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_posts/2025-12-15-homelab.md

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+---
+title: "My introduction to a self-hosted homelab"
+layout: post
+date: 2025.12.15
+---
+
+This project was a result of really good timing, as well as the right tools coming together.
+
+## Motivations
+
+The self-hosting experiment started with [Jellyfin](https://jellyfin.com), an open source
+media server for movies and TV shows. Using [Tailscale](https://tailscale.com), I connected
+my Jellyfin instance into my own personal tailnet. I originally used AWS, but moved to
+Hetzner after realizing additional block storage was half the price (!!!) there.
+
+Meanwhile, I had built a tiny monitoring service for [Interchange](https://interchange.bchen.dev) to notify
+me if the server went down. Putting this up on a PaaS (I used Heroku originally)
+ran me the same amount as a dedicated Hetzner server which could run many
+other things at once. This was not something that needed 24/7 uptime, either.
+
+Finally, I was also using [Actual](https://actualbudget.org), a budgeting app, originally
+hosted on PikaPods. At some point, I realized that putting all of these services (Jellyfin, Actual, Interchange monitoring)
+on one server would be a dream come true for my wallet.
+
+## My setup
+
+For those unfamiliar with Tailscale, it's a private mesh VPN that uses peer-to-peer instead of
+a centralized server. This means that if I connect my server to my own private network (a "tailnet"),
+I can access it from my other devices via a static Tailscale-assigned IP address.
+
+Tailscale has some handy additional features which made it suitable for my personal setup.
+Using [Tailscale Serve](https://tailscale.com/kb/1242/tailscale-serve), I could take any service mapped
+to a port number and make that accessible by directly typing in a hostname.
+
+One particular quirk of Tailscale is that you can connect a Docker container as its own
+individual device, and the default Tailscale device limit is generous. Therefore, I decided
+to run each service *as its own Docker Compose instance*. This way, I had separate hostnames
+for each service, but in reality they were all running on the same bare metal.
+
+![Screenshot of my different services running as Tailscale instances](/assets/2025-12-15-homelab/homelab.png)
+
+## Takeaways and further experimentation
+
+In the interest of automation, I'm currently experimenting with a GitHub Actions continuous
+deployment pipeline which would let me push configuration changes directly from GitHub. It uses
+Tailscale and plain old SSH.
+
+I really, really hope to self-host more of what I use in the future. I'm interested in
+[Fizzy](https://www.fizzy.do), a newly-launched Kanban software that is self-hostable,
+as an alternative to GitHub Issues and Jira.
+[Self-hosting a Git server](https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-Getting-Git-on-a-Server) for
+my personal "experimental" code is something I'm also interested in.
+
+Eventually, I plan to self-host all my personal projects.