Homelab, why?
It is a trend nowadays, lots and lots of influencers out there share their projects and know-how about home labbing, here a list of the most prominent in no particular order:
- Jeff Geerling Webiste - Youtube
- Tecno Tim Webiste - Youtube
- Jim’s Garage Youtube
- RaidOwl Youtube
- Christian Lempa Youtube
- KTZ Systems Youtube
- Servethehome Website - YOutube
- Lawrence Systems Youtube
- Network Chuck Youtube
Servers, Nas, kubernetes clusters, self hosted applications such as DNS, Streaming, VPN, git, home automation, file sharing, you name it, those are only some of the things you can do on an home lab, but the underlying question remains unanswered, WHY?
Well, there ary many reasons for this, if you think about the cloud based storage service, one could start with “The cloud is someone else’s computer”, it’s a pretty common saying, in fact it is true and it implies that by using the cloud service, you basically give your data to someone else to take care of them while still being responsible for them Shared Responsibilty Model. You basically pay for the service, for your data being available online, the applications, the photo sync and the search / sharing features, but now you depend on the service, if the vendor will rise the price, you’re gonna pay more, if the vendor will reduce the offer or move some feature to an higher tier subscription or even shut down some feature or the entire service, then you are screwed.
You’ve got the point, hopefully, and i don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of the cyber security topic: would be hard to say that a selfhosted, publicly facing app is more secure than a professional paid service, but it is very easy to restrict access to your self hosted application to the point where access to it is behind a VPN, well restricted and pretty safe, with the advantage of owning and controlling your data.
Is it all about this?
Well, no.
First of all, the homelab is a playground, is the place where you can experiment, build, destroy, change, yeld success and (mostly) cry for the insuccess, but most importantly is the place where you learn. If one should have looked into ROI of a home lab, it would probably never build one, it would be a no brainer to buy the service from Google, Netflix, Spotify or Microsoft and call it a day, but reality is that the value of a homelab doesn’t come from the 20€ saved monthly in cloud services, the value comes from the experience, from learning new technology, such as how to setup crazy badass infrastructures on a 4 node raspberry cluster worth 350€ and be able to replicate this at work on a top tier infrastructure, from reusing old, dismissed gear and turning them into a NAS Server hosting your cloud storage and photo sync application for your family.
Home labbing is the art of creating and mantaining your own infrastructure for digital subsistence, for learning new skills, for you to put yourself to the challenge, for spending more money than what you save but hey, it’s a lot of fun! (and headaches!)
Stay with me while we dive into the world of home labbing.