A perfect example of creating problems out of nowhere. Does OP have nothing productive to say other than dunking on the term? Since when does "homelab" resemble to anything concrete?
Edit: Looking at your "de-googling" post, which resembles a lot of privacy theatre, this just seems like nothing more than an attention grab
nradk · 8h ago
Well, I have nothing productive to say; overthinking nomenclature is probably even counterproductive. But I was actually quite curious to know if there are people like me who self host but don't use their setups primarily for experimentation or learning, and how they refer to their setup.. :)
esperent · 8h ago
Labs can be places for getting serious, routine work done, as any working pharmacologist or chemist would tell you. The term doesn't imply experimentation outside of vernacular usage.
BLKNSLVR · 8h ago
I self-host a few things that are important to me but likely unimportant to anyone other than me. I use the term 'homelab' because that's the use that seems to be the norm in describing various computers in a network running shit at home that, if it were in production, would be on more modern, serious and redundant hardware.
I don't experiment much these days, so 'lab' isn't quite right. But if I were to experiment then it would be using the same hardware as all the other stuff. So it's both accurate and inaccurate.
In this instance: who cares, it gets the message across to the necessary demographic - and isn't that what communication is about?
...and I'm someone who could care less about words and grammar (notice the correct use of the term, so as not to say the literal opposite of what I'm trying to say (notice the correct use of the word literal, rather than it's not-oft-used-but-oft-correctly-applicable figurative)).
I don't know the (in)correctness of the use of brackets within brackets.
n3storm · 7h ago
Indeed we do. I call it the same but in a local network I bought domain. Lake backups.mylocaldomain or webs.mylocaldomain or storage.mylovaldomain or kavita.mylocaldomain
brailsafe · 8h ago
I've had people get visibly upset when either questioning the intent of a word they've used or when attempting to use a more specific descriptor for something they've asked me about, specifically when it's failed to accurately capture a given concept or could otherwise be ambiguous. Seems to me that it's at the heart of language and communication to think about these things, and while some may be more trite than others, I say go ahead, split those hairs and write about it. I also don't have a home lab, I have computers at home, and some random bits of gear. I don't know at what point I'd consider it a lab, maybe if it was more of a collection that was deliberately experimental, but it's not, it's just computers that have general purposes.
znpy · 5h ago
> A perfect example of creating problems out of nowhere.
Agreed.
It's still a homelab, the author just doesn't seem to like the term.
brookst · 9h ago
“My 1967 Camaro that’s on blocks with a couple of body panels off is not a ‘project car’”
zxexz · 8h ago
No, at this point it’s more is a permanent art installation :D
For real though, I have several cars on blocks at the moment. I can’t think of a single way to rationalize not calling them projects, even though when they were put up it was just going to be a “quick fix”. At least I finally got one in a state where I felt comfortable donating it.
brookst · 7h ago
Yeah, as soon as you’re arguing the semantics of a common phrase it’s a sign of denial or attempted spousal appeasement.
Calwestjobs · 8h ago
in europe you can not have haphazardly build electricity system without calling it "lab". (you need electrician to do your electricity work, but calling it "lab" you can do it yourself )
so in that sense i agree that homelab is just another hijacked term to allow people do nonproductive nonsense just to feel great.
look you have people here and on youtube selling (in more ways then one) nonsensical farces like "RPI cluster" etc. so i would argue that nonresistance to these farces actually proves OP is right. albeit i do not really see strong nor attacking rhetoric from OP in his post either, so i think problem is just that you have to chill out ;)
"degoogling" cost canada their sovereignty. just to refer to events of the past days... so even american president has to say something about it, so i think there is something to it, dont you think ?
asalahli · 8h ago
As a Canadian who doesn't follow daily news, I'm very curious to know what you're referring to in your last paragraph. Care to elaborate?
he says he is not watching news, so he does not care,
or he has schizophrenia and he cares but not cares,
or he is passive aggressive.
so which one you need me to address?
esperent · 8h ago
> in europe
Laws don't work like this in the EU, let alone in all of Europe.
Calwestjobs · 8h ago
of course you can not have your whole house be build like that, but calling one room as lab is allowed in most continental europe countries.
noone cares in Russia etc, you just have to make small donation to your public official (if they even care/notice) and everything is fine,
even those pizzaboxes...
