Hi, I’m Ajaya K C — an IT and networking enthusiast building and breaking things in my homelab. This blog is where I document everything I learn: network setups, self-hosted services, Linux configs, firewalls, and anything else I experiment with.
Got questions or want to connect? Reach out at aj@ajayakc.com — I’m always learning.
Setting Up Proxmox VE on an Old Dell OptiPlex
🚀 Introduction Repurposing old hardware is one of the best ways to get started with a homelab. In this guide, I’ll walk you through how I installed Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) on an old Dell OptiPlex and turned it into a powerful virtualization server. 🖥️ Hardware Used Dell OptiPlex (old desktop) Intel CPU (with virtualization support) 8GB+ RAM (recommended) SSD (strongly recommended for performance) USB drive (for installation) 📥 Step 1: Download Proxmox VE Go to the official Proxmox website Download the latest ISO image Save it to your local machine 💿 Step 2: Create a Bootable USB You can also use tools like: ...
AdGuard setup for blocking ads
Introduction In this post, I will show how I deployed AdGuard Home in my home lab environment to achieve network-wide ad-blocking and DNS-level filtering. My homelab runs on Proxmox, with AdGuard Home inside a Docker container on a Linux virtual machine. This setup allows all devices on my network to benefit from ad-blocking, tracking protection, and enhanced DNS management without installing software individually on each device. Why AdGuard Home? AdGuard Home is an open-source, self-hosted network-wide ad-blocker and DNS resolver. Its key benefits include: ...