Docker & Kubernetes at Home: A Modern Guide to Self-Hosted Homelabs with Plex, Pi-hole & More

By Hollis Denning

Docker & Kubernetes at Home: A Modern Guide to Self-Hosted Homelabs with Plex, Pi-hole & More

Turn your home network into a private cloud you control. This hands-on, project-driven guide walks you from zero to a resilient, production-style homelab-first with Docker/Compose, then scaling to Kubernetes (K3s/MicroK8s)-so you can stream your media, block ads network-wide, automate your home, protect remote access, back up everything, and even run local AI on your own hardware.

No fluff. No enterprise detours. Just clean flowcharts, professional tables, and copy-ready configurations that work.

What you'll build (step-by-step labs)

Media & Storage: Plex/Jellyfin, Immich photo hub, TrueNAS integration with NFS/iSCSI & Kubernetes PVCsNetwork & Smart Home: Home Assistant, Pi-hole/AdGuard, Nginx Proxy Manager or Traefik with clean HTTPS URLsSecure Remote Access: pfSense with WireGuard/OpenVPN-VPN-first exposure patterns that keep admin UIs privateObservability: Prometheus + Grafana dashboards, Loki centralized logs, alerting you can trustBackups & DR: Velero + Longhorn snapshots/backups, restore simulations that prove your strategy worksLocal AI at Home: Ollama & LM Studio on Kubernetes, Stable Diffusion with GPU passthrough, NVIDIA Operator scheduling

What you'll learn (and actually use)

Docker fundamentals done right: images, containers, volumes, networks, and Compose v2 multi-app stacksKubernetes without the enterprise bloat: K3s/MicroK8s, multi-node clustering, Ingress, Services, PVCs, HelmStorage that doesn't lose data: NFS/iSCSI with TrueNAS, Longhorn replication, snapshot/backup flows that hold up under failureNetworking that scales safely: reverse proxies (Traefik/NPM), TLS, DNS, VPN patterns, and service exposure decision treesMonitoring & logging you'll actually check: Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki-signal over noiseAI at the edge: model persistence on PVCs, GPU-aware scheduling, and practical pipelines for LLMs & generative image workloadsGitOps-friendly ops: ArgoCD basics, clean namespaces, repeatable manifests, and upgrade playbooksFix it fast: battle-tested troubleshooting cheatsheets for Docker, Kubernetes, DNS/firewalls, PVCs, and CrashLoopBackOffs

Who this book is for

Self-hosters ready to move from "one-off containers" to reliable, monitored servicesDevelopers & tinkerers who want a home lab that feels like a small production clusterPrivacy-minded builders who prefer keeping media, photos, and AI workloads on-prem, not in the cloudBeginner → intermediate readers who learn best by doing, with clear flowcharts, tables, and copy-ready configs

If you've been piecing together tutorials and wish your homelab felt coherent, resilient, and upgrade-safe, this is your playbook. Build services you're proud to rely on-then scale them with confidence.

Own your cloud. Secure your data. Run modern apps (and AI) at home.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FQ64GQ77
• ISBN13: 9798264334764
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 298 Pages
• Weight: 1.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.5" x 11.0"