EDIT: in most countries there are devices which can not be connected to grid without electrician in any case, like PV. but again germany has balkon PV something something. so yes, exceptions are to everything.
juahan · 7h ago
Well in Finland there is nothing like this for sure. You cannot do 230V electricity work regardless of what you call the rooms. I would really like to hear more about this in other European countries.
esperent · 5h ago
I've never heard of anything like this in Ireland or the UK. Every house is wired for 230v so you can connect pretty much anything you like up to whatever power the socket can handle. Normally 13-16A, but you can install an appliance circuit up to 45A.
FinnKuhn · 5h ago
Definitely not a thing in Germany either. Technically you even need an electrician to install a lamp in your ceiling.
Calwestjobs · 4h ago
100% there are temporary wiring / temporary installation exemptions in civilized parts of europe.
juahan · 3h ago
A Quick peek into the Finnish law tells me that the temporary wiring requirements are even more strict. There is no way to do any of that legally without license and proper training.
So I guess we are not civilized enough then.
Calwestjobs · 3h ago
i was commenting on nonsensical spreading of toxic activities. so that is that. so be uncivilised to youtubers spreading such toxic content not to me ,thank you.
esperent · 2h ago
> in civilized parts of europe
Ah, lovely. Racism.
Please speak clearly, which parts of Europe do you consider to be civilized, and which parts uncivilized?
Calwestjobs · 29m ago
stop spreading hate.
JohnBooty · 7h ago
"degoogling" cost canada their sovereignty. just to refer to events of the past days
What?
Calwestjobs · 8h ago
also your usage of 12 bit numbers horrifies me.
jumploops · 9h ago
Just call it a puddle :)
1. No fault tolerance or high availability
2. It can evaporate just as quickly as it formed
3. Same contents as the cloud (plus some local contaminants)
On a serious note: I wish more of the homelab community was focused on self-hosting (puddles should be awesome!), but it seems to mostly be folks justifying the purchase of large amounts of used equipment for “education” (internet points).
OccamsMirror · 9h ago
Back in the day you set up a homelab with enterprise level hardware so that you could gain experience on hardware and platforms you otherwise wouldn't have access to. Cisco firewalls, VMWare Hypervisors, vSan, etc.
burnt-resistor · 7h ago
I'll run ESXi 7 Enterprise Plus on a 2x 7402 96 thread, 512 GiB lights-out manageable system with 16 TiB of SSD and 140 TiB of HDD (in a 4U JBOD dual path SAS enclosure) at home until the wheels fall off. Attached UPSes have environmental monitoring including temperature and humidity.
dheera · 8h ago
I have a rack for convenience, not education.
It got rid of all of my wiring mess since 90% of my networked stuff just lives together and now uses a single UPS. It's also relatively easy to move from place to place as I move apartments. Also, enterprise equipment just works better. After a few Comcast failures during meetings I now have a 5G failover; I also firewall corporate laptops from the rest of my home equipment to prevent any unwanted spying.
burnt-resistor · 7h ago
Buy a house now. It's usually cheaper since apartments (in expensive metro areas) are often tantamount to setting money on fire. :o)
Where I live now (in a house) is way, way cheaper and I get regional co-op 2.5 Gbps internet for $90/month.
queenkjuul · 6h ago
I've got the fastest Internet available in my neighborhood at 1.5gbps for $90 and i wouldn't give up my apartment or my neighborhood for an extra gigabit.
And after seeing all the unbelievably expensive surprise repair bills my homeowner friends have had to deal with, I'm not convinced I'm lighting money on fire, either.
dheera · 7h ago
> Buy a house now. It's usually cheaper since apartments (in expensive metro areas) are often tantamount to setting money on fire. :o)
Not really. I live in an expensive area. I pay $4K+/month in rent for a nice apartment, and livable, nice houses here cost $3M+ which is over 700 months worth of rent.
1. The math doesn't work.
2. I don't have 3 million dollars.
3. I'm not going to fall into the stupid American trap of borrowing money to buy shit I can't afford just to stay poor and handcuffed to some bank. If I'm going to buy something that costs 3 million dollars I better have 3 million dollars in cash. That's how I roll. That's how I buy my car, computers, and my groceries. Make money -> spend money. Fuck borrowing. I don't do that shit.
burnt-resistor · 6h ago
I played that game in my 20's spending $8k/month on rent, but only for a short time. That's crazy rent. There are probably much cheaper areas nearby. There are plenty of areas where very nice homes are $200-400k.
Except you're paying a landlord money that could be going towards property that you own, and that equity is portable.
You won't have any wealth when you become very old and cannot work. You and your family will end up with nothing.
Borrowing has to be sensible for income ratio.
