INFRASTRUCTURE ONLINE

The ArgoBox Home Lab

16 years of building. Two physical sites connected by Tailscale mesh VPN. Custom Gentoo OS. 66-core build swarm. 252TB of storage. Documented obsessively since day one.

13 Systems

66 Build Cores

252TB+ Storage

2 Sites

5 Drones

Command Center Live Status View Hardware

Dual-Site Architecture

Two networks. One mesh. Forty miles apart.

Workstation

Proxmox Host

Gateway

OPNsense

3 Build Drones

32 build cores ~16TB storage

Tailscale Mesh VPN

Proxmox Host

Unraid NAS

2x Synology NAS

2 Build Drones

34 build cores ~260TB storage

Full Topology Map Uptime Monitor

The Hardware

13 systems across 2 physical locations

Capella-Outpost

Daily Driver & Dev Machine

Milky Way

CPUIntel i7-4790K

RAM32GB DDR3

Storage31TB (NVMe + SATA + HDD)

GPUNVIDIA RTX 4070 Ti

OSGentoo Linux (Argo OS)

KDE Plasma 6HyprlandBtrfs + Snapper

Izar-Orchestrator

Hypervisor & Build Orchestrator

Milky Way

CPUIntel i7-10700 (16T)

RAM16GB DDR4

Storage5.46TB ZFS RAID10

OSProxmox VE

OPNsense VMLXC ContainersBinhost

Tarn-Host

Remote Hypervisor & Build Worker

Andromeda

CPUIntel Core Ultra 9 285H

RAM64GB

StorageZFS

OSProxmox VE

Build DronesGolden ImagesTailscale Linked

Meridian-Mako-Silo

Primary Storage & Docker Host

Andromeda

CPU24+ Cores Allocated

RAM52GB+

Storage~100TB

OSUnraid

Docker ContainersBuild DroneMedia Server

Cassiel-Silo

Backup & Archive Storage

Andromeda

CPUIntel Celeron J4125

RAM8GB DDR4

Storage~120TB SHR

OSSynology DSM 7.2

NFS SharesPlex BackendBackup Target

Altair-Link

API Gateway & Service Host

Milky Way

CPUIntel i5-8400 (6C)

RAM8GB DDR4

Storage300GB SSD

OSUbuntu 22.04 LTS

Swarm GatewayDocker StackMonitoring

Argo OS Build Swarm

Distributed Gentoo package compilation across 2 physical sites

66 Total Cores

5 Drones

140GB RAM

4,728+ Binary Packages

~40 hours From source (single machine)

~40 minutes With build swarm binaries

drone-Izar Milky Way

16 cores 14GB RAM LXC

drone-Tau-Beta Milky Way

8 cores 31GB RAM Bare Metal

sweeper-Capella Milky Way

8 cores 31GB RAM LXC

drone-Tarn Andromeda

14 cores 12GB RAM LXC

drone-Meridian Andromeda

20 cores 52GB RAM VM

How It Works

apkg install <package> Client requests package

Check binhost Pre-built binary available?

Install or queue Instant install or swarm compiles

Push to binhost Available for all clients

Explore the Build Swarm

Service Stations

Orbital outposts across the network

Development

Code & Build Tools

Gitea Git repositories VS Code Server Remote development Blog Quartz publisher

Build Swarm Control Orchestrator dashboard

Media

Streaming & Downloads

Plex: Kraken-Argo Primary media server

Plex: Kraken-Bogart Secondary media server

Media: Shield NVIDIA Shield Pro

Tautulli Plex monitoring

ruTorrent Download clients

Audiobookshelf Audiobooks & podcasts

Infrastructure

Core Systems

Proxmox: Izar Primary hypervisor

Proxmox: Tarn Remote hypervisor

Unraid: Meridian Primary NAS

Synology: Cassiel Secondary NAS

Synology: Mobius Archive NAS

Ubuntu: Altair-Link Gateway server

Driver: Capella Workstation

Tau-Host Development testbed

OPNsense Milky Way firewall

ASUS Andromeda Andromeda router

Tailscale Overlay mesh network

Cloud & Edge

Cloudflare Services

Cloudflare Pages argobox.com hosting

Cloudflare Tunnels Secure ingress (cloudflared)

Cloudflare Access Zero-trust authentication

Cloudflare DNS Domain management

Monitoring

Observability Stack

Grafana Dashboards & viz

Prometheus Metrics collection

Netdata Real-time metrics

Uptime Kuma Status monitoring

Utilities

Daily Tools

Homepage Service dashboard

OpenWebUI AI chat interface

Vaultwarden Password manager

File Browser Web file manager

IT-Tools Dev utilities

Portainer Container management

Dozzle Docker logs viewer

Public Access

Internal Only

The Journey

From a single NAS to distributed infrastructure — sixteen years of building, breaking, and learning.

2010

The Spark

First experiments with self-hosting. "Why am I paying for cloud storage when I could just own it?"

Feb 2011

ArgoBox Begins

The name sticks. First dedicated NAS, first real network. The homelab has an identity.

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2011–2024

13 Years of Iteration

NAS upgrades, router experiments, Synology fleets, Plex stacks. 1,779 AI conversations documenting it all.

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Early 2025

Proxmox & Containers

Virtualization takes over. K3s cluster, OPNsense firewall, Docker everywhere.

Oct 2025

Argo OS is Born

Custom Gentoo-based distro. Portage, binary packages, Btrfs snapshots. No systemd.

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Nov 2025

22.8TB RAID Recovery

Dying Synology. UFS Explorer saves the day. Every byte recovered.

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Dec 2025

Tailscale Breakthrough

Subnet routing finally clicks. Two networks, one mesh. 40 miles apart, zero latency issues.

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Jan 2026

66-Core Build Swarm

5 drones across 2 sites compiling Gentoo packages in parallel. 40 min vs 40 hours.

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Feb 2026

Still Building

252TB+ storage, 13 systems, 16 years in. The lab never sleeps.

Why Build All This?

Ownership

Your data. Your hardware. Your rules. No cloud provider reading your metadata, no subscription fee for accessing your own files.

Learning

You can't learn systems engineering from a textbook. You learn it at 11 PM on a Saturday when your RAID array is degrading and Plex is buffering on Christmas Eve.

Longevity

Systems built to last a decade. Gentoo has been maintained since 2002. Btrfs snapshots mean 2-minute recovery. Documentation ensures Future Me isn't lost.

Interactive Playground

Spin up sandboxed environments and deploy templates — no account required

Ansible Sandbox

Deploy interactive visualizations with one click. Fireworks, Matrix Rain, Starfield, and more.

Templates Simulation Mode

apkg Tutorial

Learn Gentoo package management with our teaching-focused emerge wrapper. Interactive lessons.

Gentoo Interactive Demo

All playgrounds run in isolated, ephemeral environments. No data persists after session ends.