Getting Started
7 guides about getting started for your home lab
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Building a Budget Homelab Under $300: A Practical Guide
How to plan and build a functional homelab for under $300. Covers choosing between mini PCs, used enterprise hardware, and Raspberry Pis, with sourcing tips, common mistakes, and a clear upgrade path.
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FinOps for Homelabs: Managing Infrastructure and Cloud Costs
Apply FinOps principles to your homelab and hybrid cloud setup. Track electricity costs, optimize cloud spending, use monitoring tools like Infracost and OpenCost, set up budgeting alerts, and break down cost-per-service.
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Your First Home Lab Server: A Beginner's Complete Guide
Everything you need to know to buy, build, and set up your first home lab server — from choosing hardware to installing your first operating system.
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Keeping Your Home Lab Affordable: A Cost Optimization Guide
Practical strategies for reducing home lab costs — measuring power consumption, choosing efficient hardware, buying used gear, and knowing when to scale up.
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Home Lab Networking Fundamentals: Everything You Need to Know
A practical guide to networking basics for home lab beginners — IP addressing, DHCP, DNS, subnetting, NAT, ports, and choosing the right network gear.
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Building a Media Server with Jellyfin: The Complete Guide
Set up a self-hosted media server with Jellyfin — installation, library organization, hardware transcoding, client apps, remote access, and how it compares to Plex.
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Self-Hosting Your Photos with Immich
How to set up Immich as a self-hosted Google Photos replacement. Covers Docker deployment, mobile backups, ML features, storage planning, and migrating from Google Photos.