Kaizen #4: Overhauled homelab<br>Tim Hårek
Skip to contentTim Hårek Andreassen<br>tim@harek.no<br>PGP key<br>Kaizen #4: Overhauled homelab<br>Published<br>July 5, 2026<br>14 minutes read
I started this “blog-series” to force myself to write more about my set up, and<br>my continuous iterations. But it didn’t happen… until today! This post has been<br>a long time coming, and I have kept the ideas in my head and notes.<br>I will walk through everything I did, in order:<br>Previous setupNetwork situation<br>What I self-hosted
NetworkingFiber adventure<br>Wiring<br>Wiring the garage
The new server<br>The new setupDebian<br>Dokploy<br>MediaJellyfin<br>Immich<br>Files
Monitoring<br>MiscellaneousqBittorrent<br>Linkding<br>Mesh VPN
Final result<br>What’s remaining<br>Previous setup<br>Two years ago, I revamped my homelab. I had just bought a new<br>machine to use as my main home server, coming from a 9U server rack with a bunch<br>of machines tangled together. Back then I finally sat down to figure out how I<br>want things. And it has worked great… until it hasn’t.<br>The new machine back then, a Zimaboard, was set up with NixOS, which seems<br>excellent and worked perfectly until I wanted to do a basic cronjob for backups.<br>I never figured out how to do that, so I basically did my backups manually<br>whenever I had the time. I use Restic, which is awesome.<br>Network situation<br>We have a 750/750 Mbps fiber-connection with Bergen Fiber (Altibox), which is<br>more than enough for our needs. It’s a very reliable connection, never slow,<br>absolutely no complaints about the connection.<br>Earlier this year we moved to a house, where we own the whole thing, it’s<br>amazing! But the network situation wasn’t great. Not a single Ethernet port in<br>the whole house, except where the fiber and modem were located. And guess where<br>that’s located!? Beside the door to the balcony, where the previous owner used<br>to have their TV (we have made a separate TV room). One thing to note, there was<br>a bunch of phone lines throughout the house, and we’ll get to those later.<br>My previous setup, underneath the cat's feeding station.As you can see, not an ideal placement, especially after we found out that it<br>was the perfect location for the cat to have his food, away from the dog.<br>Another thing that I particularly didn’t like about the Zimaboard setup I had<br>done, was that I chose to install NixOS directly on the onboard flash storage.<br>Whenever I tried to upgrade the NixOS version, I ran into issues with having<br>enough space. I had to do a bunch of clean ups and micro adjustments every<br>fucking time to get it to work.<br>My networking situation was fine after moving into the new house, but I was<br>unable to get WiFi in the garage. The coverage seemed fine, but it wasn’t ideal<br>outside or in the TV room. I don’t think having the router on the floor was the<br>best spot, but I didn’t want to mount the thing on the wall of the living room<br>either.<br>All the WiFi came from an ASUS RT-AX92U router, which worked pretty well,<br>especially on the second floor where it was located. But it was a whole<br>different story on the first floor, and outside.<br>What I self-hosted<br>For all my ripped media, TV shows and movies, I used Jellyfin, which is so good,<br>it just works. I also used Jellyfin for audiobooks with a great iOS app,<br>plappa. And for all my Linux ISOs, I used qBittorrent. It<br>runs great as a headless torrenting client, and there’s also a great iOS app for<br>it,<br>qRemote.<br>I also had a bunch of small Docker containers, for Foundry and some personal<br>projects.<br>And I used to self-host Nextcloud, but it became cumbersome and just a hassle to<br>maintain. It was bloated for my use-case.<br>Networking<br>I bought Ubiquiti UniFi gear, specifically:<br>UCG Ultra<br>U7 Lite access points x3<br>PoE-injectors<br>I also bought a fresh roll of Ethernet cable, 500 meters, and tools to make my<br>own cables.<br>UniFi has a lot of respect from homelabbers, and for good reason. It’s not<br>(F)OSS, but it’s excellent hardware with no subscription and no account required<br>to use it.<br>The easy part: unboxing all the new gear.Buying all the equipment was the easy part, putting it all together, oh man, it<br>was a totally different ordeal.<br>Fiber adventure<br>One of the first things I thought about when we bought the house was to move the<br>fiber inlet and modem to the attic, so that it could be out of the way and not<br>be an eyesore. I politely asked my local ISP, Bergen Fiber, if they could do it<br>for me, or if they could provide me with a 5 meter fiber-cable SC/UPC. They said<br>yes to providing me with a cable, and when I followed them up via email asking<br>what I needed to do for them to send me the cable, they replied via SMS that<br>they couldn’t 🙃. They could send me a 2 meter cable though. So I asked around,<br>and spent some time looking for the specific cable online. Most of what I found<br>was the wrong length or way too expensive for a short cable. I managed to find<br>one, from a B2B company that is 5 minutes away from where I live. I...