Over the past few months, I’ve been diving into the world of self-hosted media servers, and one of my favorite projects has been setting up a Jellyfin server to manage and stream my personal collection of movies and TV shows. For those who haven’t explored this space yet, self-hosting your media offers a level of control, privacy, and customization that traditional streaming platforms simply can’t match.

With Jellyfin, I can organize my library with metadata, posters, and genres, all while keeping everything running on hardware I control. I’ve configured transcoding for smooth playback across devices, set up secure remote access, and even experimented with optimizing storage and network performance for large media files. It’s been a rewarding challenge combining networking, server management, and media organization into a single project.

If you’re curious about self-hosting, media streaming, or network setups, feel free to check out my Jellyfin server. You can explore the interface, browse the library, and see firsthand how a fully self-managed movie server operates. It’s a great example of how modern technology allows us to take control of our digital content while learning more about server administration along the way.

Recently, I’ve been spending a lot of time running my own infrastructure at home, and one project that really stood out was deploying a self-hosted instance of Vaultwarden. Instead of relying on third-party password services, I wanted a solution where I control both the data and the environment it lives in. Self-hosting made that possible, while still keeping things secure and easy to use.

By hosting Vaultwarden myself, I manage my entire encrypted password vault on my own server while maintaining seamless access from multiple devices using official Vaultwarden clients. I’ve put effort into securing the deployment with SSL, strict access controls, and regular backups, and fine-tuned the setup to be reliable and resilient. It’s been an excellent hands-on experience in system hardening, security-focused configuration, and ongoing server maintenance.

For anyone interested in learning more about self-hosting, cybersecurity, or managing critical services, this Vaultwarden setup is a practical example of how you can build secure, self-managed solutions. It highlights how taking ownership of your tools can improve both your technical skills and your confidence in how your data is protected.

I recently added Apache Guacamole to my homelab stack, and it’s quickly become one of my favorite self-hosted tools. I wanted a cleaner way to access my RDP and SSH machines without juggling VPN clients or exposing unnecessary ports. Like most of my infrastructure, I deployed it using Docker. I spun up three containers guacd, guacamole, and a MySQL database  all defined in a single Docker Compose file. One docker compose up -d later, the service was running.

After the initial login, I secured the default credentials and placed it behind my Nginx reverse proxy with HTTPS. Proper WebSocket configuration was key to keeping RDP sessions stable through the proxy. Once that was in place, adding internal Windows and Linux hosts was straightforward. Now I can securely access everything through a browser, fully segmented within my VLAN architecture and without installing remote clients on every device.

It fits perfectly into my container-based environment and keeps remote management centralized, clean, and efficient. Just another solid addition to the lab that makes day-to-day administration smoother and more controlled.