Building the Physical Foundation of my Homelab
A Guide to Homelab Hardware, Why I Picked It, and Why It Works
In my first article, I outlined how I built a modern homelab supporting my creative and professional projects. Today we’re going deeper into the physical components that keep my homelab up and running every day. If you’re planning on building a homelab that supports your fun projects and family’s digital life, you’ll find that uptime is more than a statistic - it’s how you keep everyone happy!
Before we get started, let’s take a look at the core use cases that shaped my acquisition decisions.
My Homelab Use Cases
These use cases, as I covered in my article My Homelab Architecture Explained (2025 Edition), are the core responsibilities that I needed my homelab to cover. I strongly recommend you develop your use cases before you start spending money and time on your own homelab projects. It will save you time and money and helps to make sure you’re only adding components that move your lab forward.
| Use Case | Purpose |
|---|---|
| File Sharing and Serving | NFS and SMB shares for documents, media, and backups |
| Photo Storage and Serving | Centralized family photo management and backup |
| VPN Access | Secure external connection to the home network |
| AI & Development | AI app prototyping, Docker automation, LM Studio endpoints |
| Media Streaming | Jellyfin as a child-safe media center |
| Video Games | Local Minecraft as a child-safe server |
In my case, each physical device in the homelab directly supports one (or preferably, more) of these goals. For the rest of this article, I’ll go over the component choices I made, how they’re used, and how each piece of equipment fits into the rest of the lab.
Initial Purchase: Synology DS1522+
The Synology DS1522+ was the first major homelab purchase and is the heart of the entire homelab, especially my storage strategy. It is a five-bay Network Attached Server (NAS) with a simple-to-use interface, strong performance, and excellent support for self-hosted workloads. The operating system, DSM 7 (series), makes it simple to manage server administration, security, file sharing, and backups while providing a solid, polished user experience. Most importantly, it just works.
If you haven’t already heard of it, your back up strategy should follow the “3-2-1 Rule.” Basically, you should have three copies of your data, on two different media types, with one copy off-site. With the Synology NAS, you can meet all three rules with one device; keep copies on multiple computers as well as the NAS, you can mirror your data to cloud services, and you can hyper-backup to another NAS offsite or to cloud backup providers.
How it supports my use cases
• Simplified file sharing for all devices • Backups with Synology Active Backup for Business • NFS shares for Proxmox servers • Backup target for my virtual machines • Photo sharing, organizing, tagging, etc using Synology Photos • Secure access through OpenVPN (before I got my Firewalla) • VM and Docker container hosting for development (before I switched to ProxMox) • Media server through Jellyfin (in my case, although Plex is a very common application)
• Always on reliability for data access
Pros
• Excellent DSM operating system that is easy to use
• Easily expandable memory and networking
• Strong support for Docker containers
• Very reliable for 24x7 operation (including a connection to my UPS so it knows if it needs to shutdown during a power outage)
Secondary Storage: Synology DS218 Series
I was so impressed with my first Synology NAS that, when I realized I needed a secure backup of my primary NAS, I grabbed a second Synology NAS in the form of a DS218 (picked it up from eBay!). The DS218 series serves solely as a hyper-backup target for archival. It’s not as powerful as the DS1522+ and has only two drive bays, but is perfect for creating an emergency backup.
How it supports my use cases
• Hyper-backup target for my primary NAS (allowing for quick recovery and significantly reduced downtime)
Pros
• Affordable
• Simple to manage
• Great for a dedicated backup role
• Low power draw
Managed Network Switch: Netgear GS724T
The Netgear GS724T provides the backbone for homelab segmentation using VLANs with clean network organization. I started with an unmanaged switch. As I added more and more Internet of Things (IoT) devices (which I’ve since reduced), my home network quickly became chaotic. The switch lets me keep production devices, lab systems, media servers, and IoT devices separated.
How it supports my use cases
• VLAN separation for security
• Reliable backbone for NAS traffic
• Simplified troubleshooting and traffic control
Pros
• VLAN capable
• Good performance for multiple devices
• Easy to configure and rackmounted • Works smoothly with Firewalla
Firewall and Routing: Firewalla Gold SE
Firewalla Gold SE handles routing and VLANs and provides simple but powerful controls that are essential for both security and development workflows. Managing my homelab without this firewall would be a challenge. It uses a “zero-trust” mentality (which means that when a device is connected to the network, it should be treated as a potential threat instead of a trusted resource). Additionally, it provides robust control of other network functions (like the DNS routing) that I use for parental controls during activities like gaming.
How it supports my use cases
• VPN access from anywhere
• Strong parental controls
• VLAN 4 homelab segmentation
• Easy rules for internal service communication
Pros
• Easy to use app-based interface
• Advanced routing available for those who need it
• Reliable VPN service
• Works seamlessly with Synology and Proxmox
Proxmox Hosts and Other Devices
I run several servers for development. Through my experimentation with AI development, I’ve learned just how critical it is to sandbox AI. Instead of giving AI complete access to my development computer, for example, I provide it access to specifically configured VMs. That way, if the AI runs a command incorrectly, it can’t wipe out my entire repo or destroy my production files and databases.
Proxmox
I use two Proxmox hosts (I haven’t clustered them yet because I only have two; you need three to create a cluster). Both computers were picked up off of Facebook marketplace. One is an older Dell Small Form Factor Optiplex 5050, and the other is a Lenovo ThinkCenter 720q.
Proxmox is a hypervisor, so you use it to run Virtual Machines. I tend to run Linux Ubuntu VMs because they’re lightweight and easy to set up. In a future article, I’ll go over how I’ve developed a golden cloud-init template to create my VMs, and use Ansible to ensure they’re properly maintained.
Linux VMs
My Linux VMs run my automation apps, AI development, a Minecraft server, and more. In a future article, I’ll explain my AI development workflows, but for now it’s enough to say that it’s important to sandbox any development you do with AI tools if you’re planning to give AI any permissions to run commands in your development environment.
Other devices
Windows and macOS development devices
Used for hosting local AI large language models, coding, testing, and any other task suited for computers.
How they support my use cases
• Container hosting
• Virtual machine development
• Local AI execution
• Testing and CI workloads
Pros
• Flexible and easy to scale
• Separate workloads stay isolated
• Powerful foundation for future AI projects
The Synology Problem and Why I Planned an Escape Route
Although I love my Synology NAS, the company created a public relations nightmare. They recently limited their newest NAS systems to accept Synology branded hard drives only, which is a huge change in how they handled hard drives in the past. While they recently rolled back the changes, users lost the freedom to choose and use third party drives even when those drives had significantly lower prices, warranties, and uptime track records. Getting locked into an ecosystem is always a risk, and Synology reminded us of that.
My environment is still based on Synology because DSM provides real value, mostly in the significant ease of use which translates into saved time. That said, it would be completely irresponsible to hope that Synology wouldn’t do it again (personal motto: Plan for the worst, hope for the best). Therefore, I built an escape plan. In a future article, I’ll walk through it, including how to migrate to new hardware, applications, and preserve data, snapshots, containers, and workflows.
I hope I never have to use it.
Conclusion
You’re now familiar with the physical components of my homelab, why I picked them, and how they fit into my particular use case. This setup is carefully aligned with the needs of my family and my own development projects. As I’ve said before, if you’re planning on building your own homelab, don’t just copy someone else’s setup. Build your own use cases, and then build a lab that works for you.
If you are curious about building something similar or just want to follow along with future deep dives, follow me here on The Curiosity Stack!