Running my own services at home instead of relying on big-tech clouds.
Everything runs in Docker on a small home server: photo backup, file sync, a password manager, notes, media streaming, DNS and monitoring, all behind a reverse proxy with SSL. These posts cover how I set each piece up and what I learned along the way.
Posts
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My 3-2-1 backup plan (and the gaps I found)
An honest look at what my home server backs up today, the gaps I found, and how a new 10 TB drive will get me to a proper 3-2-1 backup.
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Scrutiny: catching failing hard drives before they die
Scrutiny reads the S.M.A.R.T. health data from every drive in my server and warns me before one fails. Here’s how to set it up.
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My home lab dashboard: Homarr and Glances
How I use Homarr as a start page for every self-hosted service and Glances to keep an eye on CPU, memory, disks and containers, with the compose files to set…
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Watchtower: automatic Docker updates, done safely
Watchtower updates my containers every night and reports to Discord. The important part is choosing what it should never update automatically.
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UrBackup: backing up every computer in the house
How I use the open-source UrBackup server to back up my Windows PC and a Raspberry Pi automatically over the network.
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Nextcloud: my own Dropbox and Google Drive
My Nextcloud setup with MariaDB, Redis and a cron container, with the data on a big external drive, plus the settings that matter behind a reverse proxy.
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Nginx Proxy Manager and Let’s Encrypt: HTTPS for every self-hosted app
How a reverse proxy lets one home IP serve many apps, each with a free auto-renewing HTTPS certificate, and how I use access lists and redirects.
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Vaultwarden: self-hosting my password manager
How I run Vaultwarden, a lightweight Bitwarden-compatible server, to keep my passwords on my own hardware, and how to set it up and lock it down.
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How Immich replaced Google Photos for my family
Why I moved our 25,000+ photos off Google Photos onto a self-hosted Immich server, and a quick guide to setting it up yourself.