---
title: Infrastructure Overview
description: High-level overview of the infrastructure domains documented within Hidden Den and Den Vault
tags:
  - about
  - infrastructure
  - overview
category: about
created: 2026-03-14
updated: 2026-03-14
---

# Infrastructure Overview

## Summary

The infrastructure documented in Den Vault is built around a small set of repeatable domains: networking, compute, platform services, observability, security, and data protection. Together, these form a practical blueprint for self-hosted engineering environments.

## Why it matters

Readers need a clear map before diving into individual guides. An infrastructure overview helps explain how virtualization, containers, DNS, reverse proxying, monitoring, identity, and backups fit together as one operating model.

## Core concepts

- Networking and access: segmentation, VPN, DNS, ingress
- Compute: hypervisors, VMs, and container hosts
- Platform services: reverse proxy, service discovery, identity, secrets
- Operations: monitoring, alerting, backups, updates
- Tooling: documented platforms used to implement these layers

## Practical usage

A typical self-hosted environment described by Den Vault includes:

- Proxmox or equivalent compute hosts
- Docker-based application workloads
- Tailscale or another private access layer
- Reverse proxy and TLS termination with tools such as Caddy, Traefik, or NGINX
- Prometheus and Grafana for observability
- Backup tooling with regular validation
- Static or low-dependency site infrastructure where that aligns with privacy and maintainability goals

## Best practices

- Keep core platform services few in number and well understood
- Separate public ingress from administrative access paths
- Maintain inventory of systems, dependencies, and backup coverage
- Prefer architectures that can be rebuilt from documented source material

## Pitfalls

- Treating infrastructure as a pile of tools instead of a coherent system
- Running critical services without monitoring or backup validation
- Allowing naming, routing, and authentication patterns to drift over time
- Adding redundancy without understanding operational complexity

## References

- [Proxmox VE Administration Guide](https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/)
- [Docker: Docker overview](https://docs.docker.com/get-started/docker-overview/)
- [Tailscale: What is Tailscale?](https://tailscale.com/kb/1151/what-is-tailscale)
- [Prometheus overview](https://prometheus.io/docs/introduction/overview/)
- [restic documentation](https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)