The Ever-Expanding Home Server

I run a lot of software, and minimal hardware. Maybe some day that will reverse course, but for now, it's quite a lot of software. Everything is routed behind Cloudflare, and private applications are behind Cloudflare Zero Trust (w/ GitHub for SSO)

My Main Server

Software

Everything besides my reverse proxy and Plex is ran inside of Docker.

• apache2 (w/ PHP)  - Web Server + Reverse Proxy
• Homepage - A Simple Dashboard to keep everything organized. Complete with Docker Integration so I can see what services are up/down.
• Nextcloud - Google Drive Replacement
• Vaultwarden (Bitwarden) - Password Manager
• BookStack - Documentation Platform
• Ghost - Simple Blogging Platform (You're on it right now!)
• FreshRSS - RSS Aggregator
• PrivateBin - Encrypted PasteBin
• Gokapi - Firefox Send Alternative (Admin Upload only)
• Filebrowser - A Simple Web File Browser
• Teamspeak Server - VOIP Service
• Portainer - Web UI for managing Docker Containers
• Scrutiny - SMART Scans for Drives
• Healthchecks - Cron Job Monitoring (Sends notifications to ntfy when cron jobs fail)
• ntfy - Sends push notifications
• phpMyAdmin - SQL Database Viewer
• Wireguard (wg-easy) - WireGuard VPN + Web Admin UI
• Sonarr - Automatically "acquire" TV Shows
• Radarr - ^ for Movies
• Lidarr - ^ for Music
• Readarr - ^ for Books
• Bazarr - ^ for Subtitles
• Prowlarr - Indexers for Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr/Readarr
• qBittorrent (w/ VPN) - My Torrent Client of choice
• Tautulli - Plex Statistics
• Overseerr - Requests for Plex
• Requestrr - Requests for Plex through a Discord Bot
• OpenBooks - Download books from IRC Highway
• Deemix - Download Music from Deezer (Technically I'm using lidarr-on-steroids which includes Deemix inside Lidarr)
• Wizarr - Invite System for Plex
• Umami - Website Analytics
• CyberChef - Web App for "computer science" things
• Speedtest Tracker - Daily Speedtests with Graphs
• pyLoad - File Downloader
• shields.io - shields.io instance for private GitHub repo badges
• Plex Auto Languages - Auto-Updating the subtitle language across an entire show
• Watchtower - Automatically keeps Docker Containers up to date
• MySQL - My database of choice
• Plex - Stream Content from my Home Server with a Netflix-like UI
• lidarr-true-singles - Automatically unmonitor promotional singles from Lidarr. (Disclaimer: I wrote it, also doesn't run on a schedule)

Want to spin this up for yourself? Have a look at my docker-compose.yml here!

Hardware

• OS: Ubuntu Server
• Host: OptiPlex 3010
• CPU: Intel i5-3470
• RAM: 8Gb
• GPU: GTX 1050
• Boot Disk: 500Gb SATA SSD
• Media Disk: 14Tb Easystore

Email

Yes, I am running my own email server too. Granted it's not fully self hosted but it basically counts.

After setting everything up it's been rock solid for multiple years. I don't send a whole lot of email but I've had no issues sending to Gmail users, although I've heard Microsoft is a bit worse about receiving email from self hosters.

I'm using the basic $5/mo Cloud Compute from Vultr with Mail-in-a-Box.

Backup

I don't have a very sophisticated backup system, eventually I'll bring it up to acceptable levels but here's what I currently do.

I run my backup system off of a Raspberry Pi 4B w/ 4Gb of RAM running Raspberry Pi OS Lite.

Nightly, I backup (using rsync):

• Docker Volumes
• My Home Folder(s)
• Website Data (/var/www, /etc/apache2, /etc/letsencrypt)
• MySQL Databases (w/ mysqldump)
• My Mail-in-a-Box emails
• My Family iMac (Home Folder is backed up to my Media Disk on my Main Server)

And for now, that's about it. I want to get more into hardware but it's challenging for me right now. I also occasionally boot up a Minecraft server to play with friends.