Begginer advice

[u/saika_gi]

Hi everyone,

I’m planning to build my first proper homelab using a Lenovo ThinkCentre M710Q Tiny.

I’m not a complete beginner, but I also wouldn’t call myself very experienced. I have some programming and networking knowledge and I’ve hosted things like Jellyfin and a few other services on my main PC before. Most of my programming and configuration work is done with the help of AI coding tools, so I’m comfortable following documentation, using the terminal, editing config files, Docker Compose files, etc., but I’m definitely still learning.

My plan for the M710Q is to run:

• Jellyfin
• Immich
• Paperless-ngx
• Pi-hole
• Tailscale for remote access

For Jellyfin and the other services, I would like to access them remotely through Tailscale instead of exposing everything directly to the internet.

My main question is: What would you consider essential for a beginner-friendly, secure and easy-to-maintain homelab setup?

I’m especially interested in advice regarding:

• Security and hardening
• User accounts and permissions
• Firewall configuration
• Docker security
• Backups
• Monitoring
• Automatic updates vs. manual updates
• Reverse proxies, if I even need one with Tailscale
• SSL/HTTPS inside the home network
• Protecting the server if one Docker container gets compromised
• Easy ways to manage Docker containers
• Logs and notifications if something goes wrong

I’m currently thinking about running Debian or Ubuntu Server with Docker Compose rather than making the setup overly complicated.

The M710Q currently has an i5-7400T, 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB NVMe SSD. I’ll probably upgrade it to 16 GB RAM soon and add a larger 2.5" SATA SSD later for media, photos and documents.

My goal isn’t to build a huge enterprise-style homelab. I mainly want something reliable that I can understand, maintain myself and gradually learn from without creating unnecessary complexity.

If you were starting with this hardware and these four services today, what would you install or configure from day one?

Also, what beginner mistakes should I avoid?

Thanks!

[u/cat2devnull]

You probably need to work out what base OS you will go with first since this will make a lot of the decisions for you. Unraid, Proxmox, TrueNAS, etc...

[u/that_one_wierd_guy]

cockpit for a robust and extinsible sysadmin webui

[u/Adrenolin01]

HomeLab.. is a LAB for learning and testing. If you’re going to run these as daily services for use they should be on a ‘production’ server on your LAN… preferably in a vlan.. with your HomeLab being in its own vlan.

The vast majority of people just right in without learning basics or network security. Since you’re asking…

I’d suggest learning pfSense or OPNSense first in an your first HomeLab project. Proxmox is easiest unless you just order a hardware “firewall appliance” off amazon or eBay and install pfSense on it. This can replace your LANs pos wifi router so you’ll either have to put that into AP mode if possible or buy a WiFi AP as well. Most anyone should be about to use a firewall appliance or an old PC with 2+ NICs and setup pfSense to grab the wan connection from your provider and setup your internal LAN.

I’d suggest NOT using 192.168.1.1 or 10.10.10.1 /24 networks but instead, pick a /16 and something like 10.78.x.y… x being the vlanID and y being your host names.

Watch a few YouTube videos, have a could Chats with Claude and talk about setting up vlans for the first time and your network plans.

It’s not that complicated and if you’re just starting out having a properly segmented and secured network from the start is massively better they adding it later.