Create Blog “inside-my-proxmox-lab-a-practical-self-hosted-environment”

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+title: "Inside My Proxmox Lab: A Practical Self-Hosted Environment"
+date: 2025-12-16T10:27:00.000-06:00
+description: A look at my Proxmox-based home lab, what I’m running, and what I’m
+  learning by building and breaking real systems.
+draft: false
+---
+### Why I Built This Lab
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+
+Over the years, I’ve learned that the best way to truly understand infrastructure is to \*\*build it yourself\*\*, operate it, and occasionally break it. Documentation and diagrams are helpful, but nothing replaces the lessons learned from running real services under real constraints.
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+This Proxmox environment is my personal lab — a place to experiment, learn, and refine how modern infrastructure fits together.
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+It’s not meant to be perfect. It’s meant to be \*useful\*.
+
+
+
+\---
+
+
+
+### The Foundation: Proxmox VE
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+
+
+At the core of this setup is \*\*Proxmox VE\*\*, which I use to manage virtual machines and containers. Proxmox gives me the flexibility to:
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+\- Run multiple isolated workloads
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+\- Snapshot before risky changes
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+\- Allocate resources intentionally
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+\- Treat infrastructure as something I can iterate on
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+Everything else in this lab builds on top of that foundation.
+
+
+
+\---
+
+
+
+### Core Services I’m Running
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+
+
+#### Git & Source Control (Gitea)
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+I run a self-hosted \*\*Gitea\*\* instance for source control. This powers:
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+\- Version control for my websites and projects
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+\- Authentication for Decap CMS
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+\- A private, self-contained development workflow
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+Hosting my own Git server forces me to think about identity, access, TLS, and availability in ways that cloud-hosted Git never exposes.
+
+
+
+\---
+
+
+
+#### This Website: seans.cloud
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+This site is built with \*\*Astro\*\* and intentionally kept simple. It serves as:
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+\- A place to document what I’m learning
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+\- A long-term knowledge archive
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+\- A testing ground for ideas before they become something bigger
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+Content is written in Markdown and managed through Decap CMS, which commits directly to Gitea. That means everything here is versioned, reviewable, and reproducible.
+
+
+
+\---
+
+
+
+Browser-Based Editing with Decap CMS
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+One of my goals was to make writing frictionless. With \*\*Decap CMS\*\*, I can:
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+\- Write blog posts from a browser
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+\- Save drafts without publishing
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+\- Commit content directly to Git
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+\- Let the site build itself
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+This setup blends the convenience of a traditional CMS with the reliability of Git-based workflows.
+
+
+
+\---
+
+
+
+#### Media & Personal Services
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+Alongside the “serious” infrastructure, I also run services that support daily life and experimentation:
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+\- \*\*Jellyfin\*\* for personal media streaming
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+\- A \*\*Minecraft server\*\* for shared worlds and tinkering
+
+\- Supporting services behind a reverse proxy with TLS
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+These services might seem unrelated, but they provide real traffic patterns, real users, and real failure modes — which makes them excellent learning tools.
+
+
+
+\---
+
+
+
+### Networking & Access
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+I rely on a layered approach to access and security:
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+\- Reverse proxying with TLS
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+\- Internal-only services where possible
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+\- Controlled exposure of public endpoints
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+\- Clear separation between management and user-facing services
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+Debugging OAuth flows, certificates, and proxy behavior has been one of the most educational parts of this lab.
+
+
+
+\---
+
+
+
+### What This Lab Teaches Me
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+
+
+This environment constantly reinforces a few core lessons:
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+\- \*\*Small decisions compound quickly\*\*
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+\- \*\*Security is a system, not a feature\*\*
+
+\- \*\*Documentation matters — especially your own\*\*
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+\- \*\*Operational simplicity beats cleverness\*\*
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+Running your own infrastructure forces you to think holistically: networking, identity, storage, automation, and human workflows all intersect.
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+
+
+\---
+
+### What’s Next
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+This lab will continue to evolve. Some things I’m actively working toward:
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+\- More automation and infrastructure-as-code
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+\- Better observability and logging
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+\- Expanding content and experiments on this site
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+\- Turning lessons learned into reusable patterns
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+This site — and this lab — are living systems. They exist to support learning, reflection, and growth.
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+If you’re building something similar, I hope this gives you ideas — or at least reassurance that imperfect systems are still incredibly valuable teachers.
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+
+
+\---
+
+
+
+\*Thanks for reading. More experiments to come.\*