Home Lab: From Raspberry Pi to Proxmox
The problem
I wanted a lab that felt like real infrastructure, not a single server running one app. I wanted to learn how services, networking, storage, and monitoring fit together, in a way I could break and rebuild without risking work systems.
What I built
A Proxmox environment hosting Windows and Linux workloads and Docker based services, including GPU passthrough virtual machines. On top of that: TrueNAS with Samba and NFS file sharing, Nextcloud for private cloud storage, and Proxmox snapshot based backups for recovery. For access and visibility: Pi-hole DNS filtering, Nginx reverse proxying, Tailscale encrypted remote access, and Grafana/Prometheus monitoring.
Full story: From Raspberry Pi to Proxmox Powerhouse: My Home Lab Journey.
What I learned
The lab taught me the same lesson as work deployments: standardization and backups matter more than a clever setup. A service is only useful if I can restore it, monitor it, and explain how traffic reaches it. That is why the reverse proxy, monitoring, and snapshots are part of the story, not extras.
What I would change next
Document the lab as infrastructure as code where it makes sense, and keep a short runbook for each service: what it does, how to restart it, and how to restore it. That turns a lab into proof I can walk through in an interview.
Building something similar? Reach me at contact@shawndrafts.com or on LinkedIn.