This is just a space for me to share some notes and thoughts. I hope someone finds something useful here. Zola 2025-12-07T00:00:00+00:00 https://suchaboris.com/categories/homelab/atom.xml 2025-12-07T00:00:00+00:00 2025-12-07T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://suchaboris.com/blog/building-a-family-dashboard/ <p>My next personal project was born out of spite: building a family dashboard to mimic the <a rel="external" href="https://www.costco.com/p/-/skylight-15-smart-touchscreen-calendar-and-organizer/4000234720">Skylight</a> organizer constantly shoved in my face by ads.</p> <p>I figured if I have a <strong>homelab</strong>, I should be able to self-host something like this. I used <strong>Home Assistant</strong> as a starting point after researching the different customization options.</p> <p>I now have a draft dashboard running on an old <strong>iPad</strong> on my kitchen wall, and my family finds it extremely useful. The biggest win was when the kids started adding tasks for themselves!</p> <p>I picked up some hardware during Black Friday to build a proper kiosk, which will be the next upgrade. It's a fun project that makes my homelab so much more useful.</p> <p><img src="/images/building_dashboard_1.png" alt="Temporary iPad dashboard" /> <img src="/images/building_dashboard_2.png" alt="Temporary iPad dashboard" /></p> 2025-11-16T00:00:00+00:00 2025-11-16T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://suchaboris.com/blog/using-nas-as-a-data-layer-for-k8s/ <p>I have only had time this week for a tiny personal project. And that project was to use my <strong>NAS</strong> as a data persistence layer for at least some of the apps running in my <strong>K8s cluster</strong>. It was surprisingly easy.</p> <p>The setup required tinkering with nodes and <strong>K8s</strong> manifests, but it all went very smoothly. So now I have my <strong>Minecraft</strong> server storing all the data on my NAS via <strong>NFS</strong>, so even if my lab's hardware fails, the data will not be lost. And as I'm running backups on the NAS itself, I can protect the data even more.</p> <p>There is a tiny latency tradeoff. I did notice a bit of a lag in Minecraft, as it has to read and write files a lot. But because all connections are wired and the lab and NAS are on the same switch, it has not been a problem so far. If it becomes worse, I can always revert back to local storage just for one app.</p> 2025-11-09T00:00:00+00:00 2025-11-09T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://suchaboris.com/blog/running-my-own-minecraft-server/ <p>For months, if not years, creating a <strong>homelab</strong> was on my mind, but I kept postponing it because I lacked a clear goal for what I'd run there.</p> <p>When I finally started working on it in October, the motivation was very simple: My oldest kid wanted to play <strong>Minecraft</strong> together! :)</p> <p>It took a bit of time and a lot of extra steps to ensure I did it the way I wanted. I learned so much about <strong>Kubernetes</strong> and all the related tools along the way, which was part of the goal.</p> <p>I'm happy to share I now have a <strong>Minecraft server</strong> running in my <strong>K8s homelab cluster</strong>. It is always on, there is no lag, and it's running surprisingly well.</p> <p>I have other lab projects in mind, but I am very happy that the idea that started it all is now complete.</p> 2025-10-26T00:00:00+00:00 2025-10-26T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://suchaboris.com/blog/the-joy-of-scope-creep-in-a-homelab/ <p>Last week was a classic case of <strong>scope creep</strong> (for a personal project): I started one task and it instantly spawned five more. On one hand, it's a good learning process; on the other, it feels less productive because my To-Do list got bigger, not smaller.</p> <p>All I wanted was to set up some <strong>security scanner</strong> for my <strong>homelab K8s cluster</strong>. After researching different tools, I spun one up and got a summary report, which was great. Time to start fixing vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, right?</p> <p>Well, I thought I needed to set up alerting first so I know the number does not go up. But for that, I need to set up <strong>secret management</strong> so alerts can be sent via email. And each part requires quite a bit of reading, research, and evaluation of which solution will work best for my case.</p> <p>And so, by the end of the week, my To-Do list for the homelab is twice as big as it was when the week started. And I love it. I am learning so much with this project.</p> 2025-10-19T00:00:00+00:00 2025-10-19T00:00:00+00:00 Unknown https://suchaboris.com/blog/my-homelab-is-ready/ <p>I'm very happy to share that I've finished setting up my <strong>homelab</strong>!</p> <p>It took about a month to go from "I want to run a homelab on <strong>Kubernetes</strong>" to successfully using my first self-hosted app. I thought it would take much longer with my limited time, so this is a big personal milestone.</p> <p>I have two <strong>old laptops</strong> I got from friends sitting in my garage, running a Kubernetes cluster leveraging <strong>Debian</strong> and <strong>k3s</strong>. At the moment, it's a full monitoring stack (<strong>Prometheus</strong> + <strong>Grafana</strong>) and a simple app, all running smoothly. Seeing the metrics in Grafana for the first time was incredibly satisfying.</p> <p>This entire setup relies on a <strong>GitOps</strong> flow, specifically using <strong>FluxCD</strong> to manage all deployments. I had to fight a number of quirks setting everything up, obviously, but that's just a part of the learning process.</p> <p>Next up: adding some security layers, then deploying more useful applications.</p> <p>If you want the technical details, check out my <a rel="external" href="https://github.com/prymost/homelab">Homelab repository</a> on GitHub.</p>