YMMV, but middle-/lower-income people spending an unreasonable % on rent to live in Manhattan or SF are fighting a losing battle they cannot afford to play.
dheera · 6h ago
> You won't have any wealth when you become very old and cannot work. You and your family will end up with nothing.
What do you propose? Borrow money and buy a house for millions that I can't afford? Sounds like a faster way to go broke.
Also, we all saw how the LA fires went. You'd better have $6 million in cash if you want a $3 million house. $3 million for the house, $3 million for a backup house when the first one burns down and insurance decides not to pay for it. You do not have "equity" in anything that is flammable. Flammable == disposable. Try gold bars instead.
If I could buy a house for $300K that was livable, not moldy, and not look like it was going to come crashing down during the next big earthquake, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
> There are plenty of areas where very nice homes are $200-400k
Yeah, I know there are houses for $300K in the middle of Arkansas. But there are no jobs there, I'm not going to live on burgers and fries, and all the goddamn tech bro CEOs in the valley have decided on RTO. At least there is real food here.
My real plan though: Work and save up enough money that I can live the rest of my life in Asia on my savings.
> unreasonable % on rent
I don't spend a big % of my income on rent.
I DO spend a big % of my income on taxes. That's the real problem.
phuff · 9h ago
I present an alternate etymology for homelab. Instead of "lab" as experimentation space, think of it as lab: place for doing work. Away back in the day we didn't have laptops to work on university CS classes.
So you had to go to the lab to find a computer beefy enough to do your work on.
It's not a home "lab for experimentation.".
It's a home "lab for getting work done."
ranger207 · 9h ago
My home server is definitely also a lab. Like they say, everyone has a dev environment; some people are lucky enough to also have a prod environment
sokoloff · 8h ago
I always thought of it the other way around:
Everyone has prod; some also have dev.
FinnKuhn · 5h ago
I would say everyone has both, but not everyone is lucky to have them separated.
joshka · 6h ago
It sounds like the concern here is that the OP is over-indexing on the use case for a home lab being a place to learn, and not a place to be productive.
> But I don’t consider this a homelab, because I don’t use it as a lab. It sits there, running the ten or so services I self-host for me and my family. When I work on it, it is for regular maintainence, incremental improvement, or to install new services. I do enjoy working on it, and I’ve learned a lot along the way, but these are merely side effects.
> But I think it is interesting that within the set of people who keep servers in their home, there are two subsets (with considerable overlap) whose reasons for doing so are sort of orthogonal. The ‘homelab’ moniker perfectly fits one group, and it would be nice for the self-hosters whose setups are not homelabs to have a cool name too.
If you want to split hairs on naming, then the problem here is that you're imputing an overly strict definition onto the term 'homelab' to not include your use case, complaining that your use case is different to this definition, and then failing to see that the term is generally used loosely enough that it does your use case.
Call it what you will, but from your description of things, you're using the server and associated tech as a homelab.
I'd allow you to call it a "it's not a homelab, but" if you want permission to use a different term... ;P
leohonexus · 9h ago
I call it my "homeprod" - but then, what happens if your infra spans multiple sites, and the cloud? Then it's just "prod" at that point. Probably best to just call it your "personal infra / servers", or if you have a family, "family servers".
vhodges · 10h ago
How about 'On Premise Micro Data Centre" :-p
Doesn't quite role off the tongue though, not even a good acronym. Maybe Personal Data Centre (pdc)?
There's some cross over with r/selfhosted but that generally includes people hosting things on VPS/Bare metal.
p_ing · 10h ago
Which premise is this based on?
vhodges · 9h ago
Sorry, did I get it wrong? I only ever see it as onprem ;).
aspenmayer · 9h ago
I think they were making a kind of play on words on your misspelling. It is short for on premises.
vhodges · 48m ago
No, worries, I knew, I couldn't remember if it had the s or not... I'll have to look up the etymology.
bee_rider · 9h ago
It is a bit of a shame, IMO, that the concept of an always-on home computer has basically died out, or maybe never even really caught on. A sort of digital shadow of the house, it could run a home email server and do any home automation/content hosting.
Anyway, I think it is unusual enough that it will need describing whatever he calls it, so no need to stress about the name. I’d call it the home computer, haha. Every computer is actually a network of chips anyway nowadays, this one is just physically much larger I guess.
breput · 9h ago
Has it? How many PiHole, ESPHome, and other random Raspberry Pi Home Assistant "servers" are out there? I suspect it has never been more popular.
On a related note, I'm enjoying the Self-Host Weekly newsletter[0], which is full of random open source self-hosting products.
