Author: Wes
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Immutable Storage Backups: ZFS Replication, Air-Gapped Snapshots & Syncoid
Network-attached backups that use standard read-write credentials are vulnerable to ransomware encrypting both source and destination simultaneously. True resilience demands append-only, immutable ZFS replication. This operational guide details how to…
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How to Lock Down and Harden a Fresh Linux VPS (Ubuntu / Debian)
When deploying a fresh cloud VPS on Ubuntu or Debian, securing the host before exposing services to the public internet is critical. Automated scanners probe default SSH ports within seconds…
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Managing and Pruning ZFS Snapshots with Native Properties and Sanoid
Automated snapshotting protects datasets against accidental file deletion and ransomware. However, unmonitored snapshots on high-churn datasets (like temporary downloads, virtual machine disks, or scratch volumes) quickly consume available pool capacity.…
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Modern Mesh VPN Architecture: Tailscale, Headscale, and WireGuard Site-to-Site Tunnels
Legacy point-to-point VPN protocols like PPTP, L2TP, and IPsec require complex port forwarding, fragile crypto negotiations, and central routing bottlenecks. Modern Linux networks rely on WireGuard and mesh coordination layers…
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Centralized Homelab Logging: Vector, Grafana Loki, and Structured JSON Telemetry
Searching through disjointed log files across multiple VPS instances, TrueNAS servers, and Docker containers with journalctl and grep is time-consuming and inefficient during outages. Modern infrastructure aggregates all system, container,…
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AI-Powered Video Surveillance: Frigate NVR with Google Coral TPU & WebRTC
Legacy video motion detection tools trigger endless false alarms whenever trees sway, clouds shift, or bugs fly near the camera lens. Modern local surveillance relies on Frigate NVR paired with…
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Enterprise Storage Architecture: TrueNAS SCALE, OpenZFS Topologies, ARC Caching & NVMe Tiering
Modern enterprise storage is defined by OpenZFS. For mission-critical homelabs and business servers, architecting the storage layout correctly from day one avoids painful resilvering bottlenecks, pool fragmentation, and unrecoverable data…
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Networked UPS Management: Network UPS Tools (NUT) and Graceful Automated Shutdown
Sudden power loss causes data corruption, damaged SSD flash blocks, and incomplete database transactions. An enterprise homelab requires an automated Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) monitoring daemon that coordinates graceful server…
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Homelab Notification Pipelines: Multi-Channel Alerts with Webhooks & Ntfy
Traditional email alerts sent via local SMTP (sendmail/postfix) frequently get blocked by ISP spam filters or fail silently. Modern operations rely on real-time, lightweight push notifications via webhooks. This guide…
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Homelab Status Dashboards: Modern Service Portals with Homepage and Dashy
As self-hosted services multiply across multiple servers, remembering arbitrary port numbers and subdomains becomes unmanageable for homelab administrators and family members. Modern homelabs deploy declarative, real-time application dashboards such as…