My Homelab Setup

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

A modest home server setup using TrueNAS, Tailscale, and Restic sparks broader debate over what qualifies as a “homelab” versus a simple self‑hosted NAS. Commenters trade practical advice on reverse proxies, internal DNS, password manager quirks, VPN options, and backup strategies ranging from Backblaze B2 to off‑site storage at friends’ houses, while also weighing hardware choices, power consumption, and the pros and cons of NAS appliances versus general-purpose Linux servers. Many note that modern tools and LLM-based help are dramatically lowering the barrier to running increasingly sophisticated services at home.

Reverse proxying, DNS, and service access

  • Many suggest fronting services with a reverse proxy (Nginx, Caddy, Traefik, HAProxy, Nginx Proxy Manager) plus local DNS so apps live at subdomains instead of ip:port.
  • Caddy is praised for simple config and Cloudflare/Tailscale integrations; some dislike its plugin model or distributed configuration.
  • Alternatives include Cloudflare Tunnels, Tailscale Serve/Services, AdGuard Home / Pi-hole with split DNS, and simple dnsmasq or mDNS.
  • Several recommend using a real domain with wildcard DNS and ACME (Let’s Encrypt) for internal TLS, even if records never resolve publicly.

Password managers and hostnames

  • Shared IP or base domain causes issues for tools like Bitwarden and 1Password.
  • Workarounds: subdomains per service, including ports in URLs, and tweaking per-entry matching rules. Some find defaults (base-domain matching) unintuitive or dangerous.

Backups and storage choices

  • Restic + object storage (Backblaze B2, Hetzner Storage Box, BorgBase) is common; benefits cited include encryption, deduplication, and being NAS-agnostic.
  • Some question using Restic when TrueNAS offers native backup features; others prefer tool independence from a specific NAS OS.
  • Hetzner’s S3-compatible storage is criticized for frequent degraded performance; Storage Box is praised.
  • Concerns raised about running long‑term storage without ECC RAM, though others report ZFS working fine with modest RAM if dedup is off.

Homelab vs “just a NAS/server”

  • Debate over whether this setup is a “real” homelab or a light self-hosted box.
  • One side argues homelab implies experimentation/learning or more complexity; others reject gatekeeping and say any home experimentation counts.
  • Practical split: some keep NAS and compute/router roles strictly separate for reliability and security; others embrace all‑in‑one for simplicity.

Hardware, power, and scale

  • Many note that homelab loads are usually light; CPU is mostly idle, RAM and disk are the real constraints.
  • Older desktops, mini PCs, and small workstations are widely used; some warn about high power bills from big servers vs low‑watt micros or ARM Macs.

Off‑site and “friend” backups

  • Multiple commenters run off‑prem backups to family/friends using Tailscale/WireGuard and ZFS or borg, sometimes with disk seeding to avoid upload bottlenecks.
  • This is seen as a privacy‑preserving alternative to major cloud providers.

VPN and remote access tools

  • Tailscale is popular; others suggest Headscale, NetBird, Pangolin, plain WireGuard, or Unifi-style site‑to‑site.
  • Some explicitly avoid exposing services to the public internet even via tunnels.

Restic on laptops

  • Restic is reported to resume interrupted backups cleanly (except possibly the very first run).
  • Systemd timers and anacron are suggested to deal with sleep/uptime patterns.