Sometimes a network change looks so simple that you don’t expect it to cause any trouble. This was one of those changes. I had an older HP ProCurve 2810G-24 acting as the core switch in Realm Labs. It had been…
This one was painful because the symptoms made it look like the entire domain was falling apart. I had a Windows domain environment running in Realm Labs and wanted domain-joined machines to automatically bring up a WireGuard tunnel at startup.…
After getting more and more of Realm Labs running on my Synology DS224+, I started looking at what else I could move onto it. WireGuard seemed like an obvious candidate. I was already using Docker extensively on the NAS, so…
Running Pi-hole in the home lab seemed like it should be a simple job. Deploy the container, point the network at it for DNS, and enjoy network-wide filtering. Instead, the container refused to start. The problem wasn’t Pi-hole. It wasn’t…
Changing the IP address of a Synology NAS sounds simple enough: change the address, update anything that points directly to the old address, and carry on. In practice, if the NAS provides DNS, LDAP/domain services, NFS and SMB, there can…
Home Assistant, Node-RED, Raspberry Pis, ESP32 microcontrollers and custom projects all need a simple way of exchanging commands and status information. Rather than building direct connections between every device, MQTT provides a central messaging layer that everything can use. I…
It provides managed Gigabit Ethernet, VLAN support, a proper command-line interface and remote management over SSH. For learning networking or building a more advanced home network, switches like this still have plenty of life left in them. This guide covers…
Every growing homelab reaches a point where remembering IP addresses, port numbers, and service URLs becomes a chore. While browser bookmarks work, having a central, live dashboard that displays service health, resource metrics, and instant links makes managing your environment…
Whether you are spinning up lightweight microservices or running fully featured desktop environments, Proxmox VE provides flexible virtualization through Linux Containers (LXC) and Virtual Machines (VMs). This guide covers how to upload installation media, build VMs manually from ISOs, and…
Building a fast, reliable, and lightweight hypervisor using dedicated test hardware. Welcome to the Proxmox VE installation guide at Realm Labs! Everything here is built, tested, and documented from real experience. In this guide, we will walk through setting up…
