State of My Lab Q1 2026

Two years ago I started my first Homelab. It was a Dell XPS laptop running a Minecraft server for me and my friends. Now it has grown into something much bigger, including enterprise-grade servers & networking equipment that I rely on every day.

1. Hardware#

2. Networking#

2.1. Topology#

2.2. Routing & Switching#

I currently run two instances of pfSense virtualized inside of proxmox which act as my gateways / routers / firewalls. I use my Arista 7010T (SW01) as my core switch, with a GS105 as my “WAN” switch and a GS108 as my OOBM switch.

What is the “WAN” switch?#

The WAN switch (SW02) is the switch that the WAN interfaces of both of my pfSense instances connect to. I place WAN in parentheses as it technically isn’t a WAN, just the LAN of the network provided by my ISP router

2.3. Segmentation#

My network currently consists of 6 VLANs

2.4. IP Ranges#

Time to mention my completely overkill IP Address allocations

I assign each VLAN its own /16 subnet from within 10.0.0.0/8 where the 2nd octet is the vlan tag. For example, DMZ has the subnet range 10.78.0.0/16. Inside each of these /16 subnets, I have 10.x.255.0/24 allocated for DHCP

The only exception to this rule is LAN, which has the subnet of 10.77.0.0/16.

2.5. DNS & DHCP#

I currently use the built-in “Kea DHCP” from pfSense for my DHCP and have no plans for changing within the near future.

For my DNS however, I currently run AdGuard Home, and am planning on switching to PowerDNS as it is more enterprise grade and seems like a fun project to work on.

3. Compute#

For compute, I currently have a proxmox cluster which runs a majority of my workload and two kubernetes clusters, one of which is for hosting external services, such as this website.

3.1. Proxmox Cluster#

My proxmox cluster consists of 3 nodes, one of which is a HP mini pc which I hope to replace with another DL360 G8/9 within the near future.

Every major VM creates a backup at midnight every night to NAS01 over NFS.

3.2. Kubernetes Clusters#

I run two Kubernetes clusters in my lab, one for internal services (K3sCl01), and one for external services (K3sCl02). I did this to mimic my setup in proxmox where I have local services on my LAN VLAN, and public services on my DMZ. But instead I chose to put each cluster on its own VLAN, which gives me more control over what each cluster is permitted to access.

4. Storage#

4.1. NAS01#

NAS01 is currently my one and only NAS, It is where I store all my media & backups, however I do have plans to replace this machine soon.

NAS01 is an old desktop PC that I put 4x 3TB NAS drives in running a RAIDZ1 ZFS pool. It is running TrueNAS and has been perfect for me so far, however I would like to switch to something with more drive bays, and something I can properly mount in the rack.

4.2. Backblaze#

I currently have an account with Backblaze with nothing stored. However I plan to have an off-site backup of NAS01, and to store my terraform state with them.

5. Services & Systems#

5.1. Storage#

• TrueNAS
• Backblaze
• Longhorn
• Postgres

5.2. Infrastructure#

• Proxmox VE
• Kubernetes
• Docker
• Helm

5.3. Networking#

• pfSense
• Cloudflare
• Traefik
• Pangolin
• AdGuard Home
• Gluetun
• MetalLB
• Middleware Manager
• Netbird
• Proton VPN
• Tailscale

5.4. Media#

• Jellyfin
• Radarr
• Sonarr
• Prowlarr
• qBittorrent

5.5. Communication#

• Matrix Synapse
• Proton Mail

5.6. Management#

• iLO

5.7. Security#

• Authentik
• HashiCorp Vault
• Cert Manager
• External Secrets Operator

5.8. Monitoring#

• Grafana
• Prometheus
• Loki
• Alloy
• Checkmk

5.9. AI#

• n8n

5.10. Gaming#

• Pterodactyl Panel
• Wings

5.11. Automation#

• Terraform
• Ansible

5.12. CI/CD#

• GitLab

6. What’s Next?#

In Q2 I plan to buy another DL360 to replace the mini pc that has been with me for around 1.5 years and have my proxmox cluster be fully enterprise. I also hope to replace my NAS, purchase a UPS, Deploy Vaultwarden, ArgoCD, and migrate to PowerDNS.

Thanks for reading :)