Jakub Hovorka

Homelab Diary Part 3: Building the Homelab

Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the previous part of this blog series, I shared what approach I chose when deciding on what hardware my homelab needs, and I also went over all the parts I ended up buying. Now is the time to finally start building and turn the pile of parts into a homelab.

The parts used in this build (details about prices are in the previous part of this series):

Homelab Diary Part 2: Choosing the Hardware

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, building any computer in 2026 is a painful experience for your wallet. Unfortunately, it won’t get better any time soon (thanks, AI!), and it might even get worse, so we just have to grit our teeth and try to find the best deals possible.

As I mentioned in the previous part of this series, a homelab is an indispensable tool for improving your engineering skills, which is why I think it’s a worthy investment in your future. But what actually is a homelab?

Homelab Diary Part 1: Why I Started

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In recent times, there has been a lot of buzz about AI replacing all kinds of IT professionals. From what I’ve seen, the consensus is that DevOps / Platform roles are mostly safe from this for many different reasons, some of which are that companies have a lot of technical debt or legacy tooling, which makes AI integration very difficult, or that DevOps / Platform engineers require very broad permissions, which, in the hands of AI, can be very dangerous and potentially devastating for the whole company.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m Jakub Hovorka, a DevOps/Platform engineer based in the Netherlands (soon Sweden). I work on cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, and on-prem systems.

This blog documents my homelab journey — the hardware choices, the builds, the experiments, and the lessons learned. I started it partly to improve my writing, partly to share what I find interesting, and partly because homelabbing is one of the best ways to stay sharp as an engineer.