Homelab
What Should You Monitor in a Homelab?
Monitor failures that affect household service or recovery, with an owner and response for each alert. Test notification and recovery paths that remain usable when the monitored system or network fails.
Is 2026 a Bad Time to Buy a NAS?
Decide whether a NAS purchase solves a documented storage need, comparing complete-system quotes, drive support, backup costs, and recovery requirements; no current price survey is provided.
Direct Play vs Transcoding in Plex and Jellyfin: What the Dashboard Proves
Use Plex or Jellyfin dashboard and log evidence to isolate container, codec, audio, subtitle, HDR, bitrate, client, and network playback triggers.
Home Assistant OS vs Docker vs VM: Which Install Is Right?
Choose Home Assistant OS for integrated management or Container for deliberately managed companion services. A VM is a hosting choice, not a third installation type; compare radio access, backups and recovery dependencies.
Closet NAS Maintenance: Check Heat, Dust, Power, and Drive Health
A NAS is a small server, and closets are often bad server rooms. Check airflow, power, alerts, disks, and restore paths before it fails quietly.
What Should Happen to Your Homelab During a Power Outage?
Plan outage shutdown by dependency: stop applications and VMs before their storage, and preserve the signaling network until shutdown finishes. Restart after stable power with networking and storage ready first.
How Do You Run Security Cameras Locally Without Cloud Dependency?
Evaluate the exact camera and recorder combination for local recording, viewing and export. Check power, isolation and retention, then test WAN loss without assuming RTSP or ONVIF guarantees every feature or offline login.
Immich vs Google Photos: Which Photo Backup Setup Should You Trust?
Compare provider-operated Google Photos with self-managed Immich, then test phone uploads, metadata exports, and independent recovery before replacing the family library or deleting originals.
How Do You Document a Homelab So Someone Else Can Recover It?
Create a recovery packet someone else can use when you are unavailable. Record essential services, protected access, bills, shutdown boundaries and contacts, with an emergency sheet available outside the homelab.
Quick Sync vs NVIDIA vs Intel Arc for Plex and Jellyfin Transcoding
Choose Quick Sync, NVIDIA, or Intel Arc from current codec support, driver and container fit, tone mapping, power, and measured concurrent demand.