Step-by-step guide to adding DC02 as a secondary Windows Server 2025 domain controller: preparation, AD DS promotion, DNS, Global Catalog, replication checks, SYSVOL validation, and client failover testing.
Step-by-step Windows Server 2025 domain controller deployment: static IP, AD DS installation, DNS configuration, domain promotion, OU/user setup, client join testing, and post-install verification.
Practical Docker Compose patterns for reliable homelab deployments. Healthchecks, conditional dependencies, profiles for optional services, secrets management, extension fields, and restart policies with real compose files.
Practical Ansible homelab automation guide — playbook structure, Docker container deployment with community.docker, ansible-vault secrets, Jinja2 templates, Git workflow, and full project template.
Step-by-step Docker MACVLAN and IPVLAN guide — give containers real LAN IPs for Pi-hole, Home Assistant, Scrypted. Host communication fix, Proxmox gotcha, multi-network Compose examples.
Complete Proxmox VE PCIe passthrough guide — GPU for Jellyfin transcoding, NVMe direct access, SAS HBA for NAS VMs. Kernel configs, vfio-pci, IOMMU groups, and working Proxmox VM settings.
Practical Docker container resource limits guide for homelabs — CPU quota/pinning, memory hard/soft limits, swap control, block I/O throttling, cgroup v2 differences, and Docker Compose examples.
Consumer routers give you one flat LAN. Everything talks to everything. That’s fine for five devices. Not fine for a homelab with IoT toasters, security cameras, a NAS with your whole life on it, and a gaming PC that absolutely does not need to see the Frigate NVR’s admin interface. MikroTik’s RouterOS handles VLANs natively — bridge VLAN filtering, inter-VLAN routing, per-VLAN DHCP, and firewall rules to control traffic between segments. All from the CLI. No third-party tools, no extra switches, no license fees. ...
Keeping Docker containers updated is the kind of chore you automate once and forget about — until a container silently runs a four-month-old image with five CVEs because you forgot to docker compose pull && up -d. Watchtower solves this. It watches your running containers, checks for new images, and restarts them with the latest tag — all on a cron schedule. But a naive “update everything” setup will break your database container and nuke your uptime. ...
If your Docker homelab has more than three web services, you need a reverse proxy. Without one, every container exposes its own port, you manage certificates by hand (or skip HTTPS entirely), and changing a service’s URL means editing Nginx configs and reloading. Traefik solves all of this. It watches the Docker socket, discovers new containers automatically, provisions Let’s Encrypt certificates for any hostname you define via Docker labels, and handles middleware (auth, rate limiting, headers) without touching a static config file. ...