Homelab

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A homelab shelf with a Ugreen NAS, mini PCs, a network switch, and rack servers.
I tripled my power bill building a massive home server before realizing two cheap NAS units are better

3 reasons your homelab needs two NAS devices, not just one

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A Raspberry Pi in a case lying on top of a Beelink Mini S12 Pro mini PC.
You don't need a Raspberry Pi for most "Pi projects"—here's what you can use instead

Raspberry Pi alternatives that actually outperform the Pi (and cost less)

The inside of the GEEKOM A5 mini PC showing user-replaceable RAM and SSDs.
3 insightful homelab projects to try this weekend (April 24 - 26)

Your homelab needs a wiki, and here's the easiest way to deploy one this weekend

1
A laptop showing the Speedtest-Tracker Docker container sitting on top of a server.
These 3 Docker containers turn my homelab into the ultimate network diagnostics tool

Or, why it's better to use Docker containers for diagnostics.

TerraMaster's F4 SSD NAS with four different NVMe SSDs installed.
I mix drive sizes in my NAS and it saves thousands on upgrades

Mixing drive sizes in a NAS isn't as messy as it sounds—you just have to do it right

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A NAS server surrounded by domain names.
Why your homelab needs a domain

Stop memorizing IPs like a caveman.

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A laptop with an external hard drive operating as a NAS.
I built a NAS from a $70 broken laptop—here's why it beats a dedicated enclosure

A broken laptop is the best $70 NAS host device you can buy

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A Raspberry Pi in a case lying on top of a Beelink Mini S12 Pro mini PC.
Homelab projects to try this weekend (April 17 - 19)

Three self-hosted tools that give you privacy over your tasks, money, and AI.

Immich running on an Android phone.
I stopped paying for Google Photos the moment I discovered this self-hosted alternative

Your massive photo library is the perfect excuse to buy a NAS

A laptop with an external hard drive operating as a NAS.
I tried to ditch cloud storage for self-hosting. Three drives and a mini PC later, I gave up

There are time sucks, and then there are time sucks.

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Closeup of a computer monitor with the Jellyfin logo in focus.
These 5 apps proved to me that self-hosting was worth the effort

At this point, I don't just self-host apps—I collect them.

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Front view of the six-bay Ugreen NAS stacked with a four-bay enclosure.
How I back up my Windows desktop to my NAS automatically

Automatic, reliable, and completely free—yes please.

Illustration of the Docker logo, featuring a stylized whale carrying containers and a NAS server.
How I run my entire homelab on Docker (and why you should too)

All my services, all in neat little boxes.

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A hand inserting a Seagate IronWolf 4TB hard drive into the Ugreen iDX6011 Pro NAS with the IronWolf label visible.
Stop wasting drives on RAID 6—why I ditched it for RAID 5 in my homelab

I ditched RAID 6 for RAID 5, and I'm not looking back

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Tux, the Linux mascot, holding the Windows 11 logo with 'WSL' text in the background.
Putting WSL2 projects on your Windows drive is killing your performance—here's why

The reason everything "works" but doesn't feel right

Pi-Hole logo artwork.
7 things I wish I knew before running a Pi-hole

Don't be like me, make sure to prepare for these things before deploying Pi-hole the first time.

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Three mini PCs stacked on top of each other in a homelab.
Homelab projects to try this weekend (April 10 - 12)

Spend your time this weekend making your homelab easier to access.

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A Lenovo RD440 rack-mount server mounted to a 27U rack in a homelab.
This is the one piece of gear I wish I'd bought for my homelab years ago

I ignored UPS advice for years until a power flicker corrupted my entire setup

Two WD Black NVMe SSDs installed in both M.2 slots on the Ugreen iDX6011 Pro NAS motherboard.
My NAS cache drive crashed everything—here's what I did wrong

I thought a cache drive would supercharge my NAS, but it created an unexpected bottleneck instead

Two WD Black NVMe SSDs installed in both M.2 slots on the Ugreen iDX6011 Pro NAS motherboard.
RAID 0 is a data-loss nightmare: Here is the only reason I still run it in my homelab

RAID 0 isn't worth it—unless you're backing it up every night

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