Lab

Substrate

Welcome to Substrate, the project for my HomeLab, an evolving space where I'm dipping my toes into the self-hosted ecosystem. Explore below to learn more about the hardware and network technology, services I'm running, and more.

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The brief

Substrate is my hands-on classroom for self-hosting. After years building software on top of someone else's infrastructure, I wanted to understand the layers underneath; the network, the metal, the services, and the glue that ties them together.

It starts small: a fiber line, one mini server, and a lot to figure out. This page grows with the lab, documenting the hardware, the wiring, the services I run, and the lessons I pick up along the way.

Current focus

Getting the network edge solid and prepping the OptiPlex for Proxmox.

See the live topology

Roadmap

  1. 1

    Network & edge

    In progress

    Fiber handoff, gateway, firewall, switch, and VLAN segmentation.

  2. 2

    Compute

    Up next

    Proxmox on the OptiPlex; VMs and containers for everything that follows.

  3. 3

    Services & media

    Planned

    Jellyfin, Minecraft, Portainer, and the *arr stack.

  4. 4

    Storage & backup

    Planned

    Dedicated storage with ZFS and a 3-2-1 backup routine.

  5. 5

    Automation & monitoring

    Future

    Live health metrics, dashboards, and infrastructure as code.

Status Online Maintenance Planned Offline
Link Uplink Network Data Power

Services are coming

Once Proxmox is running on the OptiPlex, this tab will map the services I'm self-hosting with live status.

  • Jellyfin
  • Minecraft
  • Portainer
  • Pi-hole
  • *arr stack