> that the concept of an always-on home computer has basically died out
I just don't see where it would fit into my life. I used to have an old desktop computer that I'd co-opted into an OpenBSD switch living on top of a cupboard when I was 19 or so, and it was a fun experiment for about a year, when the tiny amount of extra hassle it provided with the almost zero amount of extra benefit meant one day it was switched off and was never turned back on again.
Hosting anything seems like a good way to attract attention from my broadband provider who I'd rather just thought of me as a faceless number, Apple has turned my two Apple TVs into home-automation devices I never think about, and I can spin up a $5 VPS whenever.
The remaining utility is the lab, though. A set of computers I can break without worrying I've lost my email or my lights no longer work properly.
haiku2077 · 9h ago
Mesh Wireguard VPNs like Tailscale/Zerotier/etc. have brought it back. Now you can self-host all sorts of stuff and your ISP just sees regular VPN traffic like a remote worker. Handy for self-hosted movies/TV, photos, ebooks, and NAS.
queenkjuul · 6h ago
I use a free-tier Oracle Cloud VPS as a wireguard relay for all my public services. Yes, Oracle sucks donkey balls to deal with, but it's pretty set and forget, and they give you essentially unlimited bandwidth (like 50TB/mo each way or something I've never been able to get remotely close to)
petesergeant · 6h ago
That makes a lot of sense, but I guess if I'm already doing that, why would I not just pay the extra $5 a month for a VPS too? I'm sure there are reasons (you need a more powerful server, interesting hardware, interlink to home automation, whatever).
zxexz · 8h ago
I call it my deprod, or home office nonproductivity suite. Or fire hazard. Or “those f**ing wires”. I’ll usually refer to just a piece of it, like “my computer”, “my weird ARM switch”, or “that engineering sample that a guy sold me at the Flea for $10 and still hasn’t died after 5 years of being on”.
I use it to decompress. Sometimes, even, to learn. And always, for personal projects.
schmookeeg · 8h ago
You have a homelab.
If this colloquialism continues bothering you, seek help. Of the psychiatric variety.
No comments yet
CobaltFire · 9h ago
I actually really feel this. Before I retired I had a homelab in the learning, testing, experimenting sense. I didn't run anything for home "production" on it because the downtime wasn't appreciated.
Now I have a more capable rack, but it's all just running stuff I use. I don't experiment on it at all, and I don't use it to gain any new skills.
So I do call it a homelab, but its not quite what people understand that to be.
nunez · 7h ago
Same. I have a pile of machines in a closet connected to a 10GbE switch that host some internal services. Homelabs do become more important when you're doing tech sales for server based software, but I try my best to run things on my laptop, or, when that fails, the cloud.
tehlike · 9h ago
It's pedantic - it's what's known as a homelab.
I have one at home, too, running pricetracker.wtf, among other things.
It has a 56G network switch i will never be able to saturate, more compute than i'll probably need.
Looking to add 24 disk JBOD - i will never probably saturate or fill either.
juahan · 7h ago
Went to the site pricetracker.wtf, tried one example search and Cloudflare blocked me. Before that it gave a few 500 errors. Cloudflare Ray ID: 957b4f2ee9b40b9c
petesergeant · 9h ago
Is it really a lab if you can't break it without stopping things working that you'd like to continue working?
hatly22 · 3h ago
local network?
Seriously, it seems theres a cycle where people just reinvent things that have been around for aeons, then argue about the name.
However in my case it definitely is a homelab, as I am always tinkering with it and the router/server ratio is way to high.
thefz · 5h ago
Saw in /r/homelab a guy runningenterprise grade NASes with an idle power draw of 1KW. I think this is insane.
Most posts on Reddit are performative, not just in the homelab sub. Over time the sub defines what is "cool" to be in the in-group for that particular community and people post their overwordly set-ups just to be considered part of it for 10 minutes.
I took from the article that the term homelab makes it sound like the use case is trite, hobbyist or not serious.
p_ing · 10h ago
No one will honestly want to know but you can just say "I have a few computers and a switch in the garage".
JimRoepcke · 9h ago
LAN
adfm · 9h ago
Seriously, this! OP has a LAN with a server(s) running local services. A home lab isn’t for them and that’s fine. They obviously recognize that others like to call their local setup a home lab. At an institution, it would be called a computer lab and has been since they’ve been around. Businesses have various names (closet, colo, noc, etc.) but they’re all servers and networking infrastructure. Maybe gear is the deciding factor. A home lab would more likely use professional gear where if you’re merely self-hosting with SOHO gear, it’s just a LAN. No lab needed.
