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Hi, good article to encourage beginners to get started on their servers.

I have been running Synology NAS Server for 3 years now with 60TO of Data for my whole family, here is the downside:

• Even if it is easy to set up, It takes time to configure everything right, with correct security measures (Users/Groups with limited rights, Secure all connections, change the default configuration, close all ports, regular antivirus, etc...). Don't forget to make regular updates to all your packages.
• The server location is in one single place: If you travel or live far away from your server, you'll get a slow network speed, and that isn't very pleasant if you need to download/upload important documents, an album photo, or videos.

To solve the speed issue, I would have to buy and configure another Synology Server with the same storage space in another location, synchronise both server folders, and add the new IP to the DNS: It would be super expensive.

To conclude:

• If you need a lot of storage in one place, creating your own NAS server is better. Hard drives are amortized over 10 years (if they don't fail earlier), but it requires money, time, research, and knowledge.
• If you need some storage and performance, it's better and cheaper to use an existing Drive Cloud service; they already have hundreds of servers worldwide!

And I agree with you, for a beginner, a home server can be more than a simple challenge. But maybe you are overengineering it? (which is ok, considering we are all devs and engineers here 🤷🏽‍♂️)

You don't need to go all-in on your home server. Start small with a *Pi or an old computer, just to have a main source of development on your network. Then make it big as needed/wanted.

I have 8TB of data locally stored, and it's cheaper than using a paid cloud solution. Also, I love to just go from my computer to the tablet and continue working when I'm at home. And I love to learn how the sausage is made and what happens if I change the sausage ingredients. OK, it works on my computer, why Vercel is complaining? Why the client's server is giving a fatal error? With a local server, I can create n+1 environments to test.

But, after all, I still use cloud services (drive, dropbox, github, etc.). One solution doesn't negate another.

"Oh, but for devs that started yesterday a home server is overkill". Yes, that's why I wrote "should" instead of "have to". 🥷🏽

Honestly, most of what we ("we" as in "my family") run doesn't require massive dedicated boxes. I just have a fleet of Raspberry Pis handling individual tasks around the house. I have an RPi 4 to handle Homebridge (links non-HomeKit stuff into Apple's ecosystem), one to work as a Wifi router (with parental controls) for the kids' stuff, etc. Once we buy our new house next year, I'll be wiring the whole house with CAT6 ethernet and setting up a dedicated SAN for Time Machine backups, as well as a separate file/media server platform.

My Macbook Pro is my dev environment, and I have a couple of Linux-based VMs in Azure that I can spin up/down on an as-needed basis for testing before I deploy anything.

Good article, thanks for your post and oppinion.
I'm just finish my homelab setup couple days ago with my Dell Optiplex 3060 SFF, running k3s and expose it to the internet through CloudFlare, here is the specs of my machine

• 16GB RAM
• 256GB SSD
• intel i5-8400 Of course we can start will any spec we want, it's up to you.

This experience is really fun and the most important that I think we can get when build a homelab is the knowledge we need to prepare before start

• computer/server
• networking
• linux experience
• security
• mindset ... all of those really useful when my job is backend SWE

I love my data not being all in one place!

What about security breaches? Having all data in one place is convenient, but can be pretty dangerous. I would like to have some storage space NOT connected to the internet that in every case cannot be corrupted.

Home backup solutions should never be connected physically all the time (think of a voltage peak on the power line or a fire destroing your home. You would not want all data to be lost). I'm not particularly paranoid, but have my backup drive(s) in a fire safe box.

For testing - especially if you talk about web applications - Im using a cloud server from one of the big providers with fast connection. This is basically a blank debian system with average performance, so pretty much the same you would have at home. But the data center people care to keep the system running, backup and so on. This costs me less than 3 €/month, including a 7 day backup cycle + manual snapshots from time to time. If this server get´s corrupted it is one click and the machine is running again 10 seconds later.

There are some big advantages of a hosted solution that you do not get on a home server:

• If your demand grows, you can seamlessly scale your machine up
• If you need a second machine - even temporarily - the server can be cloned. You will only pay for the time it is up and running.

Great post, Paulo! I'm keen to check out Hommar, thank you for sharing ✌️

yes but you dont need it running 24/7 nor you need public remote access

Great article! A while back, I decided to set up a home server just for fun. I used one of those small computers and made things easier by opting for CasaOS. The first six months were fantastic, but later on, I hardly used it. The thought of exploring other tools caught my attention, which seems even better!

That's it, I'm doing it. Great post!

