Overview
This home lab is a place to run real applications, troubleshoot infrastructure and build operational knowledge. The focus is on learning repeatable deployment and maintenance practices, not representing the lab as a commercial hosting platform.
Infrastructure and tools
- Dell PowerEdge hardware running Ubuntu Linux, with browser-based and command-line administration.
- Docker and Docker Compose for organizing services, networks, volumes and restart behavior.
- SSH, service logs, health checks and administrative tools for diagnosing failures.
Self-hosted services
- Nextcloud — self-hosted file and collaboration services.
- Immich — photo and video library management.
- Navidrome — a personal music server.
- Uptime Kuma — availability checks and status monitoring.
- Ollama with Open WebUI — a local AI runtime and web interface; explored in more depth in the AI section.
Operating approach
Deploy and validate one service at a time, confirm it survives restarts, check logs when behavior changes and document what was actually tested. Exposure of management interfaces, access restrictions and backup practices must be evaluated for each service.
Lessons and next steps
- Health reports and running containers are different signals; both need verification.
- Power management and network availability can affect service reachability.
- Future documentation can include redacted diagrams and screenshots without revealing private addresses, credentials or sensitive endpoints.