Architecture

A high-level view of how the home lab is put together.

graph TD
    Internet([Internet]) --> Router[Router / Firewall]
    Router --> Host["ThinkCentre M920q
Proxmox VE (master node)"]

    subgraph Proxmox["Proxmox VE"]
        Docker["docker-host (VM)
Docker + Portainer"]
    end

    Host --> Proxmox

    subgraph Containers["Portainer-managed containers"]
        Svc1[Services]
    end

    Docker --> Containers

    Router --> NAS["WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra
(NAS — family backups)"]

    subgraph Planned["Planned"]
        Pi["4 × Raspberry Pi 4B (8GB)
k8s cluster for labbing"]
    end

    Router -.-> Planned

• Host: a Lenovo ThinkCentre M920q running Proxmox VE as the master node (see Hardware).
• Virtualization: Proxmox hosts a docker-host VM (Ubuntu Server) that runs Docker.
• Containers: workloads run as Docker containers, managed through Portainer (see Software & Services).
• NAS: a WD My Cloud EX2 Ultra handles family backups (see Storage & Backups).
• Planned: 4 × Raspberry Pi 4B (8 GB) earmarked for a Kubernetes cluster (see Roadmap).

The diagram above is rendered with Mermaid loaded from a CDN.