Homelab Infrastructure: Building a Production-Grade Learning Environment

Nov 17, 2025

I built a homelab to bridge the gap between learning DevOps concepts and actually understanding how they work in practice. Reading documentation is one thing. Actually implementing a multi-node Proxmox cluster, deploying Kubernetes, managing infrastructure as code, and troubleshooting real issues at 2 AM is completely different.

This project is my journey building a production-grade homelab infrastructure from scratch. I started with three business-class mini PCs and built out a complete platform for learning modern infrastructure and DevOps practices. It’s running real services, real workloads, and teaching me lessons that no tutorial ever could.

This isn’t just a collection of services I installed. It’s a complete infrastructure platform built with the same principles you’d use in production: high availability, infrastructure as code, proper monitoring, security hardening, and operational discipline.

The Journey Overview

Building this homelab has been a year-long project spanning multiple phases. Each phase taught me different aspects of modern infrastructure and DevOps practices. This is everything I’ve learned, organized into the areas that mattered most.

Phase 1: Foundation - Hardware and Virtualization

The Starting Point: I chose hardware carefully to balance power, efficiency, and cost. Three mini PCs (1x Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q with 32GB RAM as master, 2x Dell OptiPlex 3060 Micro with 16GB RAM each as workers) forming a cluster with 64GB total RAM, 18 CPU cores, and about 135W power consumption under typical load.

Why This Matters: The hardware choice affects everything that comes after. Enterprise servers would have been too loud and expensive to run 24/7. Raspberry Pis would have been too limited for running real VMs and learning x86 technologies. Business mini PCs hit the sweet spot: powerful enough for real workloads, efficient enough to run continuously, quiet enough to live in a home office.

The Challenge: I didn’t just want three standalone machines. I wanted a real cluster with high availability, quorum, and the ability to survive node failures. That meant I needed proper clustering from the foundation.

The Solution: I built a 3-node Proxmox VE cluster with proper networking, shared storage concepts, and high availability configuration. Proxmox gave me enterprise-grade virtualization with a web interface, API support, and the ability to run both VMs and LXC containers.

Read the detailed hardware selection process: Building a Homelab: Choosing the Right Hardware

What I learned:

Phase 2: Infrastructure as Code - Terraform for Proxmox (Planned)

The Problem I’m Solving: Manually creating VMs through the Proxmox web interface is fine for one or two machines. But as I build out the homelab with more services, manual VM creation becomes error-prone, inconsistent, and not reproducible.

Why This Matters: Infrastructure as Code is a foundational DevOps practice. Declaring infrastructure in code means it’s version-controlled, reviewable, repeatable, and documented. If I need to rebuild my entire homelab, I should be able to run Terraform and have it recreate everything consistently.

The Plan: Implement Terraform to manage Proxmox VMs and LXC containers declaratively. Define VM templates, network configuration, resource allocation, and storage in code. Use Terraform modules to create reusable infrastructure patterns.

What I’ll Learn:

Phase 3: Configuration Management - Ansible Automation (Planned)

The Problem I’m Solving: Even with VMs created via Terraform, I still need to configure the operating system, install packages, manage services, and deploy applications. Doing this manually on multiple nodes is inconsistent and doesn’t scale.

Why This Matters: Ansible is the industry standard for configuration management and automation. Learning to write proper playbooks, manage inventory, and automate system configuration is essential for any infrastructure engineer.

The Plan: Build Ansible playbooks to manage system configuration across all nodes. Install required packages, configure networking, manage users and SSH keys, set up Docker, deploy monitoring agents, and ensure consistent configuration across the cluster.

What I’ll Learn:

Phase 4: Container Orchestration - Docker and Kubernetes

The Problem I’m Solving: Running services directly on VMs works but doesn’t scale well. I want to learn container orchestration, microservices patterns, and how to manage distributed applications.

Why This Matters: Containers and Kubernetes are fundamental to modern infrastructure. Understanding how to deploy containerized applications, manage container lifecycle, implement service discovery, and handle container networking is critical knowledge.

The Implementation: I set up dedicated Docker host VMs for running containerized services with Docker Compose. I’m also planning to deploy a K3s cluster (lightweight Kubernetes) for learning orchestration, deployments, services, ingress, and all the complexities of running production Kubernetes.

What I’m Learning:

Phase 5: Core Services - The Infrastructure Platform (Planned)

The Vision: A homelab needs core infrastructure services: version control, container registry, databases, monitoring, and logging. These are the foundation that everything else builds on.

