Resources
Tools, gear, and services I actually use — curated from building homelabs, running platform engineering at scale, and shipping indie software. Recommendations are based on real use, and any sponsored features or paid placements are clearly labeled.
Some links may be affiliate links or feature partners. If you purchase through them I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend things I use myself, and any paid relationships are explicitly disclosed.
Homelab Hardware
The physical gear running my homelab. Mini PCs are the sweet spot for power-efficient, capable nodes.
My go-to for Kubernetes nodes. Intel N100/N150, fanless options, ~10W idle. Great price-to-performance for homelab Kubernetes clusters.
The router/firewall/switch combo I switched to after years of prosumer gear. VLAN support, great UI, and solid reliability.
Still useful for lightweight control plane duties, Pi-hole DNS, and edge automation tasks. Pi 5 is a big jump over Pi 4.
Network storage for backups, media, and persistent volume backing. Synology's DSM is mature and the ecosystem is solid.
Platform Engineering & DevOps Tools
The SaaS tools and platforms I reach for in day-to-day platform engineering work.
Internal Developer Portal that actually works. I use it to build self-service scaffolding for teams. Generous free tier for individuals.
Static analysis and code quality for open source projects. Free for public repos. Great signal for PRs without managing your own SonarQube.
Infrastructure as code. I use Terraform at work and OpenTofu for personal projects since the license change. Both work great with Proxmox, AWS, and Cloudflare.
GitOps continuous delivery for Kubernetes. Declarative, git-driven, and free. My homelab and personal k8s clusters all use ArgoCD.
Dashboards, alerting, and observability. I run Grafana + Prometheus + Loki in my homelab. The open source stack is genuinely excellent.
Developer Tools & Productivity
Software tools that show up in my daily workflow.
AI-powered code editor built on VS Code. The best coding experience I've had. Tab completion that actually understands context.
My go-to LLM for coding, writing, and architecture thinking. Claude's ability to handle long context and complex reasoning makes it ideal for technical work.
Source control, CI/CD, and project management. GitHub Actions is my default CI for open source projects.
DNS, CDN, Tunnels, and R2 storage. The free tier covers most indie hacker/homelab needs. Cloudflare Tunnels are great for exposing homelab services without port forwarding.
Hosting & Infrastructure
Platforms I use or recommend for hosting apps and APIs.
Where this blog is hosted. Frictionless Next.js deployments with excellent edge performance. Free tier is generous for personal projects.
The easiest way to deploy backend services and databases. I use it for Herp Ops side project APIs. No Kubernetes required — just push and it runs.
Affordable dedicated and cloud servers in Europe. Great for VPS workloads where AWS/GCP pricing is overkill.
Open source hypervisor I run at home for VM management. Free, powerful, and battle-tested. The foundation of my homelab Kubernetes setup.
Learning Resources
Books, courses, and content worth your time for platform engineering and infrastructure.
The best book on building production-grade platforms on top of Kubernetes. Covers cloud-native patterns, GitOps, and developer experience.
The novel that explains DevOps culture better than any technical book. Required reading for engineers moving into platform roles.
Genuinely great docs. The concepts section is required reading before touching any homelab or production k8s cluster.
Best YouTube channel for Kubernetes and DevOps tutorials. Clear, practical, and well-structured.
Missing something?
If you're looking for a recommendation on a specific tool or have a suggestion, reach out on Discord or X (Twitter).