My home server, two years in

Two years ago I bought a refurbished mini PC for less than a phone and pointed it at the problem of owning my own data. Here is the honest report card.

What runs on it

Everything lives in Docker containers behind a reverse proxy:

• A media server for the household
• A photo backup that replaced a cloud subscription
• A read-it-later app and an RSS reader
• Nightly backups to an external drive and an offsite copy

What broke

A power outage corrupted a database once, which taught me the difference between having backups and testing backups. A drive started throwing SMART warnings around month fourteen. Neither was catastrophic, but both were avoidable.

Was it worth it

Yes, with an asterisk. The monthly savings are real, the privacy is real, and the learning has spilled into my actual work. But a home server is a small pet. It needs feeding. If you want set-and-forget, pay for the subscription and sleep well.