Core homelab infrastructure should be invisible — and after more than five years of homelabbing, How-To Geek’s Patrick Campanale says just two Docker containers do most of his setup’s quiet, essential work: Pi-hole and Caddy.
His homelab has grown a lot since 2021, when it was a single server running Plex. Today it spans two NAS systems, multiple PCs and a few cloud virtual machines, orchestrated by dozens of Docker containers — from Plex to a Minecraft server controller and WordPress. Yet only two containers, he says, are truly set-and-forget: he never thinks about them, and they just keep everything going.
Homelab setup (Credits: How-To Geek)
Pi-hole: The Docker Container That Blocks Trackers and Runs Your Home DNS
Start with Pi-hole, the tried-and-true homelab staple. It began as a project for the Raspberry Pi but now runs on almost anything, and it works as a DNS management system. To use it, you point your router’s DNS field at the machine running Pi-hole — in Campanale’s case, his NAS — and Pi-hole takes it from there.
In his setup, Pi-hole is mostly a blocking system. It blocks trackers, ads and much more across every device on the network, without needing software installed on each phone, laptop or TV. Custom allow and deny lists fine-tune that blocking, so useful services still work — for example, keeping YouTube watch history functioning even while other tracking is blocked.
But Pi-hole does more than block. It can also serve custom DNS entries for sites inside your local network. Want photos on your own domain to open your Immich photo server at home? Pi-hole can make that address resolve inside your house, giving your self-hosted services clean, memorable names instead of bare IP addresses and port numbers.
Caddy: The Set-and-Forget Container That Routes Your Homelab Traffic
That is where the second container comes in. In Campanale’s setup, Pi-hole points to a separate Caddy instance running on a virtual machine, which handles the web requests and redirects them where they need to go. Caddy is his newest addition to the homelab — and, he says, honestly his favourite set-and-forget container.
The pairing is what makes the whole thing feel effortless. Pi-hole decides where a name should go; Caddy receives the request and routes it to the right service. Together, they turn a sprawling collection of servers, NAS boxes and virtual machines into something that feels like one coherent system, with tidy internal addresses and traffic flowing to the right place without constant tinkering.
The lesson for anyone building a homelab is a useful one: the flashiest services get the attention — media servers, game servers, photo libraries — but the infrastructure underneath them matters more. Get DNS and routing right, with tools you can set up once and largely forget, and everything else becomes easier to run, easier to reach, and easier to live with.
If your homelab feels like a chore, these two containers are a good place to start. They will not run your media library or host your website for you, but they will quietly do the job that lets everything else work — day after day, without asking for your attention.
Also Read: I Run Dozens of Docker Containers, But These 7 Belong in Every Homelab and A $50 Office PC Can Run Your Homelab, But Check These 5 Things First
Source: How-To Geek — read the full story there.