Home-lab design pt1 - Physical Boxes

Any long-time readers of this blog will probably be sick of my Mermaid [network diagrams](https://blog.themillhousegroup.com/2025/07/mikrotik-automation.html), but hey, these posts are as much for me to document my own trials and tribulations as they are for you, so ... let's do another one! ```mermaid architecture-beta service internet(affinity:cloud) group home(affinity:house)[Home] service ispr(affcircle:c-firewall-green) [ISP Router] in home service gbe(affcircle:c-router-green)[Mikrotik] in home service pi(affcircle:c-server-blue)[Pi] in home service nuc(affcircle:c-server-blue)[NUC] in home service nas(affcircle:c-nas-blue)[NAS] in home internet:B --> T:ispr ispr:B --> T:gbe gbe:B -- T:pi gbe:L -- R:nas gbe:R -- L:nuc ``` Dead simple. The __NAS__, a __Synology DS209__, has been faithfully just doing its thing for 15(!) years now and aside from occasional, painless, disk size increments, just keeps keeping on. And after last year's introduction of the [__Mikrotik RouterBoard RB2011__](https://blog.themillhousegroup.com/2025/01/upgrading-to-mikrotik-routerboard.html) router for [DHCP](https://blog.themillhousegroup.com/2025/03/upgrading-to-mikrotik-routerboard.html) and [DNS](https://blog.themillhousegroup.com/2025/04/upgrading-to-mikrotik-routerboard.html), the __Raspberry Pi 4B__ has been freed up for more Pi-suitable tasks (light web serving, streaming, home automation tasks). Which leaves the __Intel NUC__, specifically a `NUC5PGYH` - a lucky roadside hard-waste find that has proven invaluable as a super-compact, super-efficient x86 server. This is the core of my "self-hosting" plan for 2026.

2026 - Off we go again

Happy New Year! After some refreshing time off I'm looking to refresh my "home lab" with some self-hosted projects, so this is likely to be a big focus of this year's posts. Of course, as much as possible I'm still [doing](https://blog.themillhousegroup.com/2023/09/frenzyjs-saga-of-flood-fill.html) [projects](https://blog.themillhousegroup.com/2022/06/introducing-cardle.html) "out in the open" and hosting them on [Netlify](https://www.netlify.com), whose [SvelteKit](https://svelte.dev/docs/kit/introduction) [integration](https://svelte.dev/docs/kit/adapter-netlify) is still the smoothest and easiest way to get a modern, public-facing website that I've found. But for situations where full public access isn't appropriate, I've been experimenting with [Dockerization of Svelte apps](https://khromov.se/dockerizing-your-sveltekit-applications-a-practical-guide/) and self-hosted Docker and I'm liking what I'm seeing. More to come.