A lot of my personal projects tend to follow this flow -> frustration with an existing product or service -> wondering if it could be done better -> discovering that it absolutely can be, in exchange for personal effort -> making it happen and being happier for it.
Active Directory / GPO + SCCM/MCEM Sandbox
I set up a domain controller on my home network to safely build and test GPOs, explore alternative authentication methods, and streamline provisioning new Windows PCs.
I also maintain a full SCCM/MCEM environment with several Windows VMs attached. This where I test deployments, experiment with management configurations, and look for ways policies might be exploited or bypassed. I also have a WSUS server along side this, allowing version-controlled Windows updates across the network.
PXE boot server
After spending too much time building custom Windows images, reinstalling Linux distros, and always misplacing my gParted thumb drive, I set up a PXE boot server. I am currently evaluating iVentoy, and it’s been a game-changer. Uploading 5–10GB ISOs to Proxmox used to be a pain — now I just drop them into the samba share I created on the VM and they *just work*.
Locally Hosted Nextcloud
I was paying for extra storage on multiple Google accounts, on my Apple account, and was looking into OneDrive for the ability to sync files between my computers. After expressing my frustration about this to a coworker, they showed me Nextcloud.
After configuring the local environment (consisting of 10 docker containers for the various components), I am now using this as a all-in-one replacement for my photo/video storage and file synchronization between all the hosts on my network. I also attached it to a domain and configured it with HTTPS so I could sync files back to my home from my laptop and phone when traveling.
Pterodactyl - Containerized Game Servers
I am the "technical" friend in several of my friend groups, I noticed that none of my friends were hosting servers for themselves and were instead leasing overpriced server space from third parties or using LogMeIn Hamachi (yikes!). I wanted to make something better for my friends to use, and after some research I came across Pterodactyl. Using this software I was able to make a dashboard where my friends could login, spin up a docker container and start having fun.
At it's core, Pterodactyl a stripped down, heavily modified version of Portainer. To make it even easier for my friends to use, I also created custom templates for our favorite games, including memory/CPU recommendations, version selection, and preconfigured networking inside my DMZ with port forwarding.
Home Media server / Media encoding
This is my longest-running and most time-consuming project, but its my favorite.
Over the course of a summer, I digitized my collection of DVDs, Blu-rays, VHS tapes, CDs, cassettes, and vinyl. It took weeks to organize, tag, and store everything. I eventually automated much of the process, to a point where all I had to do was give it a title and year, and the rest of the information populates automatically, renames the files, and dumps it into pre-configured directories.
Once digitized, I setup Plex to be able to access it easily inside my home from my devices. However, bandwidth quickly became a bottleneck, so I spent a lot of time tuning custom encoding profiles for SD, 1080p, and 4K to balance quality and performance. [more on this to come]
Self-Hosted AI models
I had an aspiration to train an AI model on my Homelab documentation that would run locally on one of my servers that would be able to answer questions, and aide with planning new projects. This endeavor proved fruitless. I tried for months to get any open model to consistently correctly answer basic questions from the dataset it was trained on, and had no luck. AI is not *there* yet, even on private models like ChatGPT, and Claude, and I don't have confidence that it ever will be. Personally, I do not like the business model of "use our AI for free*" the asterisk being that you're supplementing their dataset with whatever information you put into it. I also find their common practice of relentlessly scraping the open internet for training data to be unethical at best.
Automated Smart Home (Home Assistant)
[pending details]
Websites (including this one!)
[pending details]
Powershell Automations
[pending details]
Obsidian - Note Taking and Documentation
[pending details]
Veeam Backups
I use Veeam to back up critical VMs on my Proxmox hosts, as well as both my and my partner’s computers daily. These backups are stored on a local NAS and mirrored to an off-site location. Due to the high bandwidth demands, I upgraded to a 10Gbps internal network (see the Homelab page for details).
