Building a Homelab in 2026

The homelab scene has changed a lot in the last few years. What used to require a full rack of servers and enterprise networking gear can now fit on a shelf of Intel NUCs.

Why Bother?

Self-hosting gives you control. Control over your data, your uptime, and your learning. There’s no better way to understand distributed systems than to run one yourself.

My Setup

I run a 6-node k3s cluster on Proxmox, backed by a TrueNAS storage server. The whole thing draws about 120 watts at idle — less than a gaming PC.

The Stack

  • Orchestration: k3s (lightweight Kubernetes)
  • GitOps: FluxCD
  • Secrets: Infisical
  • Monitoring: Prometheus + Grafana + Loki
  • Storage: TrueNAS (iSCSI + NFS)
  • SSO: Custom Rails app with Doorkeeper

Lessons Learned

  1. Start simple. You don’t need HA on day one.
  2. GitOps from the start. It’s harder to retrofit than to start with.
  3. Document everything. Future you will thank present you.
apiVersion: kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1
kind: Kustomization
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 5m
  path: ./flux/clusters/lab
  prune: true

The best part? When something breaks at 3 AM, you actually want to fix it. That’s how you know you’re doing it right.