The 12 Days of Christmas: Home Lab Edition

On the first day of Christmas, my home lab gave to me...

A Raspberry Pi in a Docker tree 🐳 Low-power ARM computing perfect for 24/7 services like Pi-hole, Home Assistant, or lightweight monitoring

Two SSH keys 🔐 Public/private key pairs for secure, passwordless authentication are essential for remote server management

Three Ubuntu VMs 🐧 Virtualization separates services for better security, easier troubleshooting, and snapshot recovery

Four spinning drives 💾 RAID configurations provide redundancy—because backups aren't backups until you have 3 copies

Five Cat-6 cables! 🎵 Gigabit ethernet infrastructure: the backbone of reliable home networking (WiFi is convenient, wired is consistent)

Six containers deploying 📦 Docker containerization: isolated environments, easy updates, and reproducible configurations

Seven servers proxying 🖥️ Reverse proxies (nginx, Traefik) managing traffic, SSL/TLS certificates, and subdomain routing

Eight ports forwarding ➡️ Controlled external access while maintaining security always paired with proper firewall rules

Nine logs rotating 📝 Automated log management prevents drive fills and maintains system performance history

Ten cron jobs running ⏰ Scheduled automation: backups, updates, health checks, and maintenance tasks

Eleven tickets closing 🎫 Real-world IT support experience translates directly to home lab troubleshooting skills

Twelve dashboards monitoring 📊 Grafana, Portainer, Home Assistant visibility into your infrastructure is power

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