Designing My Epic Homelab Kurukshetra 🖥️⚔️(With Wife Approval👑DLC)

[kartefact]

Fellow TE-ites,

EDIT:

TL;DR: My main questions:

1. Build the home lab with all services listed below all at once or go piece-meal?
2. Any recommended must-have self-hosted services missed in the list?
3. Are there people around who will help set this up for a fee and handover completely to me for maintenance? Cost?
4. I see a lot of trader posts here, but I’m new to trading here on TE, so point me to some currently good deals? to get an idea of average pricing before I can fix a budget for my setup.

WARNING: Read further with caution. Can cause headaches if you don’t like this style of humour as reported by others in this thread. Apologies.

ORIGINAL POST (written with AI assistance):

I’ve been dabbling in my head about assembling my homelab sena—something between a Kurukshetra lineup and Raja Raja Chola’s fleet, except with Docker containers instead of elephants.

My vision is:

• Robust – no single point of failure

• Open Source – no vendor traps

• Scalable & Replaceable – if a node dies, dharma continues

• Budget-first – Reliability > Cost > Redundancy > Performance

• Wife-approved™ – else this epic ends before it even begins

Core Services (battle formation)

• Firewall / Router (pfSense / OPNsense)

• Primary Proxmox Node (VMs, Jellyfin, *arr, Grafana, Home Assistant, etc.)

• TrueNAS Scale Node (ZFS storage, snapshots)

• Proxmox Backup Server

• ABAP Trial Server (RAM beast, 64GB+, on-demand only)

• VSCode Server (dev from browser)

• CI/CD Node (Gitea / Forgejo / GitLab pipelines)

• Nextcloud Hub (sync, docs, sharing)

• Immich / Photoprism (photo mgmt)

• Paperless NGX (document digitization)

• Home Assistant + Matter Node (IoT automation)

• VPN Access (connect to homelab remotely)

• CCTV + NVR Node (future expansion)

• HTPC / Media Centre (4K + 5.1 audio + my old HP MCE Remote)

• Backup Router / PiHole (standby)

• Secondary PiHole (super low power)

The Epic Sena

༺──────────────  Cosmic Net of Dharma  ──────────────༻
                     🌐 Internet (Aakaasha)
                               │
                 🔱 Arjuna - Guardian Firewall
                 (pfSense + Pi-hole Gateway)
                               │
        ┌───────────────┬───────────────┬───────────────┐
        │               │               │
⚡ Bhima (Proxmox)   🗄️ Yudhishthira   🌑 Nakula
(Core VMs, *arr,    (TrueNAS Scale)   (Backup Router,
Grafana, HA, etc.)                   Standby Pi-hole)

        │
   ┌────┼───────────────────────────────┐
   │    │                               │
🎥 Abhimanyu (Jellyfin/*arr)     ☁️ Draupadi (Nextcloud)
📑 Paperless Sita (Docs → Dig.)   📸 Arulmozhi Varman (Immich/Photos)
💻 Bharata (VSCode Dev)           📜 Alvar (Gitea/GitLab CI/CD)
🛕 Murugan (Matter/IoT)           🔒 Sudarshana (VPN Gateway)

   │
   │
   🐘 Ghatotkacha (ABAP Server - RAM Asura)
   (summoned rarely, 64GB+, devours watts)

   │
   👀 HanumanCam (Future CCTV + NVR)
   │
   🎶 Kumbakarna (HTPC - 4K, 5.1 Audio, sleeps until summoned)
   (Powered by vintage HP MCE Remote + USB IR receiver)

༺────────────────────────────────────────────────────────༻
   All warriors aligned under the banner of Open Source.
   If a node falls, another rises—dharma continues...
༺────────────────────────────────────────────────────────༻

The Dilemma

Realistically, I can’t go all-in at once. So the big question is:

• Should I build it slowly over time, node by node as deals/opportunities arise, carefully avoiding single points of failure assembling my sena bit by bit, like the Pandavas? Will I lose out of good, rare deals on used hardware? FOMO much?
• Or should I front-load the setup, at least the 24x7 essentials, and expand later for the “nice-to-haves” like Indrajit’s celestial chariot, ready for battle?

My Ask

1. Sellers – highlight good TE deals on Tiny/Mini PCs and used GPUs for transcoding.

2. Veterans – sanity check my homelab kurukshetra formation. Too many warriors? Missing any key hero? Does this separation of concerns make sense? Any obvious gaps?

