Running a Home Cloud

Published on January 28, 2026

What is a Homelab?

A homelab has come to be known as repurposed computer hardware than can run any number of usually lightweight (though some are becoming resource hogs) services at your house. Usually running these services is for fun and for experimentation, and if the service was to go down, it would be a minor inconvenience.

🏗️ When does a homelab become a home cloud?

I call my local network services a home cloud because it is not just a “homelab” as many people have begun calling any server or computer that runs a piece of software for a service that they consume. Think of a Mac Mini for running Moltbot or a powerful GPU to run an Ollama API with an OpenWebUI frontend to interact with the different downloaded models. While some of my home‑cloud services are for experimentation, most of the services I run in my home cloud are mission‑critical to my daily work.

I would define a homelab as a home cloud when, if the services you are running go down, you cannot operate normally without fixing them.

My use of “home cloud” is also not to be confused with self-hosted storage that replaces Google Drive or Microsoft Onedrive.

So what services might these be?

First a foray into the tech

Home‑Cloud Architecture

• Virtualization layer: Proxmox runs the underlying VMs
• Operating Systems: A set of cloud images that I auto‑install with a custom script
• Application platform: VMs, Kubernetes, and Docker host the workloads
• Deployment & configuration: Terraform, Ansible, and Helm orchestrate platform deployments

🛠️ Services critical to my daily work

• Backup File Server: The first and most important service you will run. If you’re running stateful services that have data saved within them, you need a place to back it up. This is where you start and I have a blog on how to do it here
• Devbox: A virtual machine with all the hardwrae resources I can throw at it, so I can develop on something more powerful than a MacBook.
• Password manager: None of my passwords ever actually leave my network except on the sites that I plug them into. (make backups 🫠)
• This Website gooseops.com: I know there are plenty of free hosting options for hosting my static pages website, but hey I’m in DevOps, I should be hosting this myself in a fault tolerant and redundant way.
• WireGuard VPN: An always‑on remote access to my home cloud.
• DNS server: For letting me connect to local services by name instead of IP.
• Local LLM: Runs as a coding agent or chatbot for local work (so I don’t have to pay the big guys because I’m still not sure I want AI doing all my work for me yet 😏).
• Design tool: Penpot for Canva‑like design; it’s where I keep my brand kit and other visual assets I’m working on.

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Services for the household

• Ad‑blocker: I’m a father of 5 and I want to avoid ads if I can so my kids aren’t exposed to something they shouldn’t be in an ad
• Game server: You could probably argue this one is unnecessary, but my kids that are old enough each get ~20 minutes a day on weekends to play games. If they can all play on the same server at the same time, this makes the game playing window 20 minutes instead of an hour, and I can play with them.
• Media server: This one is usually one of the first servers that gets folks excited about having a home cloud or homelab. I can definitely say, it has allowed me to pack away all my physical media so my kids can watch any of our movies through Jellyfin.
• Network controller: Allows me to manage my router and access points from one location.

🌱 Aspirations

• Cloud storage: I have run Nextcloud in the past but was met with a networking limitation which I’ve figured out now. I just need to get off my rear end and deploy it.
• Calendar: A self-hosted single location for all my calendar engagements in one location with Cal.com
• Virtual office: A virtual office with virtual office hours (I’m trying to get workadventure up and running so I can run virtual office hours, but this has proven a much larger task than I anticipated. I’m almost over the finish line here and can’t wait to start receiving guests virtually)

If some of these were services were down, it would be a minor inconvenience. However, many of these services are necessary for an uninterrupted workday, and I would be unable to do my job efficiently if they weren’t running smoothly.

🤔 So what about you?

Do you run a homelab or a home cloud? What is keeping you from moving all the services you use daily and pay for with your data or your money to a local set of services you own? There is not always something open source that will work for a service you are using, but you’d be surprised how many open source and very functional projects there are out there.

Give it a shot, turn your homelab into a home cloud, and never look back. Learn how to own and manage your data, and what it means to not have to rely on or be beholden to service companies when an outage occurs. You’re only beholden to yourself.

P.S. Have I mentioned that you should make backups?