What starts with a single server can quickly become a complex ecosystem. Here’s the story of how my passion project became a source of anxiety.

It all started from a simple place: a love for computers.

I’ve been running what you might call a “homelab” for over two decades. It didn’t start as some grand project. It was just a network hub, a couple of older computers, and a passion for tinkering. One machine handled network storage, and another, believe it or not, ran a Lotus Notes server for my email. It was simple, fun, and entirely manageable. But over the years, a slow, almost invisible force took over: homelab creep. What began as a simple hobby has gradually morphed into something that feels less like a passion and more like a small enterprise system I’m constantly trying to keep from collapsing.

It all happens one small step at a time.

The Slow March of Homelab Creep

You don’t just wake up one day with a rack of servers humming in your basement. It begins with a single, perfectly reasonable thought: “I can make this a little better.”

For me, it started with the basics. Why use my internet provider’s DNS when I could have more control? So, I set up a Pi-hole. But what if it fails? That led to setting up three Pi-hole instances for redundancy. Then came the DHCP server. A simple ISC server worked fine for years, but then I discovered KEA DHCP. It offered more features, so I set it up in a primary and secondary configuration with a Postgres backend.

Of course, managing that from the command line was a bit of a pain. The logical next step? Build a custom web front-end for it. Each solution created a new, slightly more complex problem, and I was all too happy to solve it.

Chasing Reliability and Adding Complexity

With a growing number of virtual machines and containers, I realized I was flying blind. I needed to know what was running, what was struggling, and what was about to fail. So, I added a monitoring solution. Then I needed a slick dashboard to see it all at a glance, so in came Glance. But what good is monitoring if you don’t know when something breaks? That meant I needed a notification system, so I set up NTFY.

This is the heart of homelab creep: every new layer of complexity is a solution to a problem created by the last layer.

The real turning point for me was when I decided I wanted to run my own Certificate Authority (CA) to issue SSL and SSH certificates for my internal services. I dove in and set up Smallstep, a powerful open-source CA. It was a fantastic learning experience, but it also added another critical piece of infrastructure I was now responsible for maintaining.

When Your Homelab Creep Demands Full Automation

Things were getting out of hand. Managing everything manually was becoming a chore. The updates, the configurations, the new VMs—it was too much. So, I decided it was time to learn Ansible.

I dove in headfirst, writing playbooks to automate everything:
* Updating all my VMs and containers.
* Spinning up new virtual machines from templates.
* Checking for available container updates.
* Renewing my internal certificates.

Ansible was powerful, and for a while, it felt like I had finally tamed the beast. But then, a new anxiety emerged: how do I know if my automation is actually working?

This was the final, almost comical, step. I set up my Ansible scripts to write their status to JSON files. Then I wrote a simple Python web server to parse those files and feed the data into my Glance dashboard. I had now built a monitoring system to monitor my automation system, which was built to manage the complex system that my simple hobby had become.

The House of Cards

Today, I find myself surrounded by six computers, five Raspberry Pis, a standalone NAS, and a web of VMs, containers, and scripts I built myself.

The simple joy of tinkering has been replaced by a low-level anxiety. I feel less like a hobbyist and more like a sysadmin for a small, quirky, and incredibly fragile business. It’s a house of cards, and I’m just waiting for one wrong move or one failed component to bring it all tumbling down.

It’s overwhelming. This intricate system I’ve poured years into now feels less like an achievement and more like a burden.

Does any of this sound familiar? Have you ever felt the pressure of your own homelab creep? I’m sure I’m not the only one who has gone down this rabbit hole. Check out communities like the /r/homelab subreddit to see you’re in good company. I’d love to hear your story in the comments below.