Homelab Pt 1 - Goal

Homelab is a series about getting started in building a “homelab”. We will be going through everything from “why” to “how” and all things in between.

You need a goal

Every project is better when theres a clear goal in mind. Any questions you have along the way of “which tool should I use?” or “how much money or time should I invest in this?” can be much more easily answered when you have a goal in mind. Also having a goal can add more drive to your project, a goal can help you get up off your couch, grab that laptop, sit right back down on that couch and push that goal further along!

A goal doesn’t have to be anything super specific! If you want to just mess around with tools just to see whats out there or just to have fun thats a great goal! Hold onto that goal and it can help you choose raspberry pis instead of a full on server or refurbished rather than new hard drives and help you save effort and money along the way. A bigger goal like wanting to own your own data can help to push for backup strategies and more HA in your homelab.

Your goal can change along the way too! Maybe you started by just wanting to mess around but as you did more you realized that how much you love doing this and now you wanna make a career out of it. Or maybe it just starts to feel like a chore making sure plex is up so your kids can watch elmo every morning.

A big part of my goal in building a homelab is being able to learn so I can teach others about it! Its a fun project of mine and I always enjoy sharing with others the things I learn about. This blog series is a reflection of that and I plan to talk about all kinds of things Ive learned over my last few years of building my homelab! But that is for yet another future blog post…