Homelab Journal #1: Starting small on purpose
21 Jan 2026
Week one of building my own SmallGrid homelab — decisions, trade-offs, and what I deliberately didn’t do.
#journal#homelab#smallgrid
This week’s goal
Get a working, boring, low-power baseline in place without disappearing into optimisation rabbit holes.
No dashboards. No clustering. Just something that stays on.
What I actually did
- Picked hardware I already owned instead of “ideal” hardware
- Installed the host OS and verified idle power draw
- Set up basic SSH access and backups
- Resisted the urge to virtualise everything immediately
Nothing fancy. Everything intentional.
What broke (or nearly did)
I went down a brief “maybe I should…” spiral:
- Maybe ZFS?
- Maybe Proxmox straight away?
- Maybe dual NIC bonding?
All technically valid. All unnecessary right now.
I stopped before complexity won.
What I’m keeping
- One machine
- One OS
- One clear job
This setup survives reboots, updates, and distractions — which is the real test.
SmallGrid takeaway
If your homelab needs a diagram to explain, it’s probably too complicated for week one.