What Runs in My Homelab, and Why Each Box Is There

Tue, 03 Nov 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My homelab is not a rack of enterprise gear. It’s a handful of old machines on a shelf and a desk, most of them more than ten years old, each with one clear job. Here’s the whole thing, box by box.

It started with Home Assistant. I wanted one place to watch what my home was doing, especially the solar panels and the heat pump water heater. But before connecting everything in the house to a new system, I decided to build the foundation first: solid networking, security and backups.

Overview on Small Server Lab

What Runs in My Homelab, and Why Each Box Is There