5 reasons EVERYONE needs a home server

I'm in law school right now and can't pretend to know the first thing about programming or networking- I've literally just used Mac OS since like 2009 lol- but thanks to an earlier video of yours I got a Raspberry Pi and now a Mini PC to run Pihole, docker containers with -arr apps and Jellyfin, along with some network storage which I'm keeping backups on. It was a little bit of work but it's been a huge help! I hated being dependent on Google & Apple for everything from office applications to extra storage, and entering the world of Linux & open source has been SO refreshing

Linux enthusiasts don't ask why you need a server, linux enthusiasts search for excuse to have a server.

I had no idea what I was doing but from watching your videos I got a mini pc running Ubuntu server with casa OS. Only utilizing the shared network storage features right now but I’m excited to dive into docker containers and learn more about that. Thank you for the content!

We use our family home server as NAS and [matrix] chat server. It also runs torrent for movies, series and music, because streaming services keep region locking everything and it's often more convenient and simple to just download them. Plus they don't suddently disappear. Since a few months, it has a graphics card installed for remote access gaming, when not at home. Everything is installed on our "HTPC" setup, which uses a hypervisor and different VM's, similar structure to our business server. It is super silent in it's Silverstone Grandia case, bq fans and an aftermarket GPU cooler. //Edited: forgot to mention that it also has an HDCP bypass and 4K capture for recording international TV or any other video source. Since some media players allow for real time video upscaling using the graphics card, this became very helpful when playing back recordings of SD media such as VHS or DVD.

Got one up with Jellyfin and Plex up and running thanks to your vids. Great stuff Have to expand now 😊

That "What happened to the internet" hit home lol

for anyone on a budget, you can find old mini PC's on your local marketplace for cheap and use them as a server compared to buying a new n100 mini pc. I've found a i5-6500t + 8bg ram Lenovo thinkcentre for $20 USD. what was wrong with it? just needed to reinstall windows lol. just today i picked up 2 of those same ThinkCentre + 2 keyboards + 2 mouses + 1 monitor for $60 USD. they were just missing hard drives which is cheap

Plex, smart home, nas storage, local backups, docker containers for example vpn, retro gaming

Glad I came across your video! This is EXACTLY what I am looking to do at home! Great video!!

You have a good teaching style.

Interesting video. I like to see and understand how others use their hardware and software configs, but you made me more aware that I actually do not need any home server, or at least not for now. While I had planned to make one at one point and even have the necessary spare hardware, I still don't see any benefit for myself. I'm actually the total opposite. I don't care if the internet is down as I can bring one of my retro systems / configurations up and play in an already isolated / offline environment. I don't use cloud services, I don't watch movies, play online games, etc. My only use case would be for some programming related servers which can alredy be started on demand from a container, VM or a different bootble drive. But even for those, I find portable / enbedded versions more convenient even if they are more limited in scope.

the paying for itself argument is really pointless for a lot of people who are doing this for the fact that you actually own the data and no one can take it away from you in a virtual sense. That is worth a price and to me its well worth more than the costs of hard drives and the enclosure, its beyond worth it. Im not buying just storage, I'm buying my own storage.

Agree about the value of having a home server. We are using a Thinkpad T420 laptop with a large drive in the DVD bay as a poor man's server. We are using it mainly as a source of automatic backups for my wife and my systems and file sharing for easy access by multiple computers. In addition it is running a NTP server to keep everything on our LAN time synchronized even if we lose internet access. Several of our DIY IoT devices default to firmware time and date so having a LAN based NTP server allows them get current time (sort of accurate) after a power fail even if the internet is down. It is also running a personal web server where we keep so common stuff.

Thank you for the info

I recently acquired a dead Cisco UCS C240 M4 server for free. It came with 120TB of 12GHz SAS hard drives and 240GB of SSD for the boot drive, a single Xenon CPU (motherboard can handle two), and 16 gigs of RAM (there are 24 RAM slots so plenty of room to expand). I've just about got it running again and will try installing TrueNAS or Windows. Haven't decided whether or not to keep it or sell it off. Maybe I'll set it up as a home server, if I can find somewhere to put it where the HD and fan noise doesn't drive me crazy.

I am a graphic designer and aside from this uses I also have my accounting and receipt generation self hosted fkr my freelance work as well as a website for my portfolio. Home servers have use cases for everyone plus i feel like my own IT for my oersonal business

Please can you do a video about how to start a Minecraft server on UGREEN NAS or any NAS similar because I ordered one and when I searched I didn't know how ( please do how to start a Vannila server or forge modpack server )

I've got a Synology Nas hosting personal rips of DVDs and a mini Dell PC with Kodi (on Windows). Is it possible to use the same storage to drive kodi/plex/jellyfin? I'm curious to see how different the interfaces and features are without doubling or tripling the files.

I started out with an Intel NUC I had. Installed OpenMediaVault on it, worked mostly great, just not the most stable thing to run a raid array based on USB-disks tho, so moved over to a Q-NAP NAS.

What Hardware would you suggest for someone running Jellyfin, Homeassistant, Frigate + 8 IP Cams and a host of lighter items. Currently running on a mix of hardware but wanting to simplify to 1 server with my NAS serving as Storage.