TL;DR: What started as a single Raspberry Pi project quietly evolved into managing dozens of devices across my apartment. Moving everything to Proxmox let me apply Docker's "one service per container" philosophy to actual hardware, with snapshots, proper backups, and way less late-night troubleshooting. Plus, you can now keep your entire homelab hidden from the internet (but accessible when you need it) using the new Twingate Helper-Script I wrote :) 

It started innocently enough. One Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant, plus an Arduino handling some basic IoT sensors around the apartment. Clean, simple, exactly what you'd expect from someone who'd just discovered the magic of turning lights on with code.

But homelabs have a way of growing when you're not looking.

The Creeping Complexity Problem

Soon, my homelab had game servers. Minecraft for friends, a few other multiplayer things that seemed easier to self-host than deal with sketchy public servers. Each one got its own device. For me that was old laptops, eBay and Facebook marketplace finds, a whole hodgepodge of hardware. That felt like the "right" way to do isolation: one service, one box.

Then came the open-source rabbit hole. Home Assistant was working great, so why not add Pi-hole for network-wide ad blocking? And since I was already running a few services, might as well throw in some monitoring. 

Before I knew it, things were getting out of hand. I wasn’t managing infrastructure, I was just hoarding with extra steps.

The Docker Detour (And Why It Wasn't Enough)

Like most people who find themselves accidentally running a data center in their living room, I discovered Docker. The promise was compelling: same isolation benefits, way less physical hardware to manage.

I started migrating everything to Docker Compose stacks. It worked, technically. Everything ran, containers stayed isolated, but something felt wrong.

Docker can solve the issue of isolation, but it has its downsides. You end up adding operational overhead when it comes to monitoring and running your homelab, which means you need more containers, and ultimately end up with a less-than-optimal lab.

I found myself missing the dedicated hardware approach, but dreading the operational overhead. There had to be a middle ground between "one service per physical computer" and "everything crammed into containers with limited visibility."

Stumbling Into Virtualization (The Hard Way)

Virtualization wasn't completely foreign to me, but running VMs on a homelab felt like overkill. Why virtualize when you can containerize?

My first attempt was Linux's KVM hypervisor. If you've never tried managing KVM manually, let me save you the trouble: it's… clunky. 

Creating VMs means memorizing virt-install commands that can look like giberish. Managing them requires jumping between different tools that don't talk to each other well.

I spent more time fighting with virsh commands than actually running services. KVM is powerful, but raw KVM feels like using a Formula 1 car to commute to work: technically impressive, completely impractical.

Proxmox turned out to be what I'd been looking for without knowing it: KVM and LXC containers wrapped in a web UI that actually makes sense, with enterprise features that somehow don't cost enterprise money.

The killer insight was realizing you could treat VMs and containers like Docker services, but with actual resource control. Want to give your game server dedicated CPU cores? Click a few boxes. Need to snapshot before a risky update? One button. VM crashes? Auto-restart is built in.

It's essentially taking Docker's philosophical approach - isolated, reproducible services - and applying it to a layer where you actually have full control over the underlying resources.

The Migration That Actually Worked

Moving everything to Proxmox wasn't just a technology change, it was a mindset shift. Instead of thinking "what physical hardware does this service need," I started thinking "what resources does this workload actually require."

The best part was discovering LXC containers. They give you VM-level isolation but with container-level resource efficiency. Most homelab services don't need a full operating system, they just need isolation and resource guarantees.

For things that genuinely needed full VMs (like my development environments where I'm constantly breaking things), Proxmox made those trivial to manage too. Snapshots before major changes, templates for spinning up fresh instances, and backups that actually work.

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me

If you're running more than three or four dedicated devices for homelab services, you're probably overcomplicating things. The "one service, one box" approach feels clean until you're managing updates across a dozen different systems.

Proxmox has a learning curve if you're coming from purely containerized environments. You need to understand basic virtualization concepts and be comfortable with Linux administration.

The helper script ecosystem has gotten good enough that common services (like Home Assistant, Pi-hole, Jellyfin) can now be deployed with single commands.

For me, the operational overhead dropped to almost nothing. Updates happen through the web interface. Backups are automated and actually tested. When something breaks, I restore from a snapshot instead of rebuilding from scratch.

The Remote Access Problem Nobody Talks About

Getting Proxmox running was surprisingly straightforward thanks to the helper script ecosystem. But once everything was consolidated into one box, I faced a new challenge: how do you securely access your homelab remotely without exposing it to the entire internet?

The traditional answer is "set up a VPN," but anyone who's tried configuring OpenVPN or WireGuard knows that's where good intentions go to die. I'd attempted both multiple times, and each experience involved more time wrestling with configuration files than actually using the lab.

Port forwarding the Proxmox web interface felt wrong: when one box runs everything, you don't want that management interface visible to port scanners. But I also didn't want to be locked out of my own infrastructure when traveling.

Twingate sidesteps the entire port-forwarding problem by creating outbound-only connections. The homelab stays invisible to the internet, but I can reach it from anywhere through the Twingate Client.

And now, some exciting news: my own contribution to the same helper script ecosystem that made my Proxmox adoption so smooth. 

I wrote a Twingate Connector script for the Proxmox community that automates the entire deployment process. One command creates an LXC container, installs the Connector, and handles the token configuration.

For full details you can check out our documentation, but at a high level here’s how it works: 

1. Create a free Twingate Starter network in the Admin Console.

2. Run the Helper Script on your Proxmox node (as root). It builds a lightweight Ubuntu LXC, injects your Connector tokens, and starts the service:

bash -c "$(curl -fsSL <https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/ct/twingate-connector.sh>)"

3. The script prompts for your Access Token, Refresh Token, and Network Name—copy these from the Twingate deployment panel.

4. Verify the Connector turns green in the Admin Console

5. Add Proxmox as a Resource (<server‑ip>:8006) and assign it to your user group.

6. Install the Twingate Client on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, or Linux. Connect and browse to https://<server‑ip>:8006; quit the client and the page vanishes: nothing is exposed.
   
   

The helper script I wrote for Twingate deployment is available in the community Proxmox scripts repository. It started a project to make my own life easier, but it turns out a lot of people were solving the same remote access problem in more complicated ways.

The Real Win: Treating Hardware Like Code

The biggest mindset change was starting to think about infrastructure the same way I think about application architecture. Services should be isolated, reproducible, and easy to tear down and rebuild. But unlike containers, VMs give you full control of the entire stack.

Need a development environment that matches production exactly? Clone a VM template. Want to test a major Home Assistant upgrade? Snapshot first, test the upgrade, rollback if it breaks. Gaming with friends tonight? Spin up a dedicated game server VM and destroy it when you're done.

It's the best of both worlds: Docker's architectural philosophy with actual control over the underlying system.

If you're ready to get started, it's worth exploring Proxmox Helper-Scripts (including Twingate's!). If you're ready to deploy Twingate and Proxmox into your homelab, check out our documentation.

New to Twingate? We offer a free plan so you can try it out yourself, or you can request a personalized demo from our team.