Hello everyone,
I’ve been reading the TrueNAS community for quite some time, and I thought it would be interesting to share my story.
My experience is probably a little different from most because I live in Cuba, where building and maintaining a homelab often involves challenges that go far beyond choosing hardware or configuring software.
I started learning programming when I was around 12 years old. Back then I was just a kid fascinated by computers and technology. Over the years that curiosity grew into an interest in servers, networking, virtualization, Linux, self-hosting, and infrastructure in general.
Today I’m 23 years old, which means I’ve spent more than a decade learning, experimenting, breaking things, fixing them, and trying to improve my skills.
For many people in the homelab community, obtaining hardware is mainly a matter of budget. In Cuba it is often a matter of availability.
For years I dreamed of owning a real enterprise server. Most of what I learned was done on old desktop computers, virtual machines, and whatever hardware I could get my hands on.
About two years ago I finally managed to buy a used Dell PowerEdge R730xd.
It may sound strange, but for me it was a dream come true.
Getting the server into the country was an adventure by itself. I was worried about customs issues, theft, and the possibility of components being lost during shipping, so I decided to have it shipped in multiple separate parts and then reassemble everything myself after it arrived.
Fortunately everything made it safely.
Today that server runs the latest version of TrueNAS SCALE and has become the center of my entire homelab.
Current hardware includes:
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Dell PowerEdge R730xd
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Latest version of TrueNAS SCALE
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2 SSDs dedicated to the operating system
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2 Hitachi 1.2TB 10K SAS drives for the main storage pool
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Multiple virtual machines
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Multiple containers and self-hosted services
Over time I have continued improving the infrastructure around it.
More recently I managed to buy a MikroTik hEX S. It may not be the most powerful router by the standards of many people here, but for me it was another major milestone.
The MikroTik allowed me to learn much more about routing, VLANs, firewall rules, VPNs, traffic management, and network segmentation.
Little by little I also built a small rack at home that now contains:
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The server
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MikroTik router
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Patch panel
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16-port switch
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Structured network cabling
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Various supporting equipment
Nothing in my setup is particularly high-end compared to some of the incredible homelabs posted online, but every single piece of equipment has a story behind it and required a significant amount of effort to obtain.
One of the biggest challenges isn’t even hardware.
It’s electricity.
In recent months we have experienced frequent power outages that sometimes last up to 20 hours at a time.
When many people think about a homelab, they think about storage performance, networking, virtualization, and backup strategies.
In my case, I also have to think about power reliability every single day.
Protecting data, preventing corruption, planning maintenance, deciding when to shut systems down, and making sure everything comes back online correctly after long outages has become part of normal homelab life.
Replacement parts are another challenge.
If a component fails, I cannot simply open Amazon and have a replacement delivered the next day.
Every hard drive, memory module, network card, SSD, or server component requires planning, patience, and sometimes a bit of luck.
Despite all of those challenges, building this homelab has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
It has become my development environment, testing environment, learning environment, and sometimes even my classroom.
Many of the skills I use today in software development, Linux administration, networking, virtualization, and infrastructure management were learned through this homelab.
One example is a project I recently made public called AE NetScope, a network inventory and IPAM platform that originally started as a tool for my own environment.
Looking back, it’s amazing to think that what started with old computers and limited connectivity eventually turned into a real server, a rack, managed networking equipment, virtualized services, and a growing self-hosted infrastructure.
I’m curious to hear from others in the community.
Have any of you built homelabs under unusual circumstances?
How do you deal with unreliable power, limited hardware availability, or other challenges that most people don’t have to think about?
I’d love to hear your stories.
P.S. This post was originally written in Spanish and translated into English with the help of ChatGPT. After a recent discussion about AI-assisted writing, I figured it was best to be transparent about it from the beginning. I have no problem admitting that I use AI as a tool, just as I use Linux, TrueNAS, MikroTik, and many other technologies that help me learn and build things.