Enterprise Network

A project to centralize a small consultancy’s services and storage on self-hosted infrastructure: a hypervisor running the whole service stack, private cloud for files and photos, document management and invoicing, and a verified 3-2-1 backup strategy. The detail that raises the bar is that it holds real client data, so security, encryption, and GDPR compliance drive every decision rather than being an afterthought.

The project did not stay on the v1 plan. When I put the original design (OPNsense, VLANs, new hardware) against the real budget and the client’s actual needs, the scope was trimmed: the ISP router stayed, the network stayed flat, and an existing PC became the hypervisor. The “Homelab ED50” series below documents the implementation that actually went into production, from the final hardware to the offsite backup.

The infrastructure is now in production. Each phase is documented as a blog entry, from the initial architecture and budget through to the actual build and everything that broke along the way.

Write-ups

The detailed posts live in the blog, grouped under this project:

• Infrastructure: choosing and justifying the hardware
  The hardware behind the v1 plan: backups, firewall appliance, and Proxmox server, with the reasoning for each choice.
• Planning a self-hosted service centralization (v1 architecture)
  The original blueprint: segmented VLANs, OPNsense at the edge, and the build order, all shaped by real client data on the network.
• Homelab ED50 (1/4): final hardware, Immich, and a verified 3-2-1 backup strategy
  How the plan was trimmed to the real budget, the final hardware, Immich in production, and a 3-2-1 backup verified end to end.
• Homelab ED50 (2/4): domains and TLS with Caddy, invoice management with Paperless-ngx
  Caddy as reverse proxy with a wildcard certificate and zero open ports, plus Paperless-ngx ingesting invoices automatically over IMAP.
• Homelab ED50 (3/4): TicketBot, receipt digitization via Telegram
  A Telegram bot that turns the photo of a paper receipt into a classified fiscal document in Paperless in about 15 seconds.
• Homelab ED50 (4/4): self-hosted invoicing and offsite backup on Hetzner
  Invoicing with FacturaScripts ready for Facturae and Verifactu, and the offsite copy on Hetzner that closes the 3-2-1.

More entries will land as the project keeps evolving.