3. Budget Builders – What’s the smarter way to grow this: piecemeal or semi-all-at-once?

4. Tinkerers / Service Providers – If I outsource the entire setup (install, configure, automate with Ansible/Terraform, monitoring, “set it and forget it”), what would a ballpark figure look like?

5. Community – Intend to have this thread as a starting point for novice homelabbers like me and given how this can benefit many here, please reply in thread, not DM. I’ll reach out personally only if my wife approves the royal farman.
   What would be the overall cost I’m looking at for such a setup?

Remember: This sena only rises if it clears the wife approval trial. Otherwise, all this will remain an unfulfilled itihasa and the whole plan shelved like a dead HDD.

Over to you, TE folks—should I rally my homelab sena at once, or let it grow like the epics: slowly, steadily, and with a little divine intervention?

[hitx86]

Sir, you want a what?

Also I am sure Abhimanyu (*arr stack) won’t be used for piracy as its against Dharma or something idk

[rsaeon]

Every man’s (or woman’s) homelab is unique to them.

Your budget, your needs, your level of expertise will shape what your homelab will be.

These high level questions aren’t very applicable.

And there are far too many of them.

Just get a box, and start?

[ibose]

@kartefact

This sena only rises if it clears the wife approval trial. Otherwise, all this will remain an unfulfilled itihasa and the whole plan shelved like a dead HDD.

As long as this is in your critical path, I don’t think anyone will help you.

[hitx86]

It’s really hard to tell if you are a beginner or experienced, I am assuming a beginner as anyone remotely experienced would not be asking roudabout questions like this (Also hard to believe you wrote this).

So I’d suggest you get a used pc of your choice from this forum and get tinkering, save yourself money right now as you learn and then buy something expensive as per your needs.

[herr_oberst]

Was this written by AI? xD
The mahabharat analogies really dont work and honestly nothing made any sense

I too want to start homelabbing, but the fun is in learning it gradually. A turnkey homelab with all the bells and whistles from the beginning will not be as much fun.
Right now, my old laptop with plex and nas is my ‘homelab‘.

[arunkc]

The emojis and mermaid diagram are deifinitely chatgpt5 style lol

As hitx86 suggested, just get a used dell optiplex, your local tech market should have plenty of refurb old used optiplex pcs from old offices, add 32gb ram to it, install portainer docker immich sonarr radarr etc and enjoy!

[N-TEch.11]

Oh! a die-hard Mahabharata fan around… I would advise to shift to Ramayana instead for ease of design..

[kartefact]

The first rule of fight club is that you do not talk about fight club!

[warlock7x]

I wanted to read one last post before i go to bed and this gave me a headache halfway through

[rsaeon]

I read it three times and ended up just looking for lines ending in a question mark.

[kartefact]

All valid points, indeed. Appreciate the input. However, given the years I’ve spent just living as a homelabber in my head, by reading and watching other homelabbers, the itch has gotten to me. I’m now at the stage of life I’m in, I could probably afford it financially, but I don’t have the luxury of time, so trying to have a discussion here to simmer it with the possibility of me getting involved, not just simulation, before actually diving in.

First step of the dive would be to send the proposal to the home ministry, of course , like I said in the original post. I have to make my case for which I need to have a somewhat decent level of confidence.

[kartefact]

Apologies, my friend. I guess I’m not as good at humour as I think I am.

[kartefact]

That’s probably the best advice. Thank you for your input.

[kartefact]

Possibly.

[kartefact]

The questions, the requirements and the idea of using Indian mythology to add a bit of humour for making it a fun read was mine. I did use AI to generate the diagrams and a bit of fine tuning, but I see that this style is infamous here.

[kartefact]

The analogies were for fun. I’m sorry that I didn’t see this coming. I guess I should refrain from adding humour to my posts. Not my strongest points, I suppose. Apologies.

Thanks for the advice. Just trying to get the popular opinion.

For everyone:

TL;DR

“All at once or Slow and steady?” was my main question.

[samrutur]

@hitx86

I’d suggest you get a used pc of your choice from this forum

That’s easier said than done for new members like myself. I really hope the mods will rescind the rule about new members not being able to reply on sale threads

[kartefact]

I feel you. Have been a member since more than a decade, but with only reads and occasional posts. Didn’t have the privilege of trading until recently.

[rsaeon]

@samrutur

I really hope the mods will rescind the rule about new members not being able to reply on sale threads

There’s a couple of posts here that should’ve been directed towards you when you signed up.

This: New to TechEnclave? Here’s Everything You Need to Know!

and this:

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