In 2025, home labs are more powerful and smaller than ever, thanks to mini PCs. Mini PCs with AMD Ryzen or Intel Core Ultra processors now have up to 32…

The post Do You Really Need a Full-Sized Rack for Your Home Lab in 2025? appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

Have you ever been there before? You accidentally plug in the wrong cable in your home lab or enterprise environment and you realize what you have done when pings stop,…

The post Spanning Tree Sucks, Long Live Spanning Tree! appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

One of the things that gets “hard” when you start caring about the security of your Docker containers is managing your secrets. It is a tricky bit that you need…

The post Stop Using .env Files: Docker Secrets Made Easy with Doppler appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

I have totally shifted my home lab over to using mini PCs in the past couple of years. Full-blown enterprise servers, while cool, are simply not needed to self-host or…

The post NPUs in Mini PCs are Worthless for a Home Lab, Here’s Why appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

The phrase “vibe coding” is all around us and a lot of times it is in a negative light due to some of the changes going on in the industry…

The post Why You Should Be Vibe Coding in Your Home Lab Right Now! appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

They say that you learn more from mistakes than when things go successfully. I can definitely attest to that fact. I have had some horrible crash and burns in the…

The post 10 Home Lab Mistakes I Made (So You Don’t Have To) appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

Traefik is one of my favorite reverse proxies and it stands out for a number of reasons, including how easy it is to use it with infrastructure as code and…

The post Best Traefik Plugins for Home Lab and Production (My Top Picks) appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

I have been experimenting with SSO lately in the home lab and decided to give Authentik a try. And let me tell you, it is a crazy good self-hosted SSO solution that will likely do anything you need it to do. What’s more, we can install Authentik SSO with Docker Compose easily. Overview of Authentik …

The post I Added Authentik SSO to My Home Lab with Docker-Compose: Logging In Will Never Be the Same appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

The portable SSD market has exploded in recent years. When Terramaster sent over the D1 SSD Plus for me to take a look at, it was an intriguing little device to say the least and one that piqued my interest. This is a specially suited device that is designed for creators and others who may …

The post TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus Review: Blazing Fast Storage for Creators and Home Labs appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

I have been using Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) for quite some time now, a few years from what I remember. It is a great solution and one that I point many to who are just starting out with their Docker learning journey and want to have a quick and easy way to stand up proper …

The post I Replaced Nginx Proxy Manager with Traefik in My Home Lab and It Changed Everything appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

I have been big into documenting my home lab and finding tools that are great for creating documentation for my DevOps processes in the lab and in production. This has led me down a rabbit hole of trying all sorts of documentation tools and tools that can help visualize my docker compose code. If you …

The post Visualize Your Docker-Compose with Mermaid + docker-compose-viz This Weekend appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

Kubernetes is one of the most complex architectures and solutions in modern infrastructure. When it comes to K8s, we need to manage control planes, worker nodes, certificates, upgrades, and lifecycle management. This is where Talos Linux and Omni come in. Talos Linux is gaining traction as a favorite for those that want a secure and …

The post How to Install Talos Omni On-Prem for Effortless Kubernetes Management appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

Networking is literally the lifeblood of your home lab. If the network is no good, then everything else is going to fall down. Things won’t perform well, and you will spend most of your time troubleshooting the network and other issues related to connectivity. If you are just getting into a home lab or you …

The post Top Home lab Networking Mistakes to Avoid in 2025 appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

One of the most important areas to take a look at when you start playing around with automating things in your home lab, is the problem of using secrets and storing them. Let’s look at three unique solutions, including Hashicorp Vault, Doppler, and Sealed Secrets. Each of these has strengths and may be a good …

The post Vault vs Doppler vs Sealed Secrets: Automating Home Lab Secrets in 2025 appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

Portainer has long been on the lists of best Docker tools that you can use in the home lab and in production environments. REcently, they have announced the new Portainer 2.33 LTS version has been released. It is folding in many of the new features contained in the recent STS builds and bringing these into …

The post Portainer 2.33 LTS Released with Alerting, New Look, Helm Overhaul and More! appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

Storage is one of the coolest projects that you can undertake in your home lab as most apps or services that you want to self-host will have the need to store things. Aside from specific app data, you will likely want to run virtual machines, Docker containers, or other types of resources, your storage makes …

The post 5 Storage Projects to Supercharge Your Home Lab This Weekend appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

Proxmox VE 9 is the latest in the release of Proxmox VE Server now that it is generally available. Many are now looking at upgrading their Proxmox VE 8.x instances to 9. However, outside of the new features and capabilities, you want to be sure your Proxmox VE 9 server is secure properly. Out of …

The post Top Security Hardening Steps for Proxmox VE 9 appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

When you start building a home lab, one of the first things you realize is how important DNS is. Every service you run, including Proxmox, Docker containers, Kubernetes clusters, or even something simple depends on DNS resolving correctly. Many when they get started running a home lab rely on their router’s built-in DNS or their …

The post How to Totally Control DNS in Your Home Lab appeared first on Virtualization Howto.

I can tell you that when you are on a consumer power grid, one of the biggest headaches with running a home lab is power outages. When you don’t have your lab setup in the right way to handle power outages or brownouts, these can wreak havoc on your hardware, services, and data. When these …

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