I have been following #homelab on Reddit for some time, as I've always been interested in infrastructure and also how others are setting up their homelab. Recently, I've finally decided to get my hands dirty and give it a try using my old windows HP laptop that is kept deep within my cupboard. I mainly referenced from this tutorial which provided me a good starting point.

Hardware

I'm giving my old laptop from my school days a second life:
- CPU i7-4510U (2 Cores, 4 Threads)
- RAM 8GB (7.7GiB)
- Storage 1TB HDD

Software and Initial Setup

Thus far, I have spent some of my evenings to set up my home server as follows:
- replaced my Operating System from Windows to Ubuntu, configured the system for headless operation, allowing for remote and terminal access through SSH.
- set up WireGuard and Tailscale for tunneling into my home network and accessing my home server from anywhere
- followed the TRaSH guide and running containerized media applications like Jellyfin
- running AdGuard as a DNS server for blocking ads and tracking within my home network-wide

Conclusion

This is a mini project to get my feet wet in hosting. I also learnt about things that are usually abstracted away, such as configuring ufw for port access, etc. Looking forward to improve the set up and more!