I put together five weekend projects covering trying a different management tool, testing Proxmox HA failovers, reviewing LXC helper scripts, establishing a Docker container patch routine, and exploring CetraFS or MeshXFS for VMFS-like shared storage. The HA and patching projects are useful checks on an existing lab. Also some pretty cool storage level projects. Hopefully these project suggestions will get the ideas spinning for those in their labs this weekend.

Enabling HA in your Proxmox cluster is a step in the right direction. However, it doesn't always mean your app will recover from a failure. I take a look at five practical checks for your HA. We cover host failure, network partitions and fencing, recovery-node compatibility, storage availability, and application failures inside a running VM. The goal is to see when the application becomes usable again, which is better than simply watching the VM restart.

This week’s projects cover a lot of different types of learning. These include what you can do with a single Proxmox server, comparing bare-metal Docker with Docker running in a VM, testing with nested virtualization, adding passkey logins with Pocket ID, and guardrailing your AI agent access with Octelium.

What are you building or experimenting with in your home lab this weekend?

Very cool. I love the ex-thin client setup as well due to their power profile and have been tempted to pull the trigger on a few of those myself. Like you too, I am really thankful I had a little stockpile of storage and RAM resources before everything went crazy!

You may only have the resources for a single Proxmox server to start out in your home lab. But, actually, did you know you can do just about everything with a single node that you can do with a cluster in terms of learning? Check out this post where I take a look at really how many projects and learning experiments you can do having just a single node to work with.

I run a multi-node Proxmox lab with Ceph and 10 GbE. But do you have to have that for a Proxmox home lab to be successful and a great learning playground? No! In my blog post here I take a look at what I think are things that you don't have to have when starting your home lab with Proxmox VE Server. What about you? What upgrade items did you skip?

I took a look at the Pocket ID solution as a small identity provider for self-hosted apps in the home lab. If you have thought that something like Authentik is overkill for what you want to do, I checked this solution out as your passkeys solution for the home lab. we look at the installation of Pocket ID inside Docker, OIDC integration with a test app, permissions, and we also think about recover after losing a passkey for a regular user and admin user.

These are 5 project-based home lab projects that will not only improve your technical skills but also will improve the state of your lab. I take a look at various projects across the lab environment, including the Let's Encrypt change coming, Unifi Network 11, Hermes topics including Netbox and skills, and TrueNAS 27 RC1. Let me know what projects you are working on this weekend.

Let's Encrypt is going to a much shorter certificate lifetime. I think this is something home lab admins should start preparing for now. Especially if you have your scheduled tasks and CRON jobs configured for the current 90 day expirations. I put together a set of things to check if you are using tools like Certbot, Traefik, and reverse proxies to make sure you are ready. Also, I'm curious how you are handling certificate renewals and automation across your home lab. Are you using built-in ACME clients, Certbot, or something else?

Up until now, I have been self-hosting the Unifi Network Application inside of my Kubernetes cluster. But the writing has been on the wall that I needed to make a change as Unifi has deprecated the standalone Network Application in favor of the Unifi OS Server solution.

UOS is the platform that now "runs" the Network Application. I decided to go back to a more traditional self-hosted solution with a Linux VM running UOS and running the Unifi Network Application 11. Take a look at my guide showing how I made the switch and migrated my data. What about you? Have you made the switch yet?