The Open Homelab project started as a nugget of an idea for a roundtable discussion session at the London VMUG in April 2016.

Homelab presentations are some of the most popular at technical user groups. The challenge is that unless they are recorded, the contents of these sessions is always lost at the end of the day, and only the attendees could consume the information and utilise it. What is needed is a method for crowdsourcing and capturing the collective homelab knowledge and experiences of the community, to provide people with a single source of information and advice which will help them make decisions on the best homelab solution for them, based on their individual requirements.

Although the site was started from a VMware user group, we believe that a homelab is a homelab! As such, we are keen for people across the IT community to contribute with their knowledge and tips across operating systems, hypervisors, tools and applications.

Technology agnosticism FTW!

So it is with that context that I am very pleased to announce that after a month of hard work from the team at the Open Homelab project, we are ready to open the virtual doors of this homelab library, to the public! 🙂

Its been a huge team effort with loads of great content created, but this is just the start; the acorn to the awesome metaphorical oak tree which the site could become with the help of other members of the community!

So without further ado, you can find the link to the site here:

http://openhomelab.org/

Please bear in mind that the site is also in ALPHA status, and we are using an inexpensive web host until we see whether it becomes popular. As such, please accept our apologies if we do see any performance issues at alpha go-live, and report any bugs either via Twitter or the Open Homelab Bug Tracker!

The site is based on MediaWiki, and as such there are no restrictions on who can create and edit content on the site, the only thing we ask is that you create an account to help us avoid spammers!

If you would like to get involved, we would love to have you on board. This project will only be successful if the community get behind it and contribute to the site! All you have to do is spend a few minutes of your time either editing content, adding to it, or even writing a new article:

Help make the Open Homelab awesome by sharing your knowledge!

If you have any design talents, we are also looking for a unique but simple logo for the site. The one we have at the moment is just a placeholder! We would ideally like a few entries from different people and the community can choose their favourite! More information how you can be involved in designing our official logo can be found here:

Open Homelab Logo Competition and Gallery

Finally, I just want to say thank you to all the folk who have been involved in the project to date, and all of those who will do so in the future! Without the community, the site would not exist!