BLKNSLVR · 8h ago
DMZ
shmerl · 7h ago
Home network describes it sufficiently, no need to reinvent the wheel for terms.
Calwestjobs · 4h ago
I have small 2 computer personal setup, virtual / software defined networking.
virtualization is available in commodity hw from 1999 when VMWare allowed to have 56 virtual machines inside of one computer...
email"relay" server. because i do not want hassle of DKIM and other useful and appropriate technologies, needed to have to be able to have reliable delivery of mail. which i had problems with having my own email server not being able to deliver mail to some small business in past. im just using one of the big guys mail system, but all mail is archived in my "relay server". i can change email provider in few minutes that way. and take address with me.
fileserver. rsync or iscsi or btrfs send/receive works great. Most linux distros use rsync + small script as a "installer". under GUI.
Owncloud, jitsi, wireguard.
Whonix. nothing nefarious. 2 vm setup for reality checking shadowbanning, price manipulation based on your social network profiles etc.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25okvSzFUZY] - video explaining Federal Trade Commissions pricing study about individualizing prices.
network connected cameras, collection device is "frigate nvr", every camera is just streaming RTSP anyway... you can check on them even with MPV/VLC. cameras are not exposed in any way to internet. your cameras get updates 2 times per lifetime... your windows at least once per month...
subnet / internal network - every service has its own IPV6 address so i can have visibility on multiple places into activity on my network. one of the services is changing ip address every 5 minutes. for security reasons. it is great indicator of intrusion, proved that twice already. :( if you do not have IPS, IDS, file change monitor etc, you know NOTHING about activity in your net. most linux distros are awful in default config. nonsense like WINE or products built on top of WINE are worst thing for security ever invented. you pay for unhampered surveillance of you.
Externally i rent for 2 dollars per month a private DynDNS relay / wireguard helper server for nat holepunching. because i do not have public ipv4 address, and you still need ipv4 for internet ADs ADs ADs ADs to work. I use service similar to Hurricane Electric IPV6 service.
i host my own SoftwareDefinedRadio for few "friends".
Also bought kiwi sdr to sit in "DMZ" for public to use, it is great service/device. HAMs can check if their signal is received / receivable in my location. space weather, antenna misconfiguration, jamming ... also wspr beacon. i can show people how many radio signals are out there free to use.
im thinking about deploying DMR and/or dPMR "basestation" to enable connectivity in my area. "neighbourhood watch" can work even in no grid situation. we already have own wifi network but wifi handhelds (PTT, talkpod, zello etc) are not reliable for us, for some known to us reason. already big users of PMR446 but lacks privacy, but children like them for small formfactor. (roughly 60 users) and that will be self hosted too.
meshtastic / reticulum / sideband is great as a home alarm notification system. PtMP.
homeassistant as a home manager + pv data aggregator/visualizer, it is almost not updated, i do not have nerves to deconflict plugins etc after every update. it is not exposed to wan anyway. to update only after newly bought devices require that.
passive house standard. + PV with storage. 92 % of hot water from solar photovoltaic (not solarthermal) past 365 days. ( first three months were exceptionally sunny this year) other years 88-90%. my house needs same amount of energy for heating as a 40 houses near me combined... why?
electric - house, cars, bikes, lawnmower, semi self driving cart for garden (no AI/ML just basic "bug racing" arduino project magnified 1000 times. ).
ocdtrekkie · 9h ago
Yeah I've posted a few times here and there that selfhosting and homelabbing are different concepts with different goals. You might use the same hardware but what solutions you choose will differ based on your goals.
For instance, I'd argue homelabbing with Kubernetes makes sense, selfhosting with Kubernetes is stupid. Because the only reason you should ever run that at home is practice for work.
barkingcat · 9h ago
that's the definition of the home datacentre.
queenkjuul · 7h ago
I run a 'production' 'home server' in my 'homelab' that runs a dozen or so services used by myself and my friends.
Just use the word we all use and get over it, dude.
senectus1 · 8h ago
dont be such a sook. if you're not making money off it, its a homelab.
If its just infrastucure to run your house its then you wouldnt be blogging about it.
your about says:
Hi! I’m Neeraj Adhikari. I work as a software engineer. I love free and open-source software, care about data privacy and dabble in self-hosting.
which tends to indicate a degree of "labbing".. if it wasnt and you were treating it like a fridge or a washing machine, you wouldn't be "dabbling" in it. you'd be installing it then not bothering to mention you have.
hmottestad · 8h ago
I definitely have a homelab, though I’ve tried to keep mine concealed and out of the way. It’s fairly reliable, but so overkill I wouldn’t want to talk to loudly about it in fear that people would burst my tiny little bubble of justification.
