Containers

Docker Hub rate-limits anonymous pulls to 100 per 6 hours (200 for authenticated users). In a homelab with frequent rebuilds, multiple hosts, or CI-style workflows, you’ll hit that limit fast. Even if you don’t, pulling the same nginx:alpine image ten times across ten containers wastes bandwidth and time. A local Docker registry mirror fixes both: it acts as a pull-through cache. First pull is from Docker Hub (or any upstream). Every subsequent pull from any host in your lab hits the local cache instead. ...

Cloudflare Tunnel gives you a secure outbound-only connection from your homelab to Cloudflare’s edge, proxying public traffic without opening any firewall ports. No pinholes, no DMZ, no exposing your home IP. The usual deployment is a Docker container or a systemd service on a Linux box. But if you have a MikroTik router running RouterOS 7.6+ with container support, you can run cloudflared directly on the router — zero extra hardware, zero extra VMs. ...