HomeLab Starter
Page 9 of 11
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Advanced Game Server Hosting: Mods, Performance Tuning, and Multi-Game Management
Go beyond basic game server setup — mod management, performance optimization, automated backups, player management, and running multiple game servers efficiently in your homelab.
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Ubuntu Server Initial Setup: Security Hardening for Home Labs
A step-by-step guide to securing a fresh Ubuntu Server installation — SSH key authentication, firewall setup, fail2ban, unattended upgrades, and essential hardening.
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Paperless-ngx: Self-Hosted Document Management for Your Home Lab
Set up Paperless-ngx to digitize, organize, and search all your documents — from tax returns to receipts — with automatic OCR and smart tagging.
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Load Balancing with HAProxy in Your Home Lab
Set up HAProxy as a load balancer and reverse proxy for your homelab services. Covers installation, frontend/backend configuration, health checks, SSL termination, and sticky sessions.
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Advanced Homelab Security: CrowdSec, Fail2ban, Network Segmentation, and Defense in Depth
Go beyond basic SSH hardening — deploy CrowdSec and Fail2ban for intrusion prevention, implement network segmentation with VLANs and firewall zones, and build a defense-in-depth security posture for your homelab.
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Self-Hosting Nextcloud: Your Own Cloud Storage Platform
Deploy Nextcloud as a self-hosted alternative to Google Drive and Dropbox. Covers Docker Compose installation, storage backends, performance tuning with Redis and OPcache, security hardening, backups, sync clients, and useful apps.
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UPS Systems for Your Home Lab: A Complete Guide
Everything you need to know about uninterruptible power supplies for home labs — sizing, brands, Linux monitoring with NUT, automated shutdowns, and battery care.
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Home Lab SSD Buying Guide: SATA, NVMe, and Everything In Between
How to choose the right SSD for your home lab — SATA vs NVMe, TLC vs QLC, endurance ratings, enterprise vs consumer, and the best drives for boot, cache, and VM storage.
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The 3-2-1 Backup Strategy for Your Home Lab
How to implement a real 3-2-1 backup strategy in your home lab using restic, borgbackup, and rclone. Covers local snapshots, NAS backups, offsite replication, and automating the whole thing.
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Offsite Backup Strategies for Your Home Lab
Protect your homelab data with offsite backups. Covers Backblaze B2, rsync.net, Hetzner Storage Box, and self-hosted remote options with encryption, scheduling, and cost comparison.
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Container Management Tools: Portainer vs Dockge vs Lazydocker vs CLI
Compare the most popular Docker container management tools for homelabs — Portainer, Dockge, Lazydocker, and plain CLI — with deployment guides, use cases, and practical advice on choosing the right tool.
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MetalLB: Bare-Metal Load Balancer for Kubernetes
Deploy MetalLB in your homelab Kubernetes cluster to get real LoadBalancer-type services without a cloud provider. Covers installation, Layer 2 and BGP modes, IP address pools, and practical configuration.
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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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Plex vs Jellyfin vs Emby: Choosing a Media Server for Your Homelab
A detailed comparison of Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby media servers — features, transcoding, client support, and integration with the arr stack for a complete homelab media setup.
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Uptime Monitoring for Home Labs: Uptime Kuma, Gatus, and Statping-ng
Set up self-hosted uptime monitoring to track service availability, response times, and get instant alerts when something goes down in your home lab.
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Homelab Reverse Proxy Showdown: Nginx Proxy Manager vs Traefik vs Caddy vs HAProxy
A practical comparison of the four most popular reverse proxies for homelabs — Nginx Proxy Manager, Traefik, Caddy, and HAProxy — with deployment examples, performance notes, and guidance on which to choose.
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NFS vs SMB vs iSCSI: Choosing the Right Network Storage Protocol
A practical guide to network storage protocols for your home lab — NFS, SMB, and iSCSI compared, with setup examples, performance notes, and when to use each.
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Homelab VPN Deep Dive: OpenVPN vs WireGuard vs IPSec
Compare OpenVPN, WireGuard, and IPSec/IKEv2 for homelab remote access. Includes performance benchmarks, configuration complexity, mobile client support, and site-to-site tunnel setups.
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Self-Hosted Email: Running Mailcow and Mail-in-a-Box in Your Homelab
Set up a self-hosted email server with Mailcow or Mail-in-a-Box. Covers DNS records, TLS certificates, spam filtering, DKIM/SPF/DMARC, and the reality of deliverability challenges.
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Building a Dedicated NAS for Your Home Lab
A practical guide to building a purpose-built NAS for your homelab — cases, CPUs, HBA cards, drive selection, and choosing between TrueNAS, Unraid, and OpenMediaVault.