Tutorials
Your NAS Is Dying in a Closet: Fix Heat, Dust, Power, and Neglect
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.
Smart Home VLAN, Guest Wi-Fi, or Second SSID?
Smart-home isolation can improve security, but it can also break discovery, Matter, Thread border routers, casting, and app setup.
2.5GbE vs 10GbE: Which Home Network Upgrade Is Worth It?
Most homes should start with 2.5GbE for NAS, mini PCs, and Wi-Fi 6E/7 access points because it is cheap, cool, and works over existing Cat5e in many runs. Choose 10GbE when large.
Immich vs Google Photos: Which Photo Backup Setup Should You Trust?
Google Photos is easier and Immich gives more control, but neither removes the need for a real backup of originals and metadata.
Local-First Smart Home Without Becoming a Sysadmin
Build a smart home that keeps working when the internet is down without turning the house into a fragile homelab.
How Do You Make DNS Keep Working When the Internet Is Down?
Keep local DNS local. Your router, Pi-hole, AdGuard Home, Technitium, or internal resolver should answer local names without forwarding to the internet, and clients should have at least two reachable resolvers that.
Seerr Setup Guide: Media Requests for Plex, Jellyfin, Emby, Sonarr, and Radarr
A practical Seerr setup guide for adding a private media request layer to Plex, Jellyfin, or Emby while handing approved movies and shows to Radarr and Sonarr safely.
Cisco SD-WAN to Multicloud Fabric: A Migration Design
A phased migration from SD-WAN and native cloud networking to Cisco Multicloud Fabric should start with inventory, routing domains, security policy, pilot paths, and measurable experience.
Monitoring and Health Checks for a Plex and Arr Homelab
Monitor the outcomes that keep a media stack useful: mounted storage, free space, successful imports, playable files, healthy queues, available transcode resources, current certificates, and restorable backups. Start with one daily report and a few actionable alerts before building a large dashboard. Rights and lawful use: Monitor only systems and media workflows you administer, and […]
IoT Isolation for Homelabs: VLANs, Firewall Rules, and mDNS
A practical IoT isolation guide that keeps smart-home devices usable while protecting trusted clients, servers, and management networks.