Challenge
Running services at home involves much more than starting Docker containers. Networking, service exposure, remote access, reverse proxies, virtualization, security, storage, and long-term maintenance all need to work together.
Engineering
I evolved the same home server through three architectures: an early Cloudflare Tunnel setup, a bare-metal Linux and Docker environment using direct port forwarding, Caddy, and VPN access, and the current Proxmox VE architecture based on virtual machines, LXC containers, and Infrastructure as Code. The repository documents not only deployment steps, but also the tradeoffs and migration decisions behind each iteration.
Outcome
The result is both an actively used homelab and a practical reference for building one. The completed bare-metal architecture remains documented as a stable implementation, while the Proxmox-based environment continues to evolve as the current platform.