The software that made my homelab feel complete

I have been built up my homelab for almost half a decade. It is involved many iterations; From hardware to software The makeup of my homelab has all changed many times over the years.

However, I finally came to a point where I think things are stable enough to call it “finished” – for now. Although I am sure that the software I run and the hardware it performs will ebb and flow over time, here is my homelab now and I am very happy with it.

Pi-hole

With Pi-Hole you can block content or trackers at routern level. It is executed as a DNS server to which you can point your router (or individual) devices.

As I want to have a more privacy-oriented smart home, it enables having software such as Pi-Hole in my homelab exactly to know exactly which network requests leave my house. I can see if a cheap Chinese smart plug data to an external server sends and blocks. I can also block content that I just don’t want in my house, including adult sites and everything else in that spirit.

Audiobooks

Audiobookshelf is a way to host your own audio books. In essence, it can work as an audible if you have your own audio book files.

I have completely replaced Audiobookshelf. Although I still buy audio books on audible from time to time, I use Audiobookshelf exclusively for playback. I would like to know that the audio books on my server will never disappear or will be changed. I also really enjoy being fully under control about the data and analyzes from what I listen to. Audiobookshelf has changed the way I listen to audio books.

Homepage

Homepage is a simple, YAML-based Homeelab Dashboard website. With Homepage you can easily see what is happening at a glance in your homelab, while it connects the APIs of many self-hosted services to show live data. It is much more than a simple bookmark manager.

I like to use homepage as I can see at a glance what is going on in my homelab. From how many plex streams are active to how many Docker containers are executed in Portainer, how many blocked requests Pi-Hole has, and even information about my Unifi network, it is at a glance at a glance.

Infrared MC

If you have never heard of infrared MC, then you are not alone. This Minecraft Tool is not known, but it is fantastic in what it does. If you have ever tried to host several Minecraft Servers, then you know the struggle to hand out ports such as candy. With infrared-MC you can route domains (or subdomains) to specific Minecraft Server instances.

I love infrared MC and I couldn’t run my homelab without without. I usually have three or more Minecraft servers who run in my homelab at a certain moment, especially because I worlds on a server run instead of locally. With Infrared-MC I can each give a domain name and then give that domain name by hand. The internal (or external) port can change 100 times because of my network setup, but my users only have to remember a simple domain name.

Nginx Proxy Manager

Nginx Proxy Manager is a reverse proxy management system based on the infamous Nginx web servers software. Although Nginx itself has no form of a user interface, Nginx Proxy Manager delivers a simple and easy -to -use interface to configure your reverse proxies.

I use Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) to handle all my self-hosted reverse proxies. I have a number of services at home, from Audiobookshelf to Nextcloud, Minecraft Servers, the AMP Game Server Manager and much more. All these services are accessible via NPM, which also offers me SSL certificates for each domain via Let’s code.

Ostraciously

Scrypted is a self-hosted network video recorder/manager. With Scrypted you can bring in cameras from an abundance of ecosystems and then view them, transport the feeds to another system (such as HomeKit Secure Video) or record them directly on your storage system.

I use Scrypted as a way to manage all cameras from my house. I used Scrypted to integrate traditional ONVIF cameras and RTSP cameras from Abode, Wyze, Arlo and many other brands. It brings all cameras in one system and takes directly to my local hard drive, whereby the cloud storage needs are circumvented. It also treats AI object detection for me on the device.

The drops are drowning

Tautulli is a plex -plug -in that expands the normal tracking options of Plex. Designed to integrate with Plex, Tautulli gives you more detailed stream information and following history.

I use Tautulli to debug Plex streams if there are stuttering or left behind, because it gives much more detailed information than the standard plex streaming -info. I also love Tautulli’s tracking functions, because it enables me to see what most (and the least) viewed content is at a glance.

Not

Unraid is one of the best self-hosted NAS control systems that exist. I have tried a majority of the NAS operating systems and Unraid offers most functions and the easiest interface. Designed to allow you to use any mix of hard disk sizes in a storage array, Unraid offers a large number of other functions such as Docker Integration and Virtual Machine Management.

I use Unraid to provide my primary storage server at home with power. That server has 12 3.5-inch hard drives plus two M.2 NVME discs as a cache, with a connection of 2.5 GB/s. I keep everything on the Unraid server, from my growing media biotes to documents, video images for my YouTube channel and even my old photography bibergts.

Proxmox

Proxmox is a virtual operating system for controlling machine control based on Debian. It is similar to VSPHERE from VMware, except that Promox offers a completely free community edition.

I use Proxmox to be able to handle all my virtual machine needs in my homelab. At the moment I have only two VMs active: Ubuntu 24.04 LTS for Docker and Windows 11 for my game servers. The majority of Proxmox is that I can spin virtual machines in just a few seconds if I need a different operating system for whatever reason, all without affecting my other running virtual machines.

Home assistant

Home Assistant is a self-hosted Smart Home platform. Home Assistant is designed to integrate with a number of smart home devices from third parties and offers local control and can even bridge non-gay citries to HomeKit as if they were native.

I mainly use Home Assistant for the integration of HomeKit. I have many cheap smart plugs and switches that don’t work native in HomeKit, and Home Assistant enables me to integrate them into the Apple ecosystem.