showers

About the lab

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Here there be servers. This is a homelab I built by hand, predominantly “pre-AI” (funny what a watershed that’s become). It’s also a direct result of blood, sweat, and tears (all three literal and a story for another time). It consists of one main server running Proxmox, a backup box running Proxmox Backup Server, an office PC running OPNsense, and a segmented home network.

For the past two-ish years my setup was rock solid as long as I didn’t touch it. I set up every container and service by hand, and it ran with relative reliability until it came time for a new piece of the puzzle. Cracks started showing and I found myself feeling like each new service required an increasing amount of effort to get working with everything else.

Separation of Repo and State

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“Paranoid is what they call people who imagine threats against their life. I have threats against my life.”

Garak, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

New here? The About page covers what the lab is and why this blog exists.

I wanted to share my Ansible code. The roles and playbooks that configure my homelab are the kind of thing I’d have liked to find when I started, and putting them in public is a good way to keep myself honest about writing them properly.

Converted so far

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The lab was built by hand. This is how far the move to Ansible has got, one service at a time. The roles are in the public repo.