About

Hey, I'm Tom 👋

By day, I work in Healthcare. By night (and weekends, and lunch breaks...), I build things with servers.

What is Notes By Me?

This blog documents my journey building a home data center from scratch — a cluster of Proxmox servers, self-hosted services, Docker containers, and all the networking that ties it together. Every post is written from hands-on experience, covering the things I actually built, broke, fixed, and learned along the way.

The goal is simple: practical, honest tutorials that help you build your own homelab without wading through fluff. If I hit a problem, I write about it. If something took me hours to figure out, I document it so it takes you minutes.

The setup

My current homelab runs on four HP EliteDesk 800 G3 mini PCs picked up from eBay for a combined £84. They're clustered with Proxmox VE, backed up to a dedicated Proxmox Backup Server, and connected remotely via Tailscale.

Get in touch

Got a question, spotted an error, or just want to talk homelabs? You can reach me through the site or find me where the self-hosting community hangs out.

Thanks for reading. Now go build something. 🔧