🏠 Manie's Homelab — Operations Manual¶
Welcome — read this first
This is the single source of truth for everything in your homelab. When something breaks, when you forget how a service works, when you want to add a new device — start here.
Search is in the top-right (or press S). Try searching for: pialarm, vaultwarden, restore, WAN down.
🎯 What this site is for¶
| You want to… | Go here |
|---|---|
| Understand the big picture | 🗺️ Architecture → Overview |
| Know what's running on a specific host | 🖥️ Services → pick the host |
| Fix something that just broke | 🚨 Runbooks → pick the symptom |
| Restore a file from yesterday | 💾 Restic cheatsheet |
| Check if everything is alive RIGHT NOW | Uptime Kuma → status.manie.uk |
| Look up a password | 🔐 Vaultwarden → vault.manie.uk |
| See if a cron job actually ran | Healthchecks → pulse.manie.uk |
| Find a domain name | 📋 All domains |
🚪 The off-site VPS — your safety net¶
The VPS at 102.202.192.9 (Tailscale: 100.67.58.15) is outside your house. When home WAN dies, the VPS keeps running and tells you what's wrong. Everything in the 🛠️ Tools and 📊 Monitoring sections lives there.
| Service | URL | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 📚 Docs (you are here) | https://docs.manie.uk | This manual |
| 🚨 Status page | https://status.manie.uk | Live up/down of everything |
| ✅ Healthchecks | https://pulse.manie.uk | Cron job watchdog |
| 🔐 Vaultwarden | https://vault.manie.uk | Password vault |
| 🔁 Failover Node-RED | https://nodered-vps.manie.uk | Backup WhatsApp gateway |
| 🌐 Gitea mirror | https://gitmirror.manie.uk | Off-site copy of all repos |
| 📊 VPS Grafana panel | https://grafana.manie.uk/d/homelab-vps | VPS resource graphs |
🆘 Emergency cards (fastest path to fixing common problems)¶
🔥 Home WAN went down
- Check https://status.manie.uk from your phone (uses cellular, not home WAN)
- If pfSense is shown red → router/modem reboot via VPN to dh02 console
- Read 🚨 Runbooks → Home WAN is down
🔥 You stopped getting WhatsApp alerts
- Check https://nodered-vps.manie.uk — failover gateway should still work
- Either pialarm crashed OR home WAN is down. Status page will tell you which.
- Read Runbooks → pialarm died
🔥 You see "Photos missing" in Immich
STOP. Don't trigger a scan. Read Runbooks → Immich mass-trash FIRST.
🔥 You can't access vSphere from work or phone
- Open https://vcenter.home.lab/ui directly in browser (Tailscale Split DNS handles the name)
- If "site cannot be reached" → check
nslookup vcenter.home.labreturns100.115.94.1 - Read Runbooks → vSphere won't load
🧰 What's where (the 3-second answer)¶
graph LR
Phone[📱 Phone] --> CF[☁️ Cloudflare]
Work[💼 Work PC] --> CF
CF --> Tunnel[Cloudflare Tunnel]
CF --> VPS[🌐 homelab-vps<br/>102.202.192.9]
Tunnel --> DH02[🖥️ docker-host-02<br/>192.168.0.9<br/>Traefik+Authelia]
DH02 --> DH01[🖥️ docker-host-01<br/>192.168.0.200<br/>Apps]
DH02 --> PiAlarm[🥧 pialarm<br/>192.168.0.109<br/>Node-RED]
DH02 --> ESXi[💿 ESXi/vCenter<br/>192.168.0.79]
VPS -.Tailscale.-> Phone
VPS -.Tailscale.-> DH01Built with MkDocs Material. Source: https://gitea.manie.uk/Manie/homelab/src/branch/main/docs. Auto-rebuilds every 10 min from git.