Supercharging My Raspberry Pi Homelab: A Journey of Optimization
Hey everyone, I’m Adrian, and I’m excited to share my homelab journey with you! I’ve recently built a homelab centered around a Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB version), and while it’s humming along nicely, I’m always looking for ways to improve it. I believe in the power of community and learning from others, so I’m reaching out to see if you have any suggestions.
Here’s a quick overview of my current setup:
- Hardware: Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB)
- Operating System: Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS
- Containerization: Docker (running all services)
- DNS and DDoS Protection: Cloudflare
Everything runs within Docker containers on my Raspberry Pi. Currently, it’s handling everything from media servers like Jellyfin and Kavita to utility tools like Jdownloader and Filebrowser. I’m even hosting a few project websites! I’m using Cloudflare for DNS management and some basic DDoS protection, which has been invaluable.
Looking ahead, I plan to expand my hardware with a mini-PC (or perhaps even multiple mini-PCs!). The idea is to dedicate the Raspberry Pi to essential management tasks like Nginx Proxy Manager, monitoring (Glances, Beszel, UptimeKuma, Portracker), and container orchestration with Portainer. The mini-PC(s) would then take over the heavier lifting of running the main services.
One of my biggest priorities right now is implementing a robust backup solution. I haven’t purchased any hard drives yet, so recommendations for good external storage options are welcome. More importantly, I’m searching for a reliable and preferably ARM64-compatible Docker containerized backup solution. If you have any experience with this, I’d love to hear your suggestions.
I’m also open to any general advice on improving my homelab setup. Whether it’s optimizing my current configuration, suggestions for new services, or best practices for security and maintenance, any insights you can offer would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help!
