Akash Rajvanshi

Part 3 — the operational side. 3-2-1 backup strategy, a Kafka-powered observability pipeline with VictoriaMetrics + Grafana, GitOps deployments, and 2026 plans.

https://blogs.thedevopsguy.biz/blog/homelab-architecture-operations/

#homelab #selfhosted #devops #proxmox

Part 2 — every VM, LXC, and container across all nodes. 30+ services on the media stack alone, plus Authentik, Teleport, Gitea, FreshRSS, and more.

https://blogs.thedevopsguy.biz/blog/homelab-architecture-apps-services/

My 2026 homelab runs 7 Proxmox nodes, 37TB of NAS storage, pfSense + UDM SE, PiKVM for remote management, and APC UPS protection.

Part 1 covers the full infrastructure 👇
https://blogs.thedevopsguy.biz/blog/homelab-architecture-foundation/

#homelab #selfhosted #proxmox #pfsense #infrastructure

My 2026 Homelab Architecture Part 1: The Infrastructure

UDM SE + pfSense dual-router setup, Proxmox nodes 40+ CPU, 200GB+ RAM, 30TB+ across 4 NAS devices, PiKVM for out-of-band access, and dual APC UPS tiers.

https://blogs.thedevopsguy.biz/blog/homelab-architecture-foundation/

- Working on my homelab architecture and components write-up
- PostgreSQL Replications Slot copy: https://x.com/crunchydata/status/2021574704767643698?s=20

Day 15

- Completed pure and first-class functions in python functional programming
- Studied concepts and algorithms used in non-relational databases (document-based and key-value stores), focusing on scaling and high availability

- Great read today: https://medium.com/@devanshusharma658/building-a-high-performance-distributed-search-system-for-10-000-qps-240e5ce48016

- Spent the day working on AKS observability: added the Cilium dataplane and replaced NGINX Ingress with Istio. Since this is a centralized observability setup, we are using an API gateway to receive data from multiple accounts and sources

Day 14

- Worked on my notes website over the weekend; completed it today and will keep adding more content:
https://blogs.thedevopsguy.biz/

- https://github.com/SoulKyu/vault-db-injector-cnd/tree/main

- Exploring immutable OS options for the homelab (NixOS, Fedora CoreOS, Flatcar, openSUSE MicroOS). Planning to try Fedora CoreOS and openSUSE MicroOS for servers while continuing NixOS on the desktop

Day 13

- Read about PostgreSQL tuning; explored pgwatch and a Vault DB injector demo using OpenBao.

- https://stormatics.tech/blogs/postgresql-materialized-views-when-caching-your-query-results-makes-sense
- https://github.com/cybertec-postgresql/pgwatch

Read these PostgreSQL-related blogs:
- https://engineering.zalando.com/posts/2025/12/contributing-to-debezium.html
- https://neon.com/postgresql/postgresql-18/oauth-authentication

Day 12

- Not feeling well for the past two days
- Reading an excellent book on Python workout exercises and continuing to explore functional programming in Python

https://www.manning.com/books/python-workout-second-edition

Day 11

- Reading and solving problems on functional programming in Python
- Must-reads for databases: understanding how WAL works and the algorithms behind database recovery

https://yashagw.github.io/blog/db-recovery/
https://x.com/BenjDicken/status/2016514026344464535

[3/3]
- Used NotebookLM to chat with PDFs for TypeScript and Python concepts

https://stormatics.tech/blogs/unused-indexes-in-postgresql-risks-detection-and-safe-removal

[2/3]

- Read: Unused Indexes in PostgreSQL – Risks, Detection, and Safe Removal
- Key takeaway: Unused indexes increase write overhead and waste storage. Use pg_stat_user_indexes to detect them and always verify before dropping.

Day 10

[1/3]

Major updates to the homelab media stack:
- Added Glance dashboard
- Applied resource limits to all containers
- Enabled Komodo webhook-based auto-deployment
- Separated multi-host environment configs

https://github.com/AkashRajvanshi/homelab-media-stack

How to Build Resilient Observability Pipelines with OpenTelemetry and Kafka! Prevent log and metric loss using local buffering and decoupled ingestion

How to Build Resilient Observability Pipelines with OpenTelemetry and Kafka!

open.substack.com/pub/akashraj...

https://akashrajvanshi.substack.com/p/how-to-build-resilient-observability?r=2r9aan

Day 9

- Completed OOP on boot.dev and started the functional programming section
- Practiced coding on Exercism and worked through Python workout exercises
- Read more about PostgreSQL partitioning and sharding strategies, including sharding optimization

[2/2]
- Didn’t get time to code today, but focused on understanding partitioning and sharding in PostgreSQL

Day 8

- Spent the day setting up secure access to database containers via NetBird without exposing ports. The plan is to use a mesh-based flow where a backup container accesses the database container on another host through NetBird
- Added Databasus and Dockhand to the homelab

- https://github.com/netbirdio/netbird/tree/main/infrastructure_files/observability/grafana/dashboards
- https://karpenter.sh/v1.6/getting-started/getting-started-with-karpenter/#monitoring-with-grafana-optional

[2/2]

- On the observability side, adding monitoring for NetBird and Karpenter. Both are major components, and I’m working on gaining better insights while further optimizing ingestion and storage

Day 7

[1/2]

- Completed BookBot and now working through OOP concepts in Python
- Found a cool homelab project: Dockhand (https://dockhand.pro/). I mainly manage my stack with Komodo, but this adds more control over stacks and containers

- Continued practicing TypeScript and Python via the boot.dev backend development path, a great platform to understand core concepts

Day 6

- Worked on capacity and cost planning by creating a dashboard for monthly data ingestion and storage usage across Loki, Tempo, and VictoriaMetrics
- Visited the Delhi Book Fair 2026 and picked up some great tech titles

2/2

- Still exploring and strengthening some core TypeScript concepts

Day 5

1/2

- Completed CDK client code for EKS Karpenter; working on adding new components and planning to create a reusable library to publish on npm
- Found this tweet very useful for anyone who wants to understand VictoriaLogs: https://x.com/func25/status/2011420689941885037