Are you looking for the next rabbit hole to fall down in your homelab? I'm always looking for something new to do with one of my servers or Raspberry Pi's, so here are three projects to try out this weekend, including gaming, graphs, and git.
Set up your own game server host
Game server hosting is anything but cheap. One time I looked into getting a Minecraft server and was completely surprised by just how expensive it would have been to run a server for a few friends . Now that I run my single-player Minecraft worlds on a server , I couldn't even imagine what the server bill would cost me.
Because I'm cheap and don't want to pay someone else to host my game servers when I have perfectly capable hardware in my homelab, I decided to spin up a game server virtual machine. It was pretty straightforward, and I've run a few different server platforms at this point.
My primary game server for Steam games is actually Windows-based and uses CubeCoders' AMP for game management. I also run an Ubuntu Server VM for my Minecraft servers using Crafty Controller , as Minecraft simply runs better on Linux than Windows.
Regardless of what computers you have in your homelab, you can likely run some game servers. Even if you can't run a Minecraft server for 200 people with 400 mods, you can run some servers. There are a number of pieces of software to use for running game servers in your homelab, with Pterodactyl , Crafty Controller, and AMP being the three primary platforms that I've personally used in the past.
Pterodactyl is pretty advanced to set up and is a bit much for just a few servers. AMP has a cost associated with it, but can run a game server for just about any game available. Crafty Controller is designed mostly for Minecraft servers. Simply pick whatever platform you want to use, install it, and start running your own servers!
If you're running Minecraft servers , then I'd recommend using Infrared-MC as a way to proxy your servers to domain names. Without Infrared-MC, you have to give out a domain and port for others to join your game. With Infrared-MC, each domain can point to a specific Minecraft server, making it easier to host multiple without making people remember ports.
Build out a graphing dashboard with Grafana
I'll admit, Grafana is a beast I have yet to tackle in my homelab. Now that I'm journeying deeper down the rabbit hole with microcontrollers and more projects (like e-ink displays), I'm going to be setting up Grafana sooner than later. Don't be like me, and get Grafana running now instead of putting it off for years.
If you've never heard of Grafana, it can give you a centralized location for all sorts of information from your homelab. It can take in data from Prometheus , InfluxDB , Telegraf , and even direct exports from systems like Docker, Unifi, and more to give one central dashboard of information for you.
Grafana is great for building out graphs to track various things, like CPU or RAM usage, storage utilization, or networking speeds over time. Seeing these graphs can help spot problems before they get too bad, such as your storage getting close to capacity or RAM being nearly maxed out.
Sure, you can go to each individual system to check the CPU utilization or network speeds manually, but having it all in nice and neat graphs at a glance is just easier—once you have it all set up, that is.
Grafana isn't known for its super simple setup procedure, so be sure to set aside a decent chunk of time to dedicate to it this weekend. Once you're done, however, you'll be happy you did it.
Ditch GitHub and host your own git repository
GitHub is a great resource to use, but it's not always the most reliable. In fact, GitHub was down earlier this week, right after Cloudflare went down on the same day. Your homelab is the perfect place to have either a backup to GitHub or even a full replacement for your own code revisioning repository.
Hosting your own git repository is fairly straightforward, and there are many benefits. Two of the most well-known self-hosted GitHub replacements are GitLab and Gitea , both of which are fully open-source and free to use in your homelab.
Once you have either GitLab or Gitea set up (or another GitHub replacement you may find), then simply start using it for your own code revisioning repository. You can either set it up for local-only access, meaning you can only get to the code within your home network, or behind a reverse proxy to access outside your network.
Not only does hosting your own git server decentralize you from the rest of the network, meaning you can keep working even when other services are offline, but it also gives you enhanced privacy. A git server running on your network with no external access set up is purely private—nobody can access it unless you give them access, and they're at your home.
So, if you're ready to take your git usage to the next level and gain additional privacy while you're at it, then start self-hosting your own GitHub replacement in your homelab.
Your homelab can be both a source of joy and frustration, depending on where you're at in your journey. If you work with Docker often (and I definitely think you should ), then there are some tips you need to know to have the smoothest container experience possible .
Then, check out my top Docker containers that I think every homelab should have. From a dashboard to media server, Home Assistant, and more, these essential Docker containers will have your homelab up and running in no time.
