My Homelab Setup: An Overview

Over the past few months, I’ve been building out a small homelab to experiment with virtualization, networking, and self-hosted services. It’s not the largest or most complex setup, but it serves as a great foundation for learning and running my own services at home.

The Hardware

At the center of the lab is a Dell Precision desktop running Proxmox VE. This acts as the main hypervisor, hosting several virtual machines that handle storage, media, and web services.

For network management, I have a TP-Link switch that ties everything together, along with a TP-Link range extender that bridges the internet connection from my ISP’s router over to the homelab rack.

To handle DNS and ad-blocking, I use a Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole. This keeps the network clean and filters ads for all connected devices.

The Virtual Machines

Inside Proxmox, I’ve set up multiple VMs to handle different roles:

• OpenMediaVault (OMV) – This VM manages my storage and acts as a NAS. It holds my media library and general storage folders.
• Jellyfin – Running alongside OMV, Jellyfin pulls directly from the NAS folders to serve up my media collection.
• Web Server – I also run a lightweight web server from one of the VMs, which currently powers this very site.

Why This Setup?

This homelab isn’t just for fun; it’s a great way to learn about virtualization, networking, and self-hosting. Proxmox lets me easily spin up new VMs and test different tools. Pi-hole improves the network experience. OMV and Jellyfin give me a personal media server. And the whole thing runs on relatively modest hardware that I can expand later if needed.