The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source · Changelog Media

The state of homelab tech (2026) (Friends)

January 24, 2026·2 hr 3 min·5 clips

Claude AI logged into a UDM Pro via SSH and fixed jacked-up VLAN rules in minutes, restoring internet access.

Friends opens in its usual loose gear. There is a quick fly.io thank-you, a depot.dev build-speed aside with Kyle Galbraith, and then the promised homelab talk slowly comes into view. The useful stretch starts when one speaker says his home lab tour is coming soon, with hardware and software both on display. He wants it to feel worth watching. YouTube expectations are now part of the project, because simply repeating last year's setup would feel flat. Then the storage talk gets serious. He is running applications on his NAS now, partly to cut down failure points, and partly because ZFS gives him a good reason to pull things together. ZFS gets real affection here. The appeal is not just capacity. It is the way caching, metadata special vdevs, and fast app data can make a big storage pool feel much snappier than it looks on paper. The hardware plan is chunky: ten 14-terabyte hard drives under a tiered setup that keeps bulk storage available while moving the hot paths onto faster media. RAM sits at the top. The special vdev handles metadata and small files. Bigger video-editing data still lives in the main pool. The target is hybrid ZFS, where databases, applications, and video files share the same pool without every daily task feeling like it is waiting on spinning disks. It sounds fun, but also fiddly. He says getting it working has been a challenge, which is the exact kind of homelab tax this show likes to linger on. The ending drifts away into dollar stores and Five Below, with a small riff on names, prices, blue branding, and whether anything is still actually below five dollars.

As heard by us

A practical homelab check-in on NAS consolidation, ZFS storage tiers, and making self-hosted setups less fragile.

The state of homelab tech in 2026 comes through as practical shop talk about consolidation, storage, and the tradeoffs of running more services at home.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Your 2026 homelab is about to get two opinions on storage, build speed, and what actually stays running.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source