< blog 2026-01-12

Building and Organizing My Homelab: A Complete Guide

homelabself-hostedproxmoxnetworkinglinux

After months of random IP assignments and “I’ll document it later,” I spent a day reorganizing my entire homelab. This is the technical breakdown.

Hardware

Component	Spec
Server	Lenovo ThinkCentre Mini PC
CPU	Multi-core (low TDP)
RAM	16GB (7.8GB allocated to containers)
System Drive	NVMe SSD
Container Storage	SSD, LVM-thin
Backup Drive	2TB USB 3.0 External
Router	Consumer Wi-Fi 6 router
Switch	Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X (dumb switch mode)

Hypervisor: Proxmox VE (latest stable)

Container/VM Inventory

Name	Type	CPU	RAM	Disk	Purpose
pi-hole	LXC	2	512MB	8GB	DNS/ad-blocking
lubelogger	LXC	1	512MB	32GB	Vehicle maintenance
caddy	LXC	1	512MB	8GB	Reverse proxy
bookstack	LXC	1	1GB	4GB	Documentation wiki
jellyfin	LXC	2	2GB	75GB	Media server

Network Architecture

I organized the /24 subnet into logical blocks:

Infrastructure (1-49):
  Gateway, Pi-hole DNS

Servers (50-99):
  Proxmox host, Caddy, Jellyfin, Lubelogger, Bookstack

Static Devices (100-149):
  Reserved for future use

DHCP (150-254):
  Dynamic pool

IP Migration

Migrating containers is straightforward:

# Stop container
pct stop <vmid>

# Update network config
pct set <vmid> --net0 name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,ip=<new-ip>/24,gw=<gateway>

# Start container
pct start <vmid>

For the Proxmox host itself, edit /etc/network/interfaces:

auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet static
    address <host-ip>/24
    gateway <gateway-ip>
    bridge-ports eno1
    bridge-stp off
    bridge-fd 0

Apply with ifreload -a. ~5 seconds downtime.

Caddy Reverse Proxy

Using Caddy’s internal CA for HTTPS on the local network — no Let’s Encrypt needed since services aren’t internet-exposed.

Caddyfile

{
    local_certs
}

proxmox.example.com {
    reverse_proxy <proxmox-ip>:8006 {
        transport http {
            tls_insecure_skip_verify
        }
    }
}

service.example.com {
    reverse_proxy <service-ip>:<port>
}

The pattern is the same for each service — a hostname that Caddy matches, proxied to the container’s internal IP and port. Proxmox needs tls_insecure_skip_verify because its built-in web UI uses a self-signed cert.

Trust the Local CA

Root cert location: /var/lib/caddy/.local/share/caddy/pki/authorities/local/root.crt

On Arch Linux:

sudo cp caddy-root.crt /etc/ca-certificates/trust-source/anchors/
sudo trust extract-compat

Pi-hole Configuration

Local DNS Records

All internal hostnames point to Caddy’s IP in Pi-hole’s local DNS records (/etc/pihole/custom.list or via web UI). Caddy then routes by hostname to the appropriate container.

Prevent Database Bloat

Pi-hole’s query DB grew to 1.4GB. Fix:

# Set retention in /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.conf
MAXDBDAYS=90

# Reclaim space
sqlite3 /etc/pihole/pihole-FTL.db 'VACUUM;'

# Restart
systemctl restart pihole-FTL

Journal Limits

Container journals can grow fast. Set limits:

mkdir -p /etc/systemd/journald.conf.d/
cat > /etc/systemd/journald.conf.d/00-max-size.conf << 'EOF'
[Journal]
SystemMaxUse=100M
MaxRetentionSec=7day
EOF

systemctl restart systemd-journald

Backup Strategy

External Drive Setup

# Format
mkfs.ext4 -L proxmox-backups /dev/sdb1

# Add to /etc/fstab (use your drive's UUID from blkid)
UUID=<your-uuid> /mnt/backups ext4 defaults 0 2

# Mount
mount -a

# Add to Proxmox storage
pvesm add dir backup-usb --path /mnt/backups --content backup

Backup Schedule

When: Sunday 02:00
Compression: ZSTD
Retention: 14 backups
Storage: 2TB external USB

Estimated weekly backup: ~30-40GB. 14 weeks retention = ~500GB.

Manual Backup Commands

# Backup specific container
vzdump <vmid> --storage backup-usb --mode snapshot --compress zstd

# Check backup logs
tail -100 /var/log/vzdump.log

# List backups
ls -lh /mnt/backups/dump/

Gotchas

Bookstack URL Migration

Bookstack stores URLs in the database. After an IP change:

cd /opt/bookstack
php artisan bookstack:update-url http://OLD_IP http://NEW_IP
php artisan cache:clear
systemctl restart apache2

Pi-hole 403 on Root

Pi-hole web UI lives at /admin. Add a redirect in Caddy:

redir / /admin

Proxmox No-Subscription Repo

Default enterprise repo requires a subscription. Switch to community:

echo "deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-no-subscription" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-no-subscription.list
apt update

Storage Cleanup Results

Action	Space Freed
Deleted unused containers	~96 GB
Pi-hole DB vacuum	~1 GB
Pi-hole journal cleanup	220 MB
Lubelogger journal cleanup	3.1 GB
Total	~100 GB

SSD pool went from 75% to 47% utilization.

Useful Commands

# Container management
pct list                          # List containers
pct enter <vmid>                  # Shell into container
pct exec <vmid> -- df -h          # Run command in container
pct config <vmid>                 # View config

# Storage
pvesm status                      # Storage pool status
lvs -o lv_name,lv_size,data_percent

# Backups
vzdump <vmid> --storage backup-usb --mode snapshot --compress zstd
pct restore <vmid> /path/to/backup.tar.zst

# Network
pct set <vmid> --net0 name=eth0,bridge=vmbr0,ip=<ip>/24,gw=<gateway>

Future Plans

VLAN segmentation for IoT isolation
VPN for remote access
Uptime monitoring
Offsite backup rotation (3-2-1 strategy)