If I’m still doing this that far down the line I’m going to start scaling back the more technical bits. Most networking things can be managed with a regular router combo running DD-WRT, for example. Maybe small physical dumb switches with a VLAN each so that part is visible and easy to label, instead of a big managed switch where you have to figure it out.
The trick is to document things well enough, that the people in your life who need a smooth and graceful transition off of/away from what you have setup have what they need that they can share it with a trusted family friend who is techy enough to use that info to sunset/roll back everything as needed.
My only plan is to have a single button for my wife that says “dump important stuff to Google drive”
I can barely keep up with what I built. Right now there’s the name of one of my guys who could get into it and bring all the data they care about out.
Not too worried. My wife is tech savvy enough to replace the slightly-overkill network infrastructure with a router from Best Buy and It’ll still probably cover the house just fine. All family photos are already on iCloud and my NAS copies are just for backup. Etc.
Yeah have a “Incase Bad Shit Happens Book”
Lucky the wifey is in IT and could work it out (just hates networking, which is most of the lab and doing any IT stuff outside of work 
- typical “oh just make ad blocking work”).
I keep it updated yearly to avoid documention debt. otherwise I have all dev crap detailed in a note app the moment I do stuff (a work habit)…
I think it’s SUPER important - until you have a loved one die and have to go through the troubles of trying to find every account and access them, most people just don’t realise. Document your stuff people 
Yes I have disaster recovery documentation saved, I think only my brother would be able to interpret most of it in the immediate family, but worst case someone techy could follow it and determine where things are and how to grab the data. I need these docs because I can’t remember all my crap and it helps to look at when spinning up a new service sometimes.
Yep. And a playbook that can be run that will migrate my *arr stack and Home Assistant to the NAS, wipe out the bulk of my personal data that isn’t required to be kept after my passing to increase the usable space on the NAS itself.
Outside of that my manual includes how to enable a VPN and credentials to send to a friend who can assist in stripping down anything that the playbook fails to do (I really don’t maintiain the thing) and instructions on dbanning the servers to prep them for sale. If I’m gone my partner doesn’t need 4-6 enterprise pizza boxes running up the power bill anymore.
The manual also has some basic how-to instructions on what to do in order to keep HA and arr up to date, how to avoid being scammed with drives if they need to be purchased (Basically just says get over it and pay full price from one of 5 shops) and what to look for if a new nas is required.
Write the steps on how to properly move the internet from the current homelab infrastructure to a normal SoHo WiFi router like normal people. That is all your non techie family will want to know.
Include links to the sign up page for Netflix, Hulu, etc.
You could write out really detailed instructions if you want, but eventually something will change so those will no longer work. At that point, non tech people would just give up and call it a day.
Destroy hdds, sell the rest, keep the router and wifi or have the isp come install their own.
Sub to streaming services as needed.
You’re not going to be able to teach a bunch of people who aren’t already involved with your systems. If they have anything critical on your stuff, you should consider how they can move it to something they can use or maintain long-term. And you should make it so that your stuff can last at least a few months and preferably a year or more if you don’t maintain it. Your family will have much larger things to deal with in the beginning.
In the past, I used overengineered systems because they were fun and I learned a lot setting them up.
In the past couple of years, I have been simplifying everything.
- I have removed my HA cluster and replaced it with a single sff node.
- All of my custom VMs have been reduced to a single VM running a bunch of docker containers.
- Most importantly I have replaced ansible, which was really cool, with detailed notes about how and why I set things up the way I did.
These notes include IP addresses, passwords, and other details. The goal is to provide enough information so that the family is not left stranded if something fails when I am not there.
EDIT: I also have a failsafe router. If for some reason the home network goes to shit, I have the router my ISP gave us set up as a simple backup router. If the network goes down, All someone has to do is move one ethernet cable from the PFSense router to the ISP router and turn on the power. Our laptops and phones will then connect to the ISP router until someone can get around to troubleshooting the network.
We are in a hilly area with no cell service in the house so working wifi is critical.
My homelab is setup in such a way that it is on a stub in the network. Perhaps I should write instructions though, as I can’t bear to think of my wife trying to get the internet working while grieving my death.
Home LAB - No, my wife knows my 2 local friends who would take it and find it new homes.
Home SERVER/Infrastructure - Been teaching my son how to run everything.
I see no point in it other than access to my password manager my brother knows enough about IT himself so he could tear down the infrastructure with easy and use anything himself. There is no one else to inherit my stuff.
I’ve given this some brief thought but I live alone and most of my data will probably be insignificant to my family, except for maybe photos.
If my family wanted things like photos they could probably dig around on my computer and eventually find my NAS file shares.
My network is decently simple, it’s kinda overbuilt, but still simple, so if they brought in someone who knows computers they could easily figure things out I think. At least the more important stuff.
I thought about doing something like this, but nobody is gonna give a shit about my lab once I’m gone. Not enough for anyone to pick it apart and try to do anything with it. If someone ever mentions they’d be interested in picking it up if something were to happen to me, maybe.
The only thing that might prove valuable is the home automation I have setup as well as the networking equipment that runs it, but that’s all replaceable with consumer hardware. If I ever sold my house, writing a manual on how to operate that seems far more beneficial in the long term.
I posted about this some months ago. The biggest takeaway, for me, were these things.
Document everything you can that must live on after you die. The router, the firewall, plex, file storage (i.e. my digital “filing cabinet” shared drive). Document them in a way where you can give it to a geek-squad-like person to deal with. Keep this simple, too.
Document the things that can be left to fail, like the things you tinker with. The *arrs, the goofy nextcloud setup, your learning to develop a new thing in a different language. Keep things separate, if you can.
For me, I have an unraid server, opnsense and a backup server. Those can be maintained with a modicum of work (no upgrades, etc). My desktop in my home office can be junked, but most of the rest can be easily maintained.
Nobody cares about your stuff,it will be in the bin before you are buried.
Delusion running deep, unless you have an immediate family member who is interested in the hobby, it’s all going to be thrown in a dumpster or sold at an estate sale if you are the last surviving.