2026 Year Start Homelab Services Overview
In time for the end of 2025 start of 2026, I thought I would revisit the post I made 2 years ago at the very end of 2023, which went over what is in my homelab. Not much has changed, but things have been added.
Everything is still running on an old HP Mini PC with an Intel Core i5-7500T CPU (2.70GHz) with 16GB RAM. This is normally around 5% CPU utilisation and 55% RAM usage. It is still running Proxmox, because if it ain't broke... Below I will go through the new and changed services.
Container 3: Containerception
This has been expanded to include:
- RYOT - I tested a few different media trackers, and settled on RYOT: it has a great UI, is constantly updated, and has a good community. I use this religiously, updating my instance after everything I watch, read or listen to. This is the most involved I have been with a open source project, and it is great to see my ideas considered and (sometimes) implemented;
- Nebula Sync - A great tool for synchronising my Pi-Hole instances (of which there are two). It was setup and promptly forgotten about;
- Redlib - A Reddit proxy. I have been actively avoiding Reddit as much as possible since the API debacle, preferring to use Lemmy instead. Sometimes I need to dip my toe in, so this does the trick;
- Journiv - a journaling app which I will use sporadically. Great to keep this locally but maintaining stats on mood.
VPS 1
This is very low powered, but manages to run:
- Uptime Kuma - monitoring my websites, domains, services and my home internet connection;
- NTFY - notifications, which are sent to my phone and laptop. This is used for changes to media I monitor via RYOT (see above), scripts that run on schedules, and Uptime Kuma (above);
- Docker-Mailserver - the setup of this was fantastic for learning about mailservers, mail protocols, and DNS. It is used for notifications from some services that aren't covered by NTFY.
VPS2
This just hosts Nextcloud.
Tailscale
Over the last year, I made significant changes to my containers and the DNS records for my "internal only" domain: everything is now behind Tailscale. There is a catchall DNS record that points to the tailscale FQDN for my Proxy server, so everything is neatly accessible via https://service.domain.tld when I am connected to the TS network.
The Synology NAS that sits in the UK is also connected, so my Proxmox containers are backed up to it over the Tailscale network. This did cause me issues for a long while, but it was sorted (tl;dr: RTFM).
To compare with the last post, here is the newest version of my Homepage dashboard:
