lab@home - Just Host It with Proxmox and Debian

Homelabbing is a time-honored tradition of the Linux, FOSS and networking community at large. This talk will help the uninitiated learn the fundamentals by utilizing Proxmox and Debian VMs/LXCs.

In this session, I will go through the following ideas:

• What and Whys of homelabs - Explain to attendees how homelabbing can be a fun hobby & learning experience, and also help someone professionally.

• Requirements for setting up your own - Explain the hardware involved, particulars of hardware required for certain kinds of setup, costs involved etc.

• Explaining Proxmox - what it is, how it can be used for homelabs, how to install it, a quick demo of my proxmox cluster to demonstrate various features.

• Hosting services - Once you have your proxmox cluster set up, you need to actually host useful services on it. An explanation of what kinds of services might be useful for yourself, and for the wider world.

• Exposing services to the internet - Sharing is caring. Why not expose a few hosted services out to the web for people to use? An explanation of the intricacies involved with exposing your network to the bad bad world outside, traversing NAT, getting around unhelpful ISPs and more.

• Future improvements for your cluster - There's a lot more you can do with homelabs; setting up High Availability, replication, storage, backups, esoteric networking setups, Authentication and Authorization, Remote Access, Infrastructure as Code, Automation and much more.

This covers the basics of homelabbing. There is a lot more to explore, so I encourage attendees to chat with me after the talk for figuring out anything else they want to know about.

I apologize in advance for not linking my slides.

• Why a homelab might be beneficial for the attendees.

• Common tools/hardware/costs involved with setting up one.

• Networking fundamentals.

• An understanding that hosting doesn't have to be for big players - even a regular person can set one up with minimal costs and effort. If even one person sets up their homelab after this talk, I will consider this talk a success.