Self-Hosting

In February I wrote a post on how I stopped paying for ChatGPT in favor of a self-hosted solution. Since then, I haven’t completely stopped using ChatGPT, and I did resume my subscription briefly, but I’ve cut the cord again, this time I think for good. I mentioned previously that I’m using Ollama as a backend to run large language models on a local machine, and while it has gotten some significant upgrades in the past few months and even has its own UI now, I still prefer the solution I found earlier this year for day-to-day use, Open WebUI. It’s a powerful self-hosted interface for using both local and cloud AI models, and has rapidly gained a massive community and countless new features thanks to dozens of contributors. The team behind the app has kept pace very well with the major commercial offerings, and they show no signs of slowing down, having gained both Tailscale and Warp, the AI-powered IDE, as sponsors. ...

I just added a KVM console to my server rack, and it’s easily one of the best upgrades to my homelab I’ve ever made. Gone are the days of digging an old keyboard and VGA monitor out of a forgotten box somewhere in the basement just to regain access to a machine I’ve managed to lock myself out of, or to set up new hardware or a refreshed box. Now all I have to do is go downstairs, open up the console and switch inputs to the machine I need to access. It’s an old-school concept but it really does make a difference. ...

Two and a half years ago I was one of the earliest users of ChatGPT, and like most others I was amazed at what it could do, but right away I started dreaming up potential use cases that it was in no way ready to support. As I started testing ideas, the top of my wishlist read, “Run an LLM at home.” Not for any particular reason at the time, other than my love of self-hosting anything I could reasonably run locally. ...

I always have at least a few projects queued up or in progress, but recently I decided to get better organized with some personal project management. I installed Planka in my homelab and I’ve been filling it up with ideas, maintenance tasks, and issues for both homelab projects and house projects. Planka is essentially a Trello clone that’s missing a lot of Trello’s better features, but for now it’s where I’ve landed as it works pretty well and I’m hopeful that the project will stay active and keep adding features. ...

The next challenge I’ve decided to take on in my homelab journey is to replace one of my business’s remote servers hosted at OVH with a custom server hosted in my rack here at home. While technically this server will be separate from all homelab/non-production components, there is enough overlap that I don’t mind lumping it into the homelab category. After all, the primary purpose of my homelab is to support production in my business. ...