My Self Hosted Home Lab Software 2026

September 2026 video based on this forum post.

This video covers most of the apps I was hosting in March of 2026

And this is the forum post related to that video.

This is accurate as of September 2026.

Hypervisors and Storage

  • XCP-ng: Virtualization platform based on Xen, with a full management stack for hosting and running virtual machines.
  • Proxmox VE: Open source virtualization platform combining the KVM hypervisor and LXC containers behind a single web interface.
  • PVE-UPS: Simple web based tool that handles graceful shutdown of standalone Proxmox VE hosts on a power outage. It runs as an unprivileged LXC or docker, polls the UPS over SNMP or NUT, and triggers the shutdown through a Proxmox API token scoped to Sys.PowerMgmt rather than root SSH or a host agent. No USB or serial support.
  • TrueNAS: Open source network-attached storage operating system developed by iXsystems, built on OpenZFS.
  • Docker: Container runtime that most of the applications below run on top of.

Networking and Remote Access

  • UniFi Dream Machine Beast (UDM-Beast): Rack mount UniFi Cloud Gateway running the full UniFi application suite. These are the routers here.
  • Nginx Proxy Manager: Pre-built Docker image providing a web interface for managing Nginx reverse proxies and Let’s Encrypt certificates.
  • NetBird: Zero trust overlay network built on WireGuard that connects devices without opening firewall ports.
  • Apache Guacamole: Clientless remote desktop gateway. It serves RDP, VNC, and SSH sessions through a browser, so no client software is needed on the machine you are connecting from.
  • RustDesk: Remote desktop application designed for self-hosting, so connections do not depend on third party relay servers.

Security and Monitoring

  • UniFi Protect: Camera security system that records locally with no subscription. It can use the cloud but does not require it.
  • Graylog: Centralized log management and SIEM platform for collecting, indexing, parsing, and analyzing structured and unstructured data.
  • Netdata: Real time infrastructure monitoring with per-second metrics and automatic detection of what is running on a host.
  • NetAlertX: Network visibility and asset discovery. It scans on a schedule, builds an inventory of what is connected, and alerts you when something shows up that was not there before.
  • SO-CRATES: Standalone web application for analyzing pcap, log, and binary files. Suricata handles the network side, YARA scans binaries, and Sigma rules cover the logs, all behind a single page UI for alerts, metadata, transcripts, and hexdumps. From Doug Burks, who also created Security Onion.
  • Kasm Workspaces: Container streaming platform that provides disposable browser and desktop sessions, keeping the primary OS isolated from whatever you are browsing.

Documents, Files, and Photos

  • Paperless-ngx: Document management system that ingests scans and PDFs, runs OCR, and tags and indexes everything so it is full-text searchable. It turns the filing cabinet into something you can actually query.
  • Syncthing: Continuous file synchronization between devices over peer to peer encrypted connections.
  • Immich: Photo and video backup and management, with local AI powered facial recognition and organization.
  • Joplin: Open source note taking and to-do application with end to end encryption that syncs to your own storage.

Information and AI

  • FreshRSS: Self-hostable RSS aggregator for following news and blogs without a centralized platform or algorithm in the middle.
  • SearXNG: Privacy respecting metasearch engine that aggregates results from other search services while stripping tracking data and cookies.
  • OpenWebUI + Ollama: A pairing that runs large language models entirely on local hardware.

Home and Garage

  • Home Assistant: Open source home automation platform built around local control, so smart home data stays on your network.
  • LubeLogger: Self-hosted, open source, unconventionally named vehicle maintenance and fuel mileage tracker.

Management and Tools

  • Homarr: Dashboard and landing page for everything else on this list, with integrations that pull live status from the services it links to. Drag and drop configuration, no YAML.
  • Dockhand: Docker management application with real time container management.
  • IT-Tools: Collection of developer utilities such as formatters and decoders, run locally so sensitive code and data stay in house. Linked repo is the actively maintained sharevb fork.
3 Likes

Hey Tom,

Just finished watching and I didn’t hear you mention what kind of hardware you are using. I’ve been acquiring sata controller cards for a future TrueNas build and am curious what you are using to make sure you have plenty of horsepower to run Proxmox and all the docker containers.

Enjoyed the vid. Cheers!

You commented that there are several applications that you like, but don’t regularly use. You should add those to an additional section at the bottom of the list.

The few that come to mind that I have but only used sometimes are CyberChef , Pangolion and N8N I also forgot the mention in the list about MeTube and JellyFin

I am working on a hardware lab tour. All the Docker apps run on an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 8845HS Radeon 780M Graphics with 32GB of ram running Proxmox. My primary TrueNAS that all my videos are edited on is an Intel Atom C3758 @ 2.20GHz with 64GB of ram. There is a LOT of other much faster hardware in the rack, but I use that all for lab work.

I’m so excited you mentioned LubeLogger! I was just doing some maintenance on my car and telling myself I need to start recording the work I’m doing. I’m going to get this added to my docker stack this weekend!

1 Like