Introduction A key goal of my homelab journey is to build and host services using infrastructure that I control. For this project, I wanted to host my own WordPress website while keeping the underlying services inside my home network. The objective was simple: The final result: running from my own infrastructure. The Starting Point The …
Introduction A major goal of Realm Labs is to document the journey of building and experimenting with technology. Rather than using a hosted blogging platform, I decided to run the website using the same principles as the rest of the home lab: self hosting, learning and having full control. This project documents the process of …
Introduction Every home lab needs a reliable place to store data. While compute resources such as virtual machines and containers get a lot of attention, storage is one of the most important parts of any infrastructure. For Realm Labs, Synology NAS systems provide the storage foundation that supports everything else running in the environment. From …
Introduction One of the biggest changes in Realm Labs was moving from installing applications directly onto individual machines to running services in containers. Docker completely changed the way I approach self-hosting. Instead of dedicating an entire computer or virtual machine to a single application, containers allow multiple services to run efficiently while remaining separated and …
Introduction As Realm Labs grew, managing individual computers and devices manually became more difficult. Installing applications, changing settings and keeping systems consistent across multiple machines quickly becomes repetitive. The solution was to introduce a proper domain environment using Active Directory. While Active Directory is usually associated with business environments, a home lab is the perfect …
