Intermediate

Intermediate

Move from "one machine running containers" to a proper virtualized homelab - Proxmox, VM/container separation, networking, storage, remote access, monitoring.

This is where most homelabbers plateau happily, and that's a legitimate place to stop - not a waypoint everyone has to leave. This tier covers virtualizing your hardware with Proxmox, separating workloads into VMs and containers instead of piling everything onto one Docker host, segmenting your network, adding dedicated storage, exposing services safely with a reverse proxy and remote access, and getting real monitoring and backups in place.

By the end you'll have a homelab that can lose a service to a bad update without losing your evening, and that you can walk away from for a week without worrying about it. Read the pages below roughly in order - Proxmox and its storage/networking implications come first because later pages build on them.

Come here once you've finished Beginner and want more than one box's worth of homelab.

  1. Why Virtualize?

    Containers vs VMs vs both, and an honest look at when Proxmox actually earns its keep over just running more Docker on your Beginner-tier box.

  2. Proxmox Installation

    Installing Proxmox VE, getting the web UI configured sensibly, and creating a non-root admin user before you do anything else.

  3. Proxmox VMs and Containers

    QEMU/KVM virtual machines vs LXC containers inside Proxmox - when to use which, and how to not over-provision either.

  4. Storage and ZFS

    ZFS basics, pools, and snapshots - why it's worth the learning curve for a homelab that's starting to matter to you.

  5. Network Segmentation

    Splitting one physical network into isolated logical ones with VLANs, so a compromised IoT device can't reach your NAS.

  6. Reverse Proxy and TLS

    Nginx Proxy Manager vs Traefik vs Caddy, the real trade-offs between them, and automatic TLS with Let's Encrypt so you stop remembering port numbers.

  7. Local DNS for Your Homelab

    Making your real domain resolve to your reverse proxy on your own network, so internal traffic stays internal while you still get real, publicly-trusted TLS certificates.

  8. Should You Self-Host Email?

    Why running your own mail server is the one common homelab urge this guide actively talks you out of, and what to do instead once you own a real domain.

  9. Remote Access

    Tailscale and WireGuard vs exposing ports directly - the payoff for every "we'll cover this properly in Intermediate" note from the Beginner tier.

  10. Centralized Storage

    NAS approaches worth actually running, NFS vs SMB, and mounting network storage in your containers and VMs instead of scattering data across guests.

  11. Media Automation

    Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, and a download client working together to automatically find and organize media for Jellyfin - and the VPN container that belongs in front of the download client.

  12. GPU Passthrough and Hardware Transcoding

    Sharing an iGPU into an LXC container for Jellyfin hardware transcoding, vs. full PCIe GPU passthrough to a VM - two different tools for two different problems.

  13. Home Assistant

    Home Assistant is nearly a homelab of its own - where it fits alongside everything else here, and the VM-vs-container decision that shapes what you can do with it.

  14. Monitoring and Alerting

    Uptime Kuma for "is it up," Grafana and Prometheus for "how's it doing," and a notification channel that actually reaches you.

  15. UPS and Graceful Shutdown

    Why a dirty power loss is a much bigger deal once ZFS and multiple VMs are in the picture, and how NUT gets everything shut down cleanly before the battery runs out.

  16. Proxmox Backups

    Proxmox Backup Server, why a snapshot is not a backup, and setting up schedules and retention you can actually trust.