The best homelab services run 24/7 and get used maybe once a week
A good homelab setup doesn't need to consist of all flashy, exciting applications. The longer I've used my homelab, the more I've come to view the apps that sit idle in the background as the most important services I host.
They're the ones that ensure my essential homelab services are consistently available when I need them.
A homelab is for productivity as much as fun
Tinkering leads to more than a hobby
Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek | Anucha Cheechang/ Shutterstock
I've spent plenty of time trying out new services, tweaking configurations until something breaks, and testing out random tools just to entertain myself. That's half the fun of self-hosting. But as time has gone on, the more my own setup has started to act as a full replacement for services I used to pay for.
The thing about these services isn't that they're things I necessarily use every day, it's about reliability. I don't think about my backups every day; I'm lucky if it crosses my mind twice a month. However, when something inevitably goes wrong, my backups—like other essentials—instantly become the most pressing thing I'm thinking about.
That is exactly how I've learned to treat a good chunk of my homelab. I used to think that services sitting idle were "boring" or a waste of power, but I've increasingly come to rely on them as a safety net. Having those systems ready and waiting might not feel "productive" on a daily basis, but it's the only way to ensure that the services I do use daily stay running when I need them.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
You don't want to find yourself starting from zero when something breaks, and that will happen . There is nothing worse than having to configure my VPN from scratch just to get back into my own network, or spending hours trying to figure out which settings I liked.
Take the time to make reliable backups of your data, your system configuration, and your service configurations. It'll turn a whole-day headache into a 20-minute fix.
The services I run 24/7 and forget about
They're not exciting, but they get the job done
I run dozens of services intermittently, but these are some of the ones that run in the background. Some of them are always active; others only show their use when something goes wrong.
Backups are everything
I've kept my backup setup as basic as possible by using rsync to push data from my PC to a container running on my Proxmox server.
I have configured rsync, so some files are copied over daily, while others are only copied once a week. That saves on space and bandwidth, and it prevents my backup folder from becoming a cluttered catastrophe. Additionally, when some does go wrong, I don't need to fuss with whether a backup tool will correctly restore files automatically. I just copy the backup files to the appropriate locations and get back to whatever I was doing before.
Because I've moved this process to separate hardware, I have a reliable safety net against the most common issues, like buggy updates, accidental deletions, or a hard drive that dies at an inopportune moment. It is a simple setup, but it is an important part of my homelab setup, and it means I don't stress about experimenting on my PC. Everything important is safely stored elsewhere.
A WireGuard VPN is an invaluable backdoor
I use a Raspberry Pi running WireGuard as the primary way to access my self-hosted services from the outside. However, my favorite part of the setup is the second node. I have a Pi Zero running as a backup VPN that runs on battery power in the event of an outage.
By running a second low-power VPN , I can be sure that even if something unexpected happens—like a power outage or the main Pi going down—I still have access to my home network. I'm not hamstrung by a single failure.
On most days, the redundant setup does nothing at all. But one day it actually matters. It is very nice to have.
The Pi Zero is especially important, since it consumes next to no power when idle, and even under load, only consumes a few watts. That means it can run for days without draining its battery.
Reverse proxies are for more than internet access
A reverse proxy is most commonly used as a part of a setup to access your network services from the internet, but I already use a VPN for that. My reverse proxy is just around to preserve my sanity.
A local-only reverse proxy gives everything in my homelab an easily-memorable name. I no longer have to memorize a string of ports and IP addresses just to get to my own services, and it makes getting others to use them much easier too.
It's one of those simple quality-of-life improvements that makes running a whole mess of self-hosted services much less tedious.
Dashboards and monitoring are important; I keep it simple
It is tempting to run a million dashboards to monitor your services and keep an eye on your network performance, but I try to keep it simple.
I set up Homepage and Internet Pi on a Raspberry Pi to keep an eye on things. It can let me know if something has gone wrong with my ISP (has happened on occasion) or if a service goes down.
I don't look at it every day; I probably even look at it every week. However, when I'm performing maintenance or upgrading my services en-mass, it is nice to have.
A Pi-hole provides real security benefits.
Most people run a Pi-hole as another ad blocker, but the main appeal for me is security.
The Pi-hole can block connections to known malicious domains before any device on my network even has a chance to reach them. That includes things like phishing sites and malware distribution domains. Instead of relying on individual devices to protect itself, the Pi-hole provides a baseline level of protection for every device.
I doubt my Pi-hole blocks a potentially malicious domain or phishing domain every day, but it is nice to know it is providing a layer of protection in the background.
The apps that tie my homelab together
A homelab can be a fun way to experiment, but over time, many of my services have become more than entertainment—they're essential to my daily routines.
Those background apps aren't really exciting, but they protect my data, ensure that I can always access my other services, and make my homelab a breeze to use.
Without them, the system would be unwieldly and unreliable, which defeats the point of self-hosting my own services in the first place.
