Home Lab

The first question you are likely asking is what is a “home lab”. Well it is a set of computers and networking gear that sort of approximates a personal data center in your home. The idea is to satisfy people with a need to “geek out” and flex their DIY muscles. It is also a set of tools that allows the home lab enthusiast experiment with and learn new technologies

You will sometimes also hear this hobby referred to as “self hosting”. That means re-creating the kinds of services that you could buy from Google, Dropbox, Apple iCloud, etc. The reason for doing this at home instead of buying something in the cloud is that self-hosting enthusiasts either don’t want to trust their data to large corporations and/or they can create the services cheaper at home.

I think for me it is a mix of all of the above. I enjoy experimenting with new technology, and I host both my wife’s website and this website at home, essentially for free. This is also the next logical extension of my passion for building PCs from scratch, which I began doing in 1992.

Anyway, please check out my home lab blog posts below to learn more about this hobby, how my home lab has evolved, and some of the new skills I have learned in the last year or so. Enjoy!