Pause - Inventory - Plan

This homelab journey begins where most do. With what i'm already using for my home network. A router, two small switches, an access point, and the various devices that rely on internet access. What makes my homelab unique? My homelab will be the core support for many of my other hobbies, interests, home devices, and automation equipment for our small farm.

The first step: taking an old gaming PC and wiping the existing Windows OS off of the primary disk and installing Proxmox. Proxmox has become one of the most popular hypervisors (1) for homelab enthusiasts as well as professionals.

Since I already have work experience with server administration and automation, I knew I wanted to start exploring Docker Swarm. Until beginning this project, the extent of my Docker knowledge has been writing simple docker-compose YAML(2) files.

The first service I had in mind is probably what many others did when they got their first Raspberry Pi (3). Configuring Pi-Hole to block ads. As part of this first test, I also wanted to see how Traefik made use of labels in Docker. Finally, since I have been making use of n8n already, I decided to make my first docker stack(4) to setup configurations for and run these three services.

1. A hypervisor is a special type of operating system that allows you to create virtual machines that will run a single node (physical computer) or multiple nodes working together.
2. Yet Another Markup Language

3. Raspberry Pi: A small single board computer that has been popular for small home projects.

4. AdGuard Home Stack.

5. Throw in Portainer.
6. Stand up Ollama and OpenWeb UI
7. Homepage to access them all.
8. Pausing to evaluate speed to production.
9. Create a plan for network segmentation.
10. Draw out diagrams.