Tempo + Grafana: Tracing for Self-Hosters
Distributed tracing with Tempo and Grafana for self-hosted multi-service stacks. OpenTelemetry, sampling, exemplars, and when tracing actually matters at home scale.
All the articles with the tag "homelab".
Distributed tracing with Tempo and Grafana for self-hosted multi-service stacks. OpenTelemetry, sampling, exemplars, and when tracing actually matters at home scale.
Prometheus federation for multi-site home labs: hierarchical scraping, cross-cluster aggregation, federation vs remote_write, practical config.
TrueNAS Scale ditched Kubernetes for native Docker. Apps catalog vs raw Compose, when each wins, dataset snapshots, and why custom apps took so long.
Four file-sharing protocols compared for home labs: NFS speed, SMB compatibility, SSHFS convenience, WebDAV over HTTP, and which one to pick per use case.
Compare cold storage tiers: Backblaze B2, Storj decentralized cloud, and Scaleway Glacier. Pricing, egress, restore times, and which backup service wins.
Why rsync.net is the no-BS off-site backup target for Restic and Borg: SSH-only ZFS, real Unix support, and what 1.5 cents per GB per month actually costs.
ZFS tuning for flash: ARC sizing, recordsize, autotrim, sync modes, and SLOG advice, plus why defaults written for spinning disks waste an NVMe pool.
Backup patterns that survive disasters: snapshot, replication, off-site. Retention, safety, and the 3-2-1 model done right.
API vs self-hosted LLM cost reality, GPU TCO, privacy, latency, break-even math. When paying OpenAI/Anthropic wins. When local wins.
LXC and Docker both containerize workloads, but one runs mini-VMs with init processes while the other handles single-process apps. Here's when each wins.
Your ISP's box doesn't have to run your network. How to find bridge mode, dodge double NAT, and hand real routing duty over to a MikroTik router instead.
Audiobookshelf vs Booksonic: which self-hosted audiobook server wins? ABS takes it for most homelabbers. Here's why, and when Booksonic still makes sense.