There comes a moment when your Google Drive reaches capacity, and the ever-persistent “upgrade now” notification appears. For some, this prompt is just a minor inconvenience. For me, it marked the beginning of a much deeper journey.
I wasn’t particularly keen on paying for more cloud storage, nor was I entirely comfortable entrusting a third party with all of my personal data. So I began looking into alternatives. That’s when I discovered Immich, a self-hosted platform offering functionality reminiscent of Google Photos—but with the distinct advantage of giving you complete control over your content.
Initially, it was meant to be a simple fix. But, as tends to happen in tech, it quickly escalated.
The Big Mini PC Haul
My first stop was eBay. The requirements were straightforward: compact form factor, low power consumption, quiet operation, and enough horsepower to comfortably run containers and lightweight services. I intended to purchase a single unit. Somehow, that number turned into three.
Dell OptiPlex 7050 Micro
Released around late 2016, this one came packed with an Intel Core i5-6500T, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD. It’s a tight little unit originally made for enterprise environments, so it handles 24/7 uptime with no complaints.
Lenovo ThinkCentre M710q Tiny
This model dates to early 2017 and can run up to an Intel Core i7-6700T. Mine came with a Core i5-7400T, 8 GB of RAM, and 1 TB HDD, but it still punches well above its size. It’s only about one liter in volume, which is wild considering how much power it delivers.
Dell OptiPlex 3050 Micro
The budget-friendly workhorse. It’s equipped with an Intel Core i5-7500T, 16 GB of RAM, and 250 GB SSD, which I upgraded into a 1 TB SSD. Despite being the budget-friendly one of the bunch, it costed me the most due to its double RAM compared to the rest.
Together, they form the heart of my homelab. Not bad for a trio of second-hand PCs.
A Tale of Two Switches
Before the official switch arrived, I temporarily repurposed a GL.iNet GL-A1300 (Slate Plus)—a travel router, technically—to function as a makeshift switch. It wasn’t ideal, but it handled basic traffic well enough.
Eventually, the proper hardware was delivered: the Netgear GS308T S350, an 8-port managed gigabit switch from Netgear’s Smart Managed Pro series. It was chosen specifically to explore advanced features such as VLANs and QoS. Managed switches provide flexibility, and this one offered room to grow into.
However, initial setup presented… a few hurdles.
The switch defaulted to the IP address 192.168.0.239, while my home network was configured on the 192.169.1.0/24 subnet. Unfortunately, the switch wouldn’t accept a DHCP lease outside of its default range, rendering it unreachable. I was reluctant to reconfigure my entire network—especially with running services and forwarded ports.
Eventually, after much deliberation (and more trial-and-error than I’d care to document), I conceded and restructured my network to align with the switch’s expectations. Not the most elegant solution, but it worked. And, as with all homelab setups, every minor battle adds to the lore.
From Storage Fix to Full-On Obsession
Immich may have sparked the journey, but the fire kept spreading. Before long, I had registered a domain and began routing traffic through Cloudflare Tunnels—an excellent solution for securely exposing services to the internet without revealing my home IP.
Soon, my homelab was running not just Immich, but Portainer, Uptime Kuma, a number of personal projects, and even this very site. Most are containerized and deployed using Docker, hosted on virtual machines managed through Proxmox (which, admittedly, deserves a post of its own).
What surprised me was how much this setup benefited my professional work. When projects began to outgrow my work laptop’s capabilities—especially during intensive Docker builds—I simply shifted them to the homelab. Build times dropped. Productivity rose.
Why It’s More Than Just a Hobby
Yes, it saves money compared to traditional VPS hosting. But that’s only part of the story.
Setting up a homelab has been an incredibly effective learning tool. Concepts like container orchestration, network segmentation, firewalls, and subnetting became much clearer when applied in a hands-on environment. There’s something deeply satisfying about resolving an issue you caused yourself (after, of course, a brief existential crisis and a few too many cups of coffee).
There are trade-offs, naturally. Relying on residential power and internet does introduce occasional downtime. But for development, testing, and personal projects, the system is more than adequate. If scalability or geographic redundancy becomes necessary, VPS hosting remains a viable supplement.
Final Thoughts
What began as a workaround to avoid cloud storage fees evolved into a full-fledged exploration of self-hosting and systems architecture. The homelab has become more than just a sandbox—it’s a platform for experimentation, skill-building, and digital autonomy.
All because a notification popped up and said, “You’re out of space.”
Funny where those little warnings can take you.
Links
If you’re interested in starting on your homelabbing journey and wanting to keep your homelab on the smaller side, I recommend looking into the following links. These are homelabbers and creators that I found while doing my research. There are definitely more out there but here are some to get you started.
- https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/
- https://youtube.com/@hardwarehaven
- https://youtube.com/@jeffgeerling
- https://youtube.com/@raidowl