It’s time for another round of fun home lab projects this weekend, and it all starts with server monitoring! Then, once you’ve set up centralized monitoring of your server, I’ll show you how to optimize your Docker experience. Here are three fun at-home lab projects to tackle this weekend.
Monitor your servers with Beszel
Server statistics at a glance without consuming tons of resources
If you have multiple servers in your home lab, then you should have some type of server monitoring software implemented. It’s really nice to be able to see the statistics for each server in your home lab at a glance.
you babies It is extremely easy to run and hardly consumes any resources. In fact, when my coworker Faisal implemented Beszel in his own lab, he said that Beszel is now the server monitor he runs on all his devices, and it only takes up 5 MB of resources.
The way Beszel works is that you have a “controller” system and then all the other computers communicate with that. So, decide which of your servers will be the main one and start Beszel via your Docker Compose file.
Then once you have the main system up and running, you can click “Add System” in Beszel and it will give you the Dockable composition file needed for secondary servers to communicate with the primary.
It’s a pretty cool system; It’s very lightweight and gives you all the information you need about your servers at a glance.
Viewing Docker logs is not a chore with Dozzle
Docker registries, but better
I rarely have to look at my Docker logs, but when I do, it’s always a pain. Portainer doesn’t show the full log, Unraid rarely shows me what I need and it’s a pain trying to pull the logs through the terminal. That’s why Dozzle was created.
With Dozzle, you can easily explore all your Docker container logs from all your servers. That’s right, Dozzle also supports monitoring multiple Docker instances.
It shows you real-time logs, live statistics and server metrics, and allows you to search everything. The platform’s database runs on SQL, so it is fully accessible and searchable as you would expect.
Not only that, but it also includes alerts and webhooks. So you can set up Slack, Discord, or any other notification platform to ping you if a record starts going crazy.
However, Dozzle is more than just a log viewer; It also has shell and executive access natively, so if there’s a problem with a container, you can fix it from the Dozzle interface.
Add to that the fact that Dozzle is officially sponsored by Docker and you have no other reason why you shouldn’t be running this Docker registry management stack in your home lab. So what are you waiting for? Deploy Docker Compose configuration today and start monitoring your home lab like never before.
Manage your Docker containers more easily with Dockge
No need for Portainer here
I’m a big fan of Portainer.that cannot be denied. However, Dock is an extremely simple management platform, centered on Docker Compose, that is completely open source and ready to handle your home lab with ease.
Dockge separates itself from Portainer and other Docker managers by simplifying everything to just Docker Compose files and stacks. This simplification helps streamline Docker management and is something I’m working on in other ways in my home lab.
With Docker Compose, you can easily deploy multiple containers from a single file. Docker Compose also makes changing a variable a trivial task after a container is launched. There’s really no reason why you shouldn’t use Docker Compose in your home lab, and Dockge is one of the best ways to manage Compose.
Dockge also provides an interactive web terminal if you want to interact with your containers natively, which is a really nice touch.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Dockge is not designed as a complete replacement for Portainer, and the developer even acknowledges this on the GitHub page. It’s really just to manage Docker Compose files in a better way than other tools out there.
That said, you can run Dockge and Portainer in parallel, using them at the same time to manage your containers in different ways. So if you’ve been looking for a better way to manage your Docker Compose files, try Dockge.
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- Brand
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GEEKOM
- UPC
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AMD Ryzen 5 7430U
- Graphics
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AMD Vega 7
- Memory
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16GB DDR4 SO-DIMM
- Storage
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512GB NVMe (expandable)
The GEEKOM A5 mini PC includes 16GB of user-replaceable RAM, a user-replaceable NVMe SSD, and two other storage slots, giving you plenty of user-upgradability in this compact system. The Ryzen 5 processor offers plenty of power for general tasks and is even great for light gaming and CAD work.
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- Brand
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THE ROOM
- UPC
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i5-14450HX
- Memory
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16GB DDR4
- Storage
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512GB NVMe
The KAMRUI Hyper H2 Mini PC has an Intel Core i5-14450HX processor with 10 cores and 16 threads and 16 GB of DDR4 RAM. The included 512GB NVMe SSD comes with Windows 11 pre-installed so your system is ready to use right out of the box.
Docker is really the backbone of almost any home lab project.
It’s rare to find a home lab project that doesn’t have some kind of Docker container attached to it. Docker is a great tool for the home lab and Docker is really something everyone should know. at this point.
Docker containers are definitely different from virtual machinesand they are even different than the LXC, but whatever you do, don’t install everything “bare metal” on your system. Use some type of containerization platform.