Planned Core Services:

Gitea - Self-hosted Git server for version control and collaboration. This becomes the single source of truth for all my infrastructure code, configurations, and documentation.

Private Container Registry - Running my own registry for container images. This is essential for learning image management, security scanning, and avoiding Docker Hub rate limits.

PostgreSQL - A proper database cluster for learning database administration, backup strategies, high availability, and supporting services that need persistent storage.

Reverse Proxy - Traefik or Nginx for managing ingress traffic, SSL termination, and routing requests to the right services. Essential for learning service exposure patterns.

Certificate Management - cert-manager for automated SSL certificate provisioning and renewal. Learning how to manage certificates at scale without manual intervention.

What I’ll Learn:

Phase 6: GitOps and CI/CD - Automation All the Way (Planned)

The Goal: Everything should be automated. Code commits should trigger builds. Infrastructure changes should go through review. Deployments should be automated and repeatable.

The Plan: Set up Gitea Actions (self-hosted CI/CD) to automate testing, building, and deployment of applications. Implement GitOps practices where infrastructure and application state is defined in Git and automatically reconciled.

What I’ll Learn:

Phase 7: Observability - Monitoring, Logging, and Tracing (Planned)

The Problem: If you can’t see what’s happening in your infrastructure, you can’t troubleshoot issues, optimize performance, or understand behavior.

The Plan: Implement comprehensive observability with Prometheus for metrics, Loki for logging, and Grafana for visualization. Set up alerting for critical issues. Deploy distributed tracing for understanding request flows.

What I’ll Learn:

Phase 8: Security and Secrets Management (Planned)

The Challenge: Homelabs often skip security because they’re “just for learning.” But learning proper security practices is one of the most valuable things a homelab can teach.

The Plan: Implement proper secrets management (possibly Vault or sealed secrets), network segmentation with VLANs, firewall rules, SSH hardening, and regular security updates. Treat security as a first-class concern, not an afterthought.

What I’ll Learn:

What This Homelab Actually Achieved

Current Status (Foundation Phase Complete):

Hardware:

Infrastructure:

Personal Learning:

Lessons Learned So Far

Start with the foundation, build incrementally. I’m glad I took time to get the hardware and basic clustering right before adding complexity. Each phase builds on the previous one.

Document everything as you go. I’m writing detailed articles about each phase of this journey. This documentation helps me remember decisions and helps others learn from my experience.

Power consumption matters for homelabs. At $15/month, I can afford to run this continuously and actually learn from it. At $50/month, I’d be constantly turning it off to save money.

Break things in your homelab, not at work. I’ve intentionally caused quorum failures, tested disaster recovery, and broken networking just to learn how to fix it. That’s the value of a homelab.

Production practices matter even in a homelab. Using infrastructure as code, proper monitoring, and good operational practices from the start teaches the right habits.

The journey is the value, not the destination. Each problem I’ve solved, each concept I’ve implemented, and each mistake I’ve made taught me something valuable.

The Planned Architecture

Here’s where the homelab is heading as I complete the remaining phases:

Infrastructure Layer:

Platform Layer:

Application Layer:

Cross-Cutting Concerns:

Where to Start If You Want to Build Your Own

If you’re inspired to build your own homelab, here’s the path I’d recommend:

  1. Start with hardware selection - Get this right first, it affects everything else
  2. Build a proper cluster from the start - Don’t settle for a single node if you want to learn HA
  3. Document your decisions and lessons - You’ll thank yourself later
  4. Implement one phase at a time - Don’t try to do everything at once
  5. Break things intentionally - The best learning comes from fixing problems

Read through the linked article for the detailed hardware selection process. As I complete each phase of the homelab journey, I’ll publish detailed articles about the implementation, challenges, and lessons learned.

The Reality of Homelab Building

Building a proper homelab takes time. It requires research, planning, troubleshooting, and patience. You will have failed deployments. You will have configurations that don’t work. You will spend hours debugging issues that turn out to be simple typos.

But that’s exactly the value. Every problem you solve in your homelab is a skill you can apply in production. Every technology you implement is knowledge you can leverage in your career. Every failure is a lesson learned in a safe environment.

My homelab journey is ongoing. The foundation is built. The platform is taking shape. The learning continues every day.

This is how you learn infrastructure by doing, not just reading. This is how you build skills that translate directly to production environments. This is what a well-designed homelab can teach you.

Foundation Phase:

Coming Soon (as I complete each phase):

Related DevOps Topics:

This homelab is my learning platform, my experimentation environment, and my path to mastering modern infrastructure practices. The journey has just begun, and I’m documenting every step along the way.

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