Where’d we get this term? I hear “home lab” and I think of having equipment to accomplish something new, not… running ordinary server software in fairly ordinary ways. Like Tony Stark designing his suits has a “home lab”. People 3D printing Warhammer figures or with a couple little servers running PiHole and Wireguard and such… not so much?
I’ve had one or two machines running serving stuff at home for a couple decades [edit: oh god, closer to 2.5 decades…], including serving public web sites for a while, and at no point would I have thought the term “home lab” was a good label for what I was doing.
There’s a blurred line between self-hosting and homelabbing.
I’d classify myself in the former camp, with a small server that runs TrueNAS and serves media, runs VMs and a few apps I use for work - and a Unifi network for my home and security cameras and VPN.
I’m positive there are people with very similar setups who call it a homelab. I don’t really experiment with mine, it’s set up and works in the background for months on end.
I’ve had one or two machines running serving stuff at home for a couple decades [edit: oh god, closer to 2.5 decades…], including serving public web sites for a while, and at no point would I have thought the term “home lab” was a good label for what I was doing.