Waitin' for "Why you shouldn't have a home server". I'm good with my 24 GB RAM x4 vCPU Oracle Freetier.

I've recently built a self-hosted storage solution and if you're looking for an off-site backup, I can highly recommend storj.io. I only have about 45GB of data, but it costs me a few cents per month. Yes, cents. Backups are very easy with rclone, just run it in a cronjob at midnight.

And security? Just don't expose anything to the open internet. You can use tailscale to set up a mesh vpn network to connect all the devices that should have access, no one else.

I want to carefully say that building a home system is not easy because we all aim to create a specific environment for specific needs.

If someone feels it's simple, then it suggests they have relatively simple needs.

Just my opinion ;)

Warning. Do NOT rely solely on a home server for backups! It may be fine for accidentally deleted or damaged files and as a central storage point for all your other devices but it will do you no good when your house burns down, gets flooded, raided by the cops, blown away, etc.

And for making files remotely accessible you need to deal with issues like changing external IP addresses and all the security issues that come from allowing the outside in. If you want more reliable remote access you need backup power for the server and network.

I'm not saying you shouldn't set up a home server. I've set up plenty ranging from personal email/web at home to data-center stacks built from bare metal. You just need to know the risks and limitations.

I have fortunately never been personally bitten but have first-hand knowledge of too many others who have lost everything in a disaster. Your backups need to be geographically dispersed. In those years BC (before COVID) when I worked at an office a reasonable distance from home I had three encrypted USB drives that I could sync my data to in rotation so there was always one at home, one at the office and one that could be in transit.

Depending on your situation, even the same town may be too small. The disasters noted above wiped out entire towns or cities.

If you really want to do a full DIY, find a distant friend with good internet who will let you run a second server at their home and you can be the remote backup location for each other but, side note, despite their flowery advertising some companies (hello Bombast) have crappy upload speeds which is a problem no matter what you use for remote storage.

Home servers definitely have a place but the less than $100/year I pay to back up my several terabytes of data is well worth it for my peace of mind.

Maybe I missed the point, but why do I want to take work home with me? :) Seriously though I think a lot of us tinker with home servers for many of the reasons you list.

But in practicality, it's only useful for me. I have older kids and for them cloud back up is good enough. I shudder to think of the effort to explain a Plex server to teens who have always had streaming at their fingertips.

I'm at the "do what makes me happy" point of my tech journey, and if that is messing with Docker and bunch of *nix distros it's alright by me.

Well for me this is article is mind-blowing! Actually I have always searched how to build it by myself and everyone is pointing a NAS which is something kind of expensive, but this is the kind of thing I was looking for to give it a try! Thank you so much and keep posting articles, you are helping many people with your experience.

Please do share more tips, I am trying to move away from dropbox to having data on our servers with a similar workflow.

An easy way (non-dev way) to keep important stuff* secure and in control is to use SD cards and manually upload to those. This might sound cumbersome but it is only on rare occasions (once a year) and it keeps the data to a minimum (as I am lazy to do it more than necessary) and in my control.

*such as bookkeeping copies downloaded from SaaS or all my favourite photos from the year.

Actually not for beginners only. I wanted a "home" server to keep at another site to make sure I didn't keep all my stuff at a single site.

Then securing the thing, access, backup/restore, deal with strange hw specifics (using a power efficient mini-computer which required some tweaks), etc.

I can't just put a machine somewhere without encryption and without a backup plan and put anything important on it.

Maintaining an important server is hard. Running some toy thing at home, I wouldn't call a server.

Yeah, this Rolf guy is probably young and inexperienced. One can argue that for 99% of the people they use a single external drive and have no issue.

There are two kinds of people - those who do backup and those who never lost data.

What are your main concerns regarding security risks? I have a home server, and it's not something I actively worry about right now. I have everything closed off to the outside, so I can only access any of the services through LAN.

While I don't use it for storage myself, I do use it for other things like Home Assistant, Journal and Vikunja.

running 24/7 without wasting too much energy

It still can be pretty costly, here's mine.

I guess I am the only one who read this and enjoyed. I too like to know how the sausage gets made. And frankly, there are a lot of things that are accepted because "that's how we do it." You never know what solution someone will come up with that will revolutionize the industry. Most people won't do that, but if you have an old computer why the eff not? It's weird how so many comments are so aggressive. Instead of saying it's a stupid idea from your perspective and experience, perhaps try being more constructive, "that sounds interesting, I would do that, but watch out for these pitfalls that can wreck you." That way you can actually give the hard earned advice you are trying to give.