Building a Homelab with Proxmox

Running your own server at home used to be reserved for sysadmins with enterprise budgets and racks of equipment. Today, all it takes is a second-hand mini PC, a weekend afternoon, and the willingness to break things a few times before they work perfectly.

This is the story of how I built my homelab — and why I haven’t looked back.

Why Self-Host?

Cloud services are convenient, but they come with trade-offs: your data lives on someone else’s hardware, pricing can change overnight, and features you rely on can disappear. After one too many “we’re sunsetting this feature” emails, I decided to take back control.

The core principle is simple: own your stack.

Hardware

I started with a refurbished Intel NUC (i5, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB NVMe). It consumes around 10–15W at idle — less than a light bulb — and sits silently on my desk. Total cost: €180.

For storage, I added a USB 3.0 external drive for backups and a second NVMe for VM storage.

Proxmox VE — The Hypervisor

Proxmox VE is a free, open-source bare-metal hypervisor based on Debian. It supports both KVM virtual machines and LXC containers, and it ships with a surprisingly polished web UI.

Installation is straightforward:

Flash the ISO to a USB drive
Boot from USB and follow the installer
Access the web UI at https://your-ip:8006

# Update after fresh install
apt update && apt dist-upgrade -y

My Container Stack

I run everything as Docker containers inside a dedicated Proxmox LXC container. Here’s what’s currently running:

Service	Purpose
Nextcloud	File sync & sharing
Stirling PDF	PDF tools — no cloud needed
Beszel	Server monitoring
Portainer	Container management UI
MariaDB	Database for Nextcloud
Nginx Proxy Manager	Reverse proxy & SSL

Networking & Security

Every service sits behind Nginx Proxy Manager with Let’s Encrypt SSL. I use a Cloudflare tunnel for external access — no port forwarding required, which keeps my home IP private.

# docker-compose snippet for Nginx Proxy Manager
services:
  npm:
    image: jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "80:80"
      - "443:443"
      - "81:81"
    volumes:
      - ./data:/data
      - ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt

Backups — The Part Everyone Skips

I use Proxmox Backup Server for daily snapshots of each container and VM. Backups are rotated weekly and also synced to an offsite cloud bucket.

The rule I follow: 3-2-1. Three copies, on two different media, with one offsite.

What I Learned

Start with one service and get it working perfectly before adding more
Use LXC containers instead of full VMs where possible — they’re lighter and faster
Document everything in a README inside your config repo
Monitoring is not optional — Beszel pings me before problems become outages

Is It Worth It?

Absolutely. My monthly cloud spend dropped significantly. I have complete control over my data. And honestly, there’s something deeply satisfying about knowing exactly where your data lives and who has access to it.

If you’re curious, start with a Raspberry Pi 4 and Portainer. You’ll be running your first container within an hour, and down the rabbit hole by the end of the weekend.

The lab never closes. ⚗️