What’s in Our Home Lab

Summary

Scott and CJ give a tour of their home labs, covering hardware, networking, storage, home automation, self-hosted media, and AI-assisted development. Their setups illustrate two approaches: CJ favors configurable, modular systems that take more time to maintain, while Scott often chooses convenient, off-the-shelf products.

Hardware and virtualization

• CJ’s workhorse is a Dell Precision workstation with two 24-core Xeons and 128 GB of RAM. It runs Proxmox, a hypervisor managed through a web dashboard, with virtual machines hosting most of his services.
• CJ uses a small Raspberry Pi for Vaultwarden, an open-source, Bitwarden-compatible password manager. This makes password access less dependent on the main server. He is also considering moving his reverse proxy to dedicated hardware so that a main-server outage won’t cut off access to services.
• Scott’s setup includes a Synology NAS, an M2 Mac Mini, Raspberry Pis, and a planned high-memory Mac Studio for heavier workloads and local AI.
• Scott designed and 3D-printed a custom rack. It is sturdy and can be tailored to the dimensions of his equipment, though printing it may cost more than buying a standard rack.
• Both note that enterprise server hardware can be inexpensive, but its fans may be very loud. In Scott’s setup, the NAS hard drives—not the fans—are the main source of noise.

Networking and remote access

• CJ runs OPNsense on a dedicated firewall appliance. It provides configurable firewall rules, VLANs, DNS controls, and frequent security updates.
• CJ load-balances two 2 Gbps internet connections, with a 5G modem available as a further fallback. A 10 Gbps SFP+ fiber connection between the firewall and switch prevents the internal link from bottlenecking the combined internet connections.
• VLANs separate guest devices and IoT devices and cameras from the main home network. CJ also explains that DNS-based ad blocking can be configured at the firewall instead of on a separate Pi-hole device.
• Scott uses an eero Wi-Fi 7 mesh system for broad coverage and easy management, while CJ uses separate access points and a more configurable network. This reflects a tradeoff: a custom network offers more control but requires more setup and ongoing maintenance.
• They recommend avoiding unnecessary ISP-router layers where possible, using bridge mode or the ISP’s PPPoE credentials to connect a separate firewall directly.
• Both use Tailscale for secure remote access to home services without exposing them directly to the public internet.
• Caddy acts as a reverse proxy, routing friendly domain names to internal services and handling TLS certificates. Cloudflare can help issue certificates for services hosted at local IP addresses.

Storage and containers

• Scott’s Synology NAS provides about 40 TB of storage, with one-drive fault tolerance and an SSD cache. He mainly uses it for storage, limits remote access, and also backs up data off-site.
• CJ separates frequently accessed “hot” storage from unplugged “cold” storage:
  • A USB hardware-RAID enclosure holds four 10 TB drives and provides 20 TB of usable redundant storage.
  • A Beelink system with six M.2 SSDs runs Proxmox and ZFS pools. Samba/SMB makes the storage available to other devices, while Cockpit provides a web interface for managing ZFS, shares, users, and the Linux host.
• For container and server management, Scott uses Synology’s container manager and OrbStack. CJ uses Proxmox for virtual machines, Docker inside those VMs, Portainer for container management, and Termix for browser-based SSH access.

Home automation

• Both run Home Assistant: Scott locally on a Raspberry Pi and CJ as a Proxmox virtual machine.
• Scott uses Lutron switches and devices from Apollo Automation, including air-quality sensors designed to integrate with Home Assistant without a separate cloud service.
• Scott is flashing Wyze cameras with Thingino firmware and using Frigate for local camera recording and integration with home automations.
• CJ favors cloud-independent smart switches and bulbs using ESPHome or Tasmota. He also uses Bluetooth temperature and humidity sensors through a Home Assistant Bluetooth proxy, alongside devices using protocols such as Z-Wave and Zigbee.
• Their general advice is to favor devices that work locally and integrate directly with Home Assistant rather than requiring vendor apps, cloud accounts, or subscriptions.

Media and other self-hosted services

• Jellyfin hosts movies, TV, and music. CJ uses the Android app Finamp to sync music for offline listening. Scott also runs Plex but has been relying more on Jellyfin.
• Audiobookshelf manages audiobooks and supports downloading them to mobile devices for offline listening.
• Immich is Scott’s self-hosted photo backup and Google Photos alternative, though he still keeps photos in Google Photos for family sharing.
• CJ uses Tube Archivist to archive selected YouTube channels and schedule downloads, Miniflux for RSS, and Wallabag for saving articles to read later.
• Kiwix provides downloadable offline copies of resources such as Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, and documentation. CJ also uses Paperless-ngx to index and search documents, including product manuals.
• Scott runs a Minecraft server for his family. He notes that a small, underpowered Mac Mini is also hosting several other services.

AI and development tools

• Scott describes a personal agent-backed productivity app built with Pi Durable. It combines tasks, a calendar, Markdown documents, and document-specific agent chats. He also uses T3 Code across his network, with selectable coding-agent “harnesses,” reusable HTML-based response layouts, and synchronized updates across machines. Zed Remote is used for working with code on other systems.
• CJ runs OpenCode on a dedicated development VM and accesses it through a browser. Related tools include code-server for browser-based VS Code, Open WebUI for configurable AI chat, and Vane (formerly Perplexica) for AI-assisted search.
• CJ also describes a server-side proxy that lets other services use an existing ChatGPT subscription through an OpenAI-compatible interface.

Practical guidance

• Consider older workstation hardware for a home server, but check noise levels before buying enterprise equipment.
• Choose between an all-in-one NAS and a more modular setup based on how much maintenance and configuration you want to take on.
• Separate critical services where practical, keep firewall software patched, segment less-trusted devices, and avoid exposing NAS services directly to the internet.
• RAID and local storage improve availability, but they are not substitutes for an off-site backup.

The video is a setup tour and practical discussion, not a formal product review or step-by-step installation tutorial.

Main speakers

• Scott Tolinski — Host; discusses his 3D-printed rack, eero network, Synology NAS, home automation, media services, and AI tools.
• CJ Reynolds — Guest; discusses his Proxmox server, OPNsense network, ZFS storage, Home Assistant setup, and self-hosted development tools.