My Lab
A self-hosted playground for learning, tinkering, and building.
Last updated: July 18, 2024 • lab self-hosting proxmox
What started as a Raspberry Pi on a desk has grown into a full Proxmox server with GPU passthrough, VPN tunneling, and self-hosted AI tools. This is where I experiment, break things, and learn.
Read the full story →
The cool home "Datacenter" I imagined
Hardware
Primary Server (Proxmox VE)
- CPU:
- AMD Ryzen 9 5900X (12-core / 24-thread)
- RAM:
- 64GB DDR4
- GPU:
- NVIDIA RTX 3070 8GB (passthrough to File Server VM)
- Storage:
- 1TB NVMe SSD + 4TB HDD + 2TB HDD
- OS:
- Proxmox VE Community Edition
Secondary Server (Raspberry Pi 4)
- CPU:
- Broadcom BCM2711 (4-core ARM Cortex-A72)
- RAM:
- 4GB LPDDR4
- Storage:
- 32GB microSD + USB 3.0 HDD Docking (2TB + 4TB)
- Use:
- Retired from primary duties, kept as backup
Virtual Machines
Proxmox VE dashboard showing the server node
File Server
Immich, Samba, GPU passthrough
14 vCPU • 50GB RAM • 155GB + 1TB SSD
Docker Server 1
Containerized services
2 vCPU • 4GB RAM • 60GB
Ghost Server
Blog CMS
2 vCPU • 2GB RAM • 50GB
MySQL Server
Database server
2 vCPU • 4GB RAM • 30GB
Home Assistant
Smart home automation
2 vCPU • 4GB RAM • 32GB
Services
Media & Storage
✦
Immich
— Self-hosted Google Photos with AI face grouping and CLIP search (GPU accelerated)
Immich interface — looks just like Google Photos
✦
Samba
— Network file sharing across devices
✦
Sonarr / Radarr
— Automated media management
✦
Plex
— Self-hosted streaming
Development & AI
✦
Lobe Chat
— Feature-rich LLM chat UI with plugin support and local model integration
Lobe Chat working with Stable Diffusion
✦
Ollama
— Local LLM inference (Llama 3, StarCoder, Gemma)
✦
Stable Diffusion Web UI
— AI image generation with AUTOMATIC1111
Stable Diffusion Web UI
Infrastructure
✦
Ghost CMS
— Blog platform
✦
Pi-Hole
— DNS-level ad blocking (router-wide)
✦
Home Assistant
— Smart home automation
✦
Nginx
— Reverse proxy (on cloud VPS)
✦
OpenVPN
— Secure tunnel between home server and cloud VPS
Network Architecture
How It Works
- 1. A cheap DigitalOcean droplet ($6/mo) provides the public IP
- 2. OpenVPN server on the droplet creates secure tunnels to each home VM
- 3. Nginx on the droplet reverse-proxies requests to the appropriate VM via VPN
- 4. Cloudflare sits in front for DDoS protection and SSL termination
- 5. This saves ~$13/mo compared to upgrading to an ISP plan with a public IP
Monthly Costs
Biznet 150Mbps Internet ~$23/mo
DigitalOcean Droplet ~$6/mo
Electricity (estimate) ~$6/mo
Total ~$35/mo
Curious about the full story? I wrote a detailed blog post about my journey from a Raspberry Pi to this setup.
Read "My Homelab Journey"