I do have a really cool washing machine from Miele that has a cartridge system in the bottom so that I don’t have to measure out detergent by hand. Just press a button.
But I’m not OP.
shmoe · 9h ago
production environment @ home
mindslight · 9h ago
I'm in the homeprod camp. The lab is on the other side of the room with the scope etc. Although come to think of it most of the electronics I do these days is fixing things, so maybe that should be considered production too. argh.
treve · 9h ago
Home rack!
aspenmayer · 9h ago
Why I never! You will address the lady of the house with the honor and respect she deserves! /s
BLKNSLVR · 8h ago
And never mention the work rack!
burnt-resistor · 6h ago
Spicy rack.
up-n-atom · 9h ago
home edge
philwelch · 6h ago
OP has a homelab.
Normal people don’t have rack-mounted servers in their homes to “self-host” ten services for their family. If you have the skills to do that kind of thing it may very well make sense to do so but you’re basically signing up to do that as a hobby. And that’s fine! Hobbies can be productive! Some people keep chickens as a hobby and feed the eggs to their families. But if you’re running rack mounted servers in your house as a hobby, that’s called a homelab.
Edit: Looking at your "de-googling" post, which resembles a lot of privacy theatre, this just seems like nothing more than an attention grab
I don't experiment much these days, so 'lab' isn't quite right. But if I were to experiment then it would be using the same hardware as all the other stuff. So it's both accurate and inaccurate.
In this instance: who cares, it gets the message across to the necessary demographic - and isn't that what communication is about?
...and I'm someone who could care less about words and grammar (notice the correct use of the term, so as not to say the literal opposite of what I'm trying to say (notice the correct use of the word literal, rather than it's not-oft-used-but-oft-correctly-applicable figurative)).
I don't know the (in)correctness of the use of brackets within brackets.
Agreed.
It's still a homelab, the author just doesn't seem to like the term.
For real though, I have several cars on blocks at the moment. I can’t think of a single way to rationalize not calling them projects, even though when they were put up it was just going to be a “quick fix”. At least I finally got one in a state where I felt comfortable donating it.
so in that sense i agree that homelab is just another hijacked term to allow people do nonproductive nonsense just to feel great.
look you have people here and on youtube selling (in more ways then one) nonsensical farces like "RPI cluster" etc. so i would argue that nonresistance to these farces actually proves OP is right. albeit i do not really see strong nor attacking rhetoric from OP in his post either, so i think problem is just that you have to chill out ;)
"degoogling" cost canada their sovereignty. just to refer to events of the past days... so even american president has to say something about it, so i think there is something to it, dont you think ?
sorry paywall .
or he has schizophrenia and he cares but not cares,
or he is passive aggressive.
so which one you need me to address?
Laws don't work like this in the EU, let alone in all of Europe.
noone cares in Russia etc, you just have to make small donation to your public official (if they even care/notice) and everything is fine,
even those pizzaboxes...
EDIT: in most countries there are devices which can not be connected to grid without electrician in any case, like PV. but again germany has balkon PV something something. so yes, exceptions are to everything.
So I guess we are not civilized enough then.
Ah, lovely. Racism.
Please speak clearly, which parts of Europe do you consider to be civilized, and which parts uncivilized?
1. No fault tolerance or high availability
2. It can evaporate just as quickly as it formed
3. Same contents as the cloud (plus some local contaminants)
On a serious note: I wish more of the homelab community was focused on self-hosting (puddles should be awesome!), but it seems to mostly be folks justifying the purchase of large amounts of used equipment for “education” (internet points).
It got rid of all of my wiring mess since 90% of my networked stuff just lives together and now uses a single UPS. It's also relatively easy to move from place to place as I move apartments. Also, enterprise equipment just works better. After a few Comcast failures during meetings I now have a 5G failover; I also firewall corporate laptops from the rest of my home equipment to prevent any unwanted spying.
Where I live now (in a house) is way, way cheaper and I get regional co-op 2.5 Gbps internet for $90/month.
And after seeing all the unbelievably expensive surprise repair bills my homeowner friends have had to deal with, I'm not convinced I'm lighting money on fire, either.
Not really. I live in an expensive area. I pay $4K+/month in rent for a nice apartment, and livable, nice houses here cost $3M+ which is over 700 months worth of rent.
