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Why homelab? (aussie.zone)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zone to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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I was reading a homelab discussion about NUTs (Network UPS Tools) that left me scratching my head and wondering "...why? Is complexity for complexities sake part of homelabs? Isn't this a huge overkill for one machine? Just...use a UPS? "

Then I got to thinking more broadly about homelabbing and I started to wonder if there weren't maybe (at least) two different schools of thought.

Using home media as example -

Store the original.
Detect the client.
Transcode when required.
Monitor the GPU.
Add reverse proxy et al
Track bandwidth.
Add user accounts
Add failover.
Graph the result.
Dashboard.

Store a common compatible file for your devices.
Play it directly.

Which school of thought are you and why?

PS: not throwing shade. I get it; for some people, complexity, learning infrastructure, practicing skills for work etc is part of the why. For me, complexity as recreation is suspiciously like work after work.

Perhaps there's an odd Venn diagram between homelabbing, interest in ownership / useful capability and infrastructure that could make for a fun discussion. For you, is homelabbing a means to an end or is it an end in itself?

EDIT: Feel free to consider "home-lab" and "self hosted" as synonyms for the purpose of this discussion (although I am aware they are somewhat different in scope).

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[–] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Some people plan out their self hosting. I did not.

I started with a free tier VPS i had no idea what to do with. I think i eventually ran irssi on it but i didn't know how to use irssi so it was just a trial project that didn't go anywhere.

Then, my mom wanted to record jeopardy and VHS tapes were getting annoying, so we made her a kodi system that could record it off the air.

Ads were getting annoying, so we made a pihole.

It was annoying having files scattered on all the computers and Google drive, so we made a nextcloud.

Et cetera.

Eventually i ended up with a handful of raspberry pis all doing something, spread sheets and network diagrams trying to keep track, and all plugged into various UPSes, and trying to figure out how to use NUT so they could all safely shut down automatically when the UPS is going down.

So no, i did not plan from day one to be struggling with the complexity of NUT, or any of my complicated bullshit self-hosting bullshit. But kind of like the process of evolution through natural selection, the complexity built up through of series of decisions which call made sense at the time for solving some kind of problem.