TLC Tech Lab
Project Writeup

Docker Services

A dedicated Docker services environment used to host monitoring, alerting, uptime tracking, container visibility, and infrastructure telemetry tools for the home lab.

Project Goal

The goal of this project was to separate containerized infrastructure services into a dedicated Docker host instead of mixing monitoring and utility workloads directly into other lab systems.

Public documentation is intentionally sanitized. Internal IP addresses, exact port mappings, private compose configuration, credentials, credentials, and admin URLs are not published.

Environment Summary

Container Platform

Docker 29.5.3 running on a dedicated Debian 13 Linux container inside the Proxmox lab.

Container Service Deployment

Docker Compose v5.1.4 is used to deploy grouped container services in a repeatable and organized way.

Monitoring Stack

Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, cAdvisor, Node Exporter, and a Proxmox exporter provide visibility into lab health.

Uptime Tracking

Uptime Kuma is used to monitor service availability and quickly identify outages or degraded services.

Architecture

Dedicated Docker Services Container | +-- Monitoring Compose Stack | +-- Prometheus | +-- Grafana | +-- Alertmanager | +-- cAdvisor | +-- Node Exporter | +-- Proxmox Metrics Exporter | +-- Uptime Monitoring +-- Uptime Kuma

Technologies Used

Docker 29.5.3 Docker Compose v5.1.4 Debian 13 Proxmox VE LXC Containers Prometheus Grafana Alertmanager cAdvisor Node Exporter Proxmox Exporter Uptime Kuma Docker Networks Monitoring

What I Built

Security and Privacy Considerations

Operational Value

This project provides visibility into the health of the lab environment and demonstrates how monitoring tools can be layered together to support infrastructure operations. Instead of waiting for a service to fail silently, the monitoring stack gives a clearer view of availability, resource usage, and service status.

It also demonstrates practical container operations: Compose files, service grouping, Docker networking, health checks, container lifecycle awareness, and separation of monitoring tools from production-like workloads.

What This Demonstrates

The project demonstrates containerized service hosting, infrastructure monitoring, Docker Compose operations, observability tooling, uptime tracking, and the ability to organize multiple infrastructure tools into a dedicated service environment.

Project Status

Active and operational. Future improvements may include alert refinement, dashboard cleanup, stronger backup documentation, additional exporters, and better long-term monitoring retention.