1. The math doesn't work.
2. I don't have 3 million dollars.
3. I'm not going to fall into the stupid American trap of borrowing money to buy shit I can't afford just to stay poor and handcuffed to some bank. If I'm going to buy something that costs 3 million dollars I better have 3 million dollars in cash. That's how I roll. That's how I buy my car, computers, and my groceries. Make money -> spend money. Fuck borrowing. I don't do that shit.
Except you're paying a landlord money that could be going towards property that you own, and that equity is portable.
You won't have any wealth when you become very old and cannot work. You and your family will end up with nothing.
Borrowing has to be sensible for income ratio.
YMMV, but middle-/lower-income people spending an unreasonable % on rent to live in Manhattan or SF are fighting a losing battle they cannot afford to play.
What do you propose? Borrow money and buy a house for millions that I can't afford? Sounds like a faster way to go broke.
Also, we all saw how the LA fires went. You'd better have $6 million in cash if you want a $3 million house. $3 million for the house, $3 million for a backup house when the first one burns down and insurance decides not to pay for it. You do not have "equity" in anything that is flammable. Flammable == disposable. Try gold bars instead.
If I could buy a house for $300K that was livable, not moldy, and not look like it was going to come crashing down during the next big earthquake, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
> There are plenty of areas where very nice homes are $200-400k
Yeah, I know there are houses for $300K in the middle of Arkansas. But there are no jobs there, I'm not going to live on burgers and fries, and all the goddamn tech bro CEOs in the valley have decided on RTO. At least there is real food here.
My real plan though: Work and save up enough money that I can live the rest of my life in Asia on my savings.
> unreasonable % on rent
I don't spend a big % of my income on rent.
I DO spend a big % of my income on taxes. That's the real problem.
So you had to go to the lab to find a computer beefy enough to do your work on.
It's not a home "lab for experimentation.".
It's a home "lab for getting work done."
Everyone has prod; some also have dev.
> But I don’t consider this a homelab, because I don’t use it as a lab. It sits there, running the ten or so services I self-host for me and my family. When I work on it, it is for regular maintainence, incremental improvement, or to install new services. I do enjoy working on it, and I’ve learned a lot along the way, but these are merely side effects.
> But I think it is interesting that within the set of people who keep servers in their home, there are two subsets (with considerable overlap) whose reasons for doing so are sort of orthogonal. The ‘homelab’ moniker perfectly fits one group, and it would be nice for the self-hosters whose setups are not homelabs to have a cool name too.
If you want to split hairs on naming, then the problem here is that you're imputing an overly strict definition onto the term 'homelab' to not include your use case, complaining that your use case is different to this definition, and then failing to see that the term is generally used loosely enough that it does your use case.
Call it what you will, but from your description of things, you're using the server and associated tech as a homelab.
I'd allow you to call it a "it's not a homelab, but" if you want permission to use a different term... ;P
Doesn't quite role off the tongue though, not even a good acronym. Maybe Personal Data Centre (pdc)?
There's some cross over with r/selfhosted but that generally includes people hosting things on VPS/Bare metal.
Anyway, I think it is unusual enough that it will need describing whatever he calls it, so no need to stress about the name. I’d call it the home computer, haha. Every computer is actually a network of chips anyway nowadays, this one is just physically much larger I guess.
On a related note, I'm enjoying the Self-Host Weekly newsletter[0], which is full of random open source self-hosting products.
[0] https://selfh.st/weekly/2025-06-27/
I just don't see where it would fit into my life. I used to have an old desktop computer that I'd co-opted into an OpenBSD switch living on top of a cupboard when I was 19 or so, and it was a fun experiment for about a year, when the tiny amount of extra hassle it provided with the almost zero amount of extra benefit meant one day it was switched off and was never turned back on again.
Hosting anything seems like a good way to attract attention from my broadband provider who I'd rather just thought of me as a faceless number, Apple has turned my two Apple TVs into home-automation devices I never think about, and I can spin up a $5 VPS whenever.
The remaining utility is the lab, though. A set of computers I can break without worrying I've lost my email or my lights no longer work properly.
I use it to decompress. Sometimes, even, to learn. And always, for personal projects.
If this colloquialism continues bothering you, seek help. Of the psychiatric variety.
No comments yet
Now I have a more capable rack, but it's all just running stuff I use. I don't experiment on it at all, and I don't use it to gain any new skills.
So I do call it a homelab, but its not quite what people understand that to be.
I have one at home, too, running pricetracker.wtf, among other things.
It has a 56G network switch i will never be able to saturate, more compute than i'll probably need.
Looking to add 24 disk JBOD - i will never probably saturate or fill either.
However in my case it definitely is a homelab, as I am always tinkering with it and the router/server ratio is way to high.
