Own your data again
Self Host Lab teaches you to install, secure and run your own services — media server, photos, passwords, automation — on hardware you control. Step by step, without the noise.
Independent guides · Open-source first · No filler
~/start $ choose your path
Understand what self-hosting is and get your first service running this weekend.
Start the basicsPick the right hardware, hypervisor, storage layout and network for your needs.
Plan my buildSecurity, backups, monitoring, high availability — make your stack production-grade.
Harden my setup~/guides $ featured
If you run Home Assistant, there’s a decent chance you also run HACS. It’s the add-on almost everyone ends up installing sooner…
Tailscale has disclosed a set of security findings affecting Tailscale SSH, plus the related Serve and Funnel features, and has already shipped…
Unraid OS 7.3.4 went out on October 22, three days before this article, and the release notes read like routine maintenance: 44…
Traefik has disclosed a high-severity vulnerability in its ForwardAuth middleware that can let one client’s authenticated identity leak into another client’s request.…
Home Assistant 2026.10, “You are here,” is now stable with a rebuilt vector-tile map, a one-click Model Context Protocol connection for AI…
~/apps $ self-hosted catalog
openHAB is a Java/OSGi home automation framework and one of the oldest genuine alternatives…
Mosquitto is the reference open-source MQTT broker, the message backbone that lets Zigbee2MQTT, ESPHome,…
Zigbee2MQTT bridges your Zigbee lights, sensors, and plugs to MQTT so any platform can…
CasaOS is an open-source personal cloud operating system that turns a spare PC, Raspberry…
Filebrowser Quantum is a lightweight, actively maintained fork of the classic Filebrowser web file…
Cloudreve is a self-hosted, Go-based personal cloud with a drive-like interface and support for…
OpenMediaVault is a free, open-source NAS operating system built on Debian Linux. Here’s the…
Unraid is a paid, closed-source NAS and virtualization OS from Lime Technology, built around…
~/compare $ media servers
Best for: privacy-first setups and full control.
Best for: families and smart-TV comfort.
Best for: live TV & DVR power users.
~/hardware $ example builds
A $150-250 first home server: a used OptiPlex or ThinkCentre Tiny, or a new N100 mini PC, running Pi-hole, Jellyfin,…
A $500-700 Proxmox VE build, mini PC or compact ITX, that runs VMs, containers, light NAS duty, and the *arr…
A quiet Intel Quick Sync build around $1,200 that streams 4K everywhere, backs up your photos, and runs the whole…
~/tutorials $ latest
