Homelab Update 1
17/01/2026
A short tour of my current setup.
I think it was probably in October last year that I actually started messing around with homelabbing and selfhosting. I started on an old laptop running headless Debian. The laptop itself has been retired from this cause (for something with a bit more compute!), but my setup has grown quite a bit since then.
The PiHole
You can actually find old thin clients on ebay for really cheap, this is a Wyse 5020 (iirc)
that I got for 20 GBP. I lovingly refer to it as 'The PiHole', because, well...
thats what it runs.
The server is running headless Debian, and I use it as my DNS, providing network-wide adblock
and request monitoring. It still has about 3/4 of it's 12GB SSD left, and I will probably use it to run a VPN and a firewall in the future.
Vespasian
Vespasian is the better specced of my two servers. It is an old EliteDesk mini and has a 500GB SSD with 8GB RAM (rather than
The PiHole's meagre two), and runs minimal Arch, which may seem an odd choice, but it is very lightweight.
Vespasian is the server on which I run all my docker containers.
It is currently hosting:
- Portainer for docker management.
- Prometheus and Grafana for hardware monitoring. You can find my setup [here].
- Uptime Kuma, for status monitoring, also linked to Node Exporter so i can see the data in grafana.
- DokuWiki, for documenting my setup in detail incase I ever forget any IPs, port numbers, or docker images.
- A few minecraft servers to start if needed.
- My ZNC server for IRC, connected to the Libera IRC network.
- My jellyfin media server for my photos, music, and more.
Networking / The Rack
To bring the entire setup together, I have it all held in the DeskPi Rackmate T1, with a
GigaBit 8-port switch. I have just about enough space in there for another server, or two,
and a k3s cluster if i ever collect enough rPis.
Vale.