Part of a yearly series: 2024 · 2025 · 2026
My homelab got smaller this year. On January 9 I deleted 6,310 lines of config in one commit, including the Grafana dashboard that ran the attack map. Everything left runs on two used Dell office PCs that each draw under 20 W on average, less than an old 60 W light bulb.
Hardware
- Dell OptiPlex 9020m: i3
- Dell OptiPlex 7060m: i5-8500T, 16GB, 256GB
I also replaced the thrifted OpenWRT router with a new one. The performance gain was negligible for my usage. I should have checked WiiSFi before buying ;_;
Six in, six out
Added:
- Immich: photo and video backup, like Google Photos, but the photos live on my machine
- Beszel: lightweight server monitoring
- Memos: quick notes
- Healthchecks: alerts when a scheduled job doesn't run
- Glance: a dashboard for feeds and widgets
- Infisical: secret management (though I'm still using .env files for now)
Removed: Motioneye, OpenWRT, Dagster, Grafana, Filestash and Homepage. They either added complexity I didn't need, or I wasn't using them enough to justify maintaining them.
The rule
A homelab makes me better at trading off money, time and learning. This year that came down to two rules:
- Spending 20 hours to save $10 is a bad trade.
- Spending 40 hours on a project nobody will use regularly is just as bad.
Looking back, it's gone in three phases: learning (Linux, Docker, infrastructure as code), building (my personal data platform), and now cutting back to what I actually use.
Plans
Do I want a small rack? Yes. Does a full Ubiquiti setup sound cool? Absolutely. Do I want to spend a fortune? Not really.
Next is a NAS for photos, videos and personal documents, probably TrueNAS running inside Proxmox, connected to my laptop over Thunderbolt for fast transfers.
Looking back (2026)
"Not really" lasted a year. I moved and went all in on UniFi. The NAS happened differently: a prebuilt N5 running TrueNAS directly, with Proxmox on the GPU server instead. Thunderbolt works, but I rarely need it. More in 2026.
Of the six additions, Beszel and Memos are still running and Immich moved to the NAS. Glance, Healthchecks and Infisical didn't last. Immich turned out to be the important one.