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I turned my hobby into a profession early on.
For many years, I worked in the field of data centers and enterprise IT, primarily with servers, storage, virtualization, clusters, and large-scale infrastructures.
At that time, my private life was focused on other priorities, and due to personal circumstances I had little interest in continuing technical experimentation in my free time.
Over the years, my professional role changed. While I am still connected to IT, I no longer operate or maintain large infrastructures on a daily basis.
This shift gradually brought me back to computers as a hobby — not as an obligation, but as a space for learning and exploration again.
The original idea was modest: running Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi and possibly adding a game emulator.
Once I started looking into homelabs and self-hosted services, it quickly became clear how easy it is to fall into a rabbit hole of possibilities.
To avoid getting lost too deeply in that rabbit hole, I want to reflect on ideas, discuss them, and evaluate their usefulness before implementing them.
This includes exchanging thoughts with other people — and, where helpful, with an AI — as well as documenting decisions and outcomes.
Given the pricing of a fully equipped Raspberry Pi 5, a refurbished small form factor PC became the more reasonable choice.
Considering the performance difference, the increase in power consumption is relatively small.
To keep the setup organized and intentional, everything was consolidated into a small rack.
The 10-inch form factor offers a good balance between size and flexibility, but commercial solutions are often expensive.
As a result, a 3D-printed rack based on the Lab Rax project was chosen as a modular and adaptable foundation.
This homelab now serves as a controlled environment for learning, experimentation, discussion, and documentation, allowing systems to be explored, adjusted, and rebuilt with purpose.