It’s time for another round of fun homelab projects to do this weekend, and it all starts with server monitoring! Then, once you have your centralized server monitoring set up, I’ll show you how to optimize your Docker experience. Here are three fun homelab projects to tackle this weekend.

Monitor your servers with Beszel

At-a-glance server stats without taking up tons of resources

If you have multiple servers in your homelab, then you really should have some type of server monitoring software deployed. It’s really nice to be able to see the stats of every server in your homelab at a glance.

Beszel is extremely easy to launch, and it takes up hardly any resources. In fact, when my coworker Faisal deployed Beszel in his own homelab, he said that Beszel is now the server monitor that he runs on all his devices, and it only takes up 5MB of resources.

How Beszel works is that you have one “controller” system, and then all the other computers talk to that one. So, decide which of your servers will be the primary and launch Beszel through its Docker Compose file.

Then, once you have the primary system up and going, you can click on “Add System” in Beszel and it’ll give you the Docker Compose file needed for the secondary servers to talk to the primary.

It’s a pretty genius system; it is very lightweight, and gives you all the information you’ll need about your servers at a glance.

Viewing Docker logs isn’t a chore with Dozzle

Docker logs, but better

Credit: Dozzle

I rarely have to view my Docker logs, but when I do, it’s always a pain. Portainer doesn’t display the full log, Unraid rarely shows me what I need, and it’s just a headache to try and pull the logs through the terminal. That’s why Dozzle was created.

With Dozzle, you can easily browse all the logs of your Docker containers from all of your servers. That’s right, Dozzle supports monitoring multiple Docker instances, too.

It shows you real-time logs, live stats and metrics from the servers, and lets you search everything. The platform’s database runs on SQL, so it is fully accessible and searchable like you’d expect.

Not only that, but it also features alerts and webhooks. So, you can set up Slack, Discord, or any other notification platform to ping you if a log starts going crazy.

Dozzle is more than just a log viewer, though; it also features shell and exec access natively, so if there’s a problem with a container, you’re able to troubleshoot it from Dozzle’s 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 log management stack in your homelab. So, what are you waiting for? Deploy the Docker Compose configuration today and start monitoring your homelab like never before.

Manage your Docker containers easier with Dockge

There’s no need for Portainer here

I’m a big fan of Portainer, there’s no denying that. However, Dockge is an extremely simple, Docker Compose-focused management platform that’s fully open source and ready to handle your homelab with ease.

Dockge separates itself from Portainer and other Docker managers by simplifying everything down to just Docker Compose files and stacks. This simplification helps streamline Docker management, and is something that I’m working on doing myself in other ways in my homelab.

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 that you shouldn’t be using Docker Compose in your homelab—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 isn’t designed as a complete Portainer replacement, and the developer even acknowledges that on the GitHub page. It’s really just for managing Docker Compose files in a better way than other tools out there can offer.

With that said, you actually can run Dockge and Portainer side-by-side, using both 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, give Dockge a try.

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  Brand

  GEEKOM

  CPU

  AMD Ryzen 5 7430U

  Graphics

  AMD Vega 7

  Memory

  16GB DDR4 SO-DIMM

  Storage

  512GB NVMe (expandable)

  The GEEKOM A5 mini PC packs 16GB of user-replaceable RAM, a user-swappable NVMe SSD, plus two other storage slots, giving you plenty of user-upgradability in this compact system. The Ryzen 5 processor packs plenty of power for general tasks, and it’s even great at lightweight gaming and CAD work too.

  
  

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  Brand

  KAMURI

  CPU

  i5-14450HX

  Memory

  16GB DDR4

  Storage

  512GB NVMe

  The KAMRUI Hyper H2 Mini PC features an Intel Core i5-14450HX 10-core 16-thread processor and 16GB of DDR4 RAM. The included 512GB NVMe SSD comes with Windows 11 pre-installed so the system is ready to go out of the box.

  
  

Docker really is the backbone of just about any homelab project

It’s rare to find a homelab project that doesn’t have some sort of Docker container attached. Docker is just such a great tool for the homelab, and Docker is really something that everyone should know at this point.

Docker containers are definitely different than virtual machines, and they’re even different than LXCs, but whatever you do, please don’t install everything “bare metal” on your system. Use some type of containerization platform.