Homelab Project

Hey. Well, I just started diving into HomeLab. It’s crazy.

So, my server is running on TrueNAS. I was familiar with TrueNAS from previous experimentation. One day, I hope to better understand Proxmox. But for now, I’ll stick with what I’m familiar with.

Specs:

TrueNAS is running on an old computer. It has an AMD FX-6300 Six-Core CPU with 16GB of RAM. For storage, I have a 500GB SSD for TrueNAS and a 2TB HDD for the storage. I know I need to get another 2TB HDD for redundancy but trying to find that on a budget is not easy. I might have to swap it for a 4TB. I found a few refurbished 4TB NAS HDD for cheap. I also put a Radeon RX 580 GPU in it for Jellyfin and AI.

Apps:

I have Forgejo as my main Git repo with GitHub as secondary. The workflow for it, is that I push my commits to Forgejo. Once Forgejo receives those commits, it push them to GitHub automatically. This creates the redundancy in case my server goes down or GitHub goes down.

I also run Nginx Proxy Manager. This allows me to have nice urls for the apps rather than some ip address with port number. It is also set to provide valid certificates to stop the annoying “Not Secure” error.

I also run Jellyfin for my home media. I kind of wish there was a native app for Apple TV but I am currently using Infuse to connect to it. I only started using it but I hope to expend its usage more.

I also run Prometheus and Grafana. Having just learned about it through Boot.Dev, I wanted to get a better understanding of both programs. So, by experimenting with my own apps, I hope to get a better understanding and make better dashboards in Grafana.

I also run Dozzle to keep an eye on logs. This has been very useful in debugging apps when I made modifications but forgot to change permissions. The TrueNAS log viewer is not very useful.

I also run a few tools such as OmniTools, IT-Tools, Draw.io and MeTube. These are just nice to have.

And let’s not forget Homepage. It is nice to have a place where I can see all my apps and a quick way to get to where I need to go. Dozzle was very helpful in debugging Homepage for permissions. When you want to look at logs in TrueNAS, the service needs to be active. So, when it goes in a loop of up and down. Not easy to read the logs.

And last but not least, WordPress. As you can imagine, I only started using it. I need to figure out how to link WordPress on my server to an external hosted WordPress. But this is why I started this HomeLab.

Conclusion:

All in all, this is the starting of my journey in the creation of a HomeLab. My first order of business is to get my storage fixed. Once that is done, let’s see where this journey takes us.

See you in the next one.

God bless.