Lab

My home machine is a lab, not a production server: I power it on when I want to test something I do not want to try on the VPS first. It ran Proxmox, then Debian 13 with WireGuard for remote access to my home network.

Remote access to the lab. From outside: connect by domain name. From inside the LAN: connect by local IP (see the NAT hairpin case).

What runs here now

Debian 13, kept separate from anything public-facing.
WireGuard, for remote access back into the home network when away.
Nothing the public internet can reach directly — no inbound port forwards to this machine anymore (see Infrastructure for why that changed).

What it's for

This is where I try things that might break: new services, Docker networking, firewall rules I'm not sure about, VLANs, backup strategies. If something here gets wedged, nothing public goes down — that separation is the whole point of running the site on its own VPS instead of at home.

Next experiments

An Ansible playbook that can rebuild the VPS from scratch
VLANs to split the home network
Proxmox again, with the lab services as separate VMs
Backups, with a restore that I've actually tested
A second container host for testing changes before the VPS

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