homelab

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I wrote the first version of The Homelab Almanac. I thought I was writing a little volume of tips and tricks I'd discovered in my own homelab journey. The book grew in the writing, and the result was more than I could have possibly imagined—as was its reception.

Folks routinely tell me they recommend the Almanac as the book to get started homelabbing. That's incredibly humbling, but it also fills me with a sense of obligation. I want this resource to be the best guide to this world possible. And in almost two years' time, I grew dissatisfied with the gaps I saw in the book.

Version 3.0 addresses those gaps. Let's go through it all.

Data centers. The "cloud." If you haven't yet recognized it for the threat it is, now's the time. In this era, entrusting your sensitive data to third parties is not the safest bargain, and may be downright dangerous, depending on your situation.

The objective of DevOps is simplicity. But with so many moving parts, getting the Rube Goldberg machine to run without a hitch is challenging even under the best circumstances. Recently, I had a need for a rapid deployment of a LetsEncrypt-enabled web service, and I was tired of doing, well, any manual steps. So I buckled down and figured out how to get an app deployed with a real domain and a real cert in a single move.

Here's how I got it done. Hopefully this process can be of use for you.

This post is a preview of the upcoming book, The Homelab Almanac, by yours truly.

Why do you want to build a homelab?

"'Cause it seems fun," is a perfectly valid answer on a lot of levels! Unfortunately, it doesn't provide a lot of information about what equipment we need, or how we'll set it up in our home. For that, we need to dive into the nitty gritty of both intention and circumstance for your future lab.