Most posts on Reddit are performative, not just in the homelab sub. Over time the sub defines what is "cool" to be in the in-group for that particular community and people post their overwordly set-ups just to be considered part of it for 10 minutes.
I mean, you don't need this
See: https://youtu.be/l2ThMmgQdpE
I took from the article that the term homelab makes it sound like the use case is trite, hobbyist or not serious.
virtualization is available in commodity hw from 1999 when VMWare allowed to have 56 virtual machines inside of one computer...
email"relay" server. because i do not want hassle of DKIM and other useful and appropriate technologies, needed to have to be able to have reliable delivery of mail. which i had problems with having my own email server not being able to deliver mail to some small business in past. im just using one of the big guys mail system, but all mail is archived in my "relay server". i can change email provider in few minutes that way. and take address with me.
fileserver. rsync or iscsi or btrfs send/receive works great. Most linux distros use rsync + small script as a "installer". under GUI.
Owncloud, jitsi, wireguard.
Whonix. nothing nefarious. 2 vm setup for reality checking shadowbanning, price manipulation based on your social network profiles etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25okvSzFUZY] - video explaining Federal Trade Commissions pricing study about individualizing prices.
network connected cameras, collection device is "frigate nvr", every camera is just streaming RTSP anyway... you can check on them even with MPV/VLC. cameras are not exposed in any way to internet. your cameras get updates 2 times per lifetime... your windows at least once per month...
subnet / internal network - every service has its own IPV6 address so i can have visibility on multiple places into activity on my network. one of the services is changing ip address every 5 minutes. for security reasons. it is great indicator of intrusion, proved that twice already. :( if you do not have IPS, IDS, file change monitor etc, you know NOTHING about activity in your net. most linux distros are awful in default config. nonsense like WINE or products built on top of WINE are worst thing for security ever invented. you pay for unhampered surveillance of you.
Externally i rent for 2 dollars per month a private DynDNS relay / wireguard helper server for nat holepunching. because i do not have public ipv4 address, and you still need ipv4 for internet ADs ADs ADs ADs to work. I use service similar to Hurricane Electric IPV6 service.
i host my own SoftwareDefinedRadio for few "friends".
Also bought kiwi sdr to sit in "DMZ" for public to use, it is great service/device. HAMs can check if their signal is received / receivable in my location. space weather, antenna misconfiguration, jamming ... also wspr beacon. i can show people how many radio signals are out there free to use.
im thinking about deploying DMR and/or dPMR "basestation" to enable connectivity in my area. "neighbourhood watch" can work even in no grid situation. we already have own wifi network but wifi handhelds (PTT, talkpod, zello etc) are not reliable for us, for some known to us reason. already big users of PMR446 but lacks privacy, but children like them for small formfactor. (roughly 60 users) and that will be self hosted too.
meshtastic / reticulum / sideband is great as a home alarm notification system. PtMP.
homeassistant as a home manager + pv data aggregator/visualizer, it is almost not updated, i do not have nerves to deconflict plugins etc after every update. it is not exposed to wan anyway. to update only after newly bought devices require that.
passive house standard. + PV with storage. 92 % of hot water from solar photovoltaic (not solarthermal) past 365 days. ( first three months were exceptionally sunny this year) other years 88-90%. my house needs same amount of energy for heating as a 40 houses near me combined... why?
electric - house, cars, bikes, lawnmower, semi self driving cart for garden (no AI/ML just basic "bug racing" arduino project magnified 1000 times. ).
For instance, I'd argue homelabbing with Kubernetes makes sense, selfhosting with Kubernetes is stupid. Because the only reason you should ever run that at home is practice for work.
Just use the word we all use and get over it, dude.
your about says: Hi! I’m Neeraj Adhikari. I work as a software engineer. I love free and open-source software, care about data privacy and dabble in self-hosting.
which tends to indicate a degree of "labbing".. if it wasnt and you were treating it like a fridge or a washing machine, you wouldn't be "dabbling" in it. you'd be installing it then not bothering to mention you have.
I do have a really cool washing machine from Miele that has a cartridge system in the bottom so that I don’t have to measure out detergent by hand. Just press a button.
But I’m not OP.
Normal people don’t have rack-mounted servers in their homes to “self-host” ten services for their family. If you have the skills to do that kind of thing it may very well make sense to do so but you’re basically signing up to do that as a hobby. And that’s fine! Hobbies can be productive! Some people keep chickens as a hobby and feed the eggs to their families. But if you’re running rack mounted servers in your house as a hobby, that’s called a homelab.