A practical guide to weekly Proxmox VE maintenance across multiple sites, including ZFS health monitoring, backup validation, memory optimization, and the scripts I use to keep everything running.

Step-by-Step: Install and Configure Pi-hole with the Proxmox Community Script

This guide covers a full technical setup for Pi-hole on Proxmox using the Community Scripts installer.

It includes:

• creating the Pi-hole LXC
• assigning a static IP
• verifying DNS is working
• configuring your router, ISP modem, or firewall DHCP server to hand out Pi-hole as DNS
• fallback options when your ISP equipment does not allow custom DNS
• post-install Pi-hole configuration
• basic validation and troubleshooting

What this guide assumes

You have:

Part 2: Set Up Nginx Proxy Manager on Proxmox with Cloudflare DNS & pfSense

In Part 2 of this series, we’re setting up Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) inside Proxmox so we can start exposing our local services with clean HTTPS URLs and valid SSL certificates.

This is where the home lab starts feeling real.

Instead of accessing Home Assistant with something like:

• http://192.168.1.20:8123

…we’ll be able to use:

• https://ha.domain.com

And because we’re using Cloudflare DNS validation, we can issue a wildcard certificate for our domain and keep everything secure and polished.

Why Proxmox Is One of the Best Hypervisors You Can Run in a Home Lab

There’s something incredibly satisfying about owning your infrastructure.

Not renting it.
Not trusting it to some mysterious black box.
Actually owning it.

That’s the spirit behind home labs, and it’s exactly why Proxmox VE has become one of the most powerful hypervisors available to builders, tinkerers, and serious self-hosters.

It’s fast.
It’s powerful.
It’s ridiculously flexible.

From Zero to Segmented: Installing pfSense CE the Right Way (With VLANs That Actually Teach You Networking)

Most home networks are flat.

One LAN. One WiFi. Everything trusts everything.

Your laptop can talk to your smart bulbs. Your TV can talk to your NAS. Your IoT camera can reach your workstation.

That’s not a lab. That’s a liability.

If you want a home lab that actually teaches real networking, segmentation, routing, firewall policy, and security boundaries, you need a real firewall.

A practical guide for deploying a locally developed Hugo site to Azure Static Web Apps using GitHub Actions.

Posting to Hugo is easy

So now the site exists. The theme is wired up. The local server is humming along on localhost:1313.

And then you hit the real question:

How do you actually post something?

This is where Hugo stops being “a static site generator” and starts being a habit. Writing posts is the entire point, so let’s document that workflow while it’s still fresh in my head.

No cloud, no deployment pipelines, no polish. Just creating content and seeing it live on a locally hosted Hugo site.