Categories

Homelab

Everything happening in my home lab: server builds, Proxmox experiments, storage, networking gear, and the ongoing practical, hands-on side of running infrastructure at home.

Microsoft 365 Admin

This is where I write down the admin side of Microsoft 365: the settings, decisions and mistakes behind keeping a small Microsoft 365 environment running. Much of it comes from my work in IT support for small businesses, where there’s no IT department and one person looks after the whole tenant. I write it down mostly so I don’t have to relearn it next time, and in case it saves you the same trouble.

Proxmox tutorials

Proxmox VE is the hypervisor my whole homelab runs on, and this is where I write down how to set it up and keep it running. Everything here is for Proxmox VE 9, tried on my own machines first: a small, low-power server rather than a rack of enterprise gear.

The main thread is the series Proxmox from scratch (all parts), one step at a time:

• Installing Proxmox VE and the choices worth making up front: hardware, disks and ZFS.
• Virtual machines and LXC containers: when to use which, and how to set them up.
• Storage and networking inside Proxmox.
• Backups of your VMs and containers.
• A two-node cluster, moving guests between the nodes, and passing the built-in GPU through to a guest.

If you’re starting from nothing, the Homelab Handbook covers the whole journey from a used PC to a running home server in one short guide, and its Proxmox chapter is the short version of this series. The posts here are the deep dive.

Self Hosting

Linux and Open Source

I’ve used Linux for a long time, sometimes dual-booted and sometimes as my main desktop. This is where I write about it: getting started with a Linux desktop, how the distributions I use handle updates and long-term support, and the kernel and open-source news that matters to people who actually run it.

What you’ll find here:

• Linux on the desktop: getting started with Ubuntu, from install to a desktop you can live with.
• Distributions and LTS: what Ubuntu’s and Kubuntu’s patch cadence says about how far you can trust a long-term release.
• Kernel and open-source news: what actually happened behind the headlines, and credit to the maintainers doing the work.

Looking for the career posts that used to sit next to these under “Modern Computing”? They’re in IT Careers now.

Nextcloud

Nextcloud is my own cloud: files, calendars, contacts and photos on a server at home instead of on someone else’s. It runs in a container on my Proxmox host, and this is where I write down what it takes to keep it that way: installing it, getting sync to behave on every device, the apps worth adding, upgrades that don’t break anything, and the occasional upgrade horror story.

What you’ll find here:

J-Cave.dk

Homelab Guides

The Kaddu Systems Guides are short, practical handbooks for people who want to run their own services at home. No hype and no rack of enterprise servers: one used PC, a handful of useful services, and plain instructions for getting there. This page is where the guides link to, and where the deeper write-ups live once the booklet’s pages run out.

Homelab Handbook: Getting Started

The first guide takes you from finding a used desktop PC to a quiet, low-power home server. It covers the hardware, storage and networking, Proxmox as the hypervisor, and then the services people usually end up running: Jellyfin, Immich, Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Home Assistant, AdGuard Home, the *arr stack, Paperless-ngx, Navidrome and Uptime Kuma. It finishes with remote access through Tailscale and where to go next.

Books

IT moves fast, and what I know I learned by reading, then trying it at home or by trying and failing and then reading about it.. This is where the books go: what’s on my reading list, what I thought of it once I’d read it, and what it actually changed.

What you’ll find here:

• Reading lists: the books I’m about to read and why they made the list.
• IT classics, read for a one-person homelab: books written for big operations teams, read for what they mean when the whole team is me.
• Reviews: sometimes of a book that has nothing to do with computers.

From April 2027 there’s a series, Books for a one-person homelab, that starts with The Phoenix Project and goes on to the Google SRE book, networking books and Proxmox books versus the official documentation.

IT Careers

I trained as a programmer, then spent years doing almost everything but IT, and got back in at the end of 2024. This is where I write about that side of things: how to get (back) into IT when your experience is broad rather than recent, and what the headlines about layoffs and AI really mean for people working in IT.

What you’ll find here:

• Getting (back) into IT: my own route back, and what helped.
• Layoffs and the job market: what the numbers say, and what’s worth doing about it.
• AI and the skills that matter: why knowing what to hand to an AI, and checking what it did, is becoming a core IT skill.

Servers

Electronics

Not everything in my lab runs in a virtual machine. Some of it has a soldering iron involved. This is where the hardware projects go: things I design and build myself, what I learned along the way, and what I’d do differently.

What also might creep in are electronics repairs, fixes, and builds not related to my home lab or computer systems.

What you’ll find here:

• DIY battery packs: designing a standard pack I can reuse for different projects, and salvaging, testing and sorting 18650 cells from old laptop batteries to build it.
• Safety first: lithium-ion cells store a lot of energy, so every build comes with the checks and precautions I actually use.
• Small builds around the homelab: radios, sensors and other gadgets that don’t fit anywhere else.

The DIY battery pack series picks up where the 2021 design post left off, starting with harvesting the cells in March 2027.

Networking

Every service in my homelab is only as good as the network under it. This is where I write about that network: the router and switches, how it’s split up, how I get in from outside, and what I’d do differently.

Possibly also about how I do Network planning and maintenance at work - maybe not specifically for security reason but more principles.

What you’ll find here:

• Routers and switches: the gear, starting with the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X I put in back in 2020, and how it has held up.
• VLANs: what they are, explained plainly, and how I use them to keep the lab, the family’s devices and the IoT gadgets apart.
• Remote access: WireGuard & Tailscale, and how it compares to the other VPN options for getting home from anywhere.

From December 2026 there’s a series, Home network, that picks up where the 2020 EdgeRouter post left off: VLANs, the upgrade with VLANs and WireGuard, VPN choices and the EdgeRouter X years later. The Homelab Handbook covers the network basics for a home server; the posts here are the deeper write-ups.

Retro Computing

My computer story started with a Commodore 64 in the 1980s and carried on with the Amiga. A few years ago I bought a used Amiga 500 and got back into it; these days there are a few Amiga 500s in the cave.

What you’ll find here:

• My Commodore history: a three-part story from the C64 to the Amiga and back again.
• Keeping old hardware usable: practical fixes like fitting a Gotek floppy emulator into an external drive case, so you’re not depending on thirty-year-old disks.