Home Server

What server(s)?

During my placement, I bought an old HPE desktop workstation and began tinkering with Ubuntu (mainly to host Minecraft servers and websites). That was the start of a very expensive hobby. Since then, I've now got an actual server rack, 2 more servers, a gigabit switch, and follow the 3-2-1 backup rule.

My first 'proper' server was an Gen9 HPE DL360 with the following specs:

• 8 SFF SAS drive slots (2x 240GB SSDs, 6xTB HHDs in RAID5)
• Dual Intel Xeon E5-2660 v3 (10 cores, 20 threads)
• 96GB DDR4 ECC memory

Now, this is definitely overkill for what I run (which we'll get onto later), but I had some LFF HDDs lying around, so the obvious solution to spare drives is to buy another server, right? And so, I bought a chassis and started collecting all the components for it, so now I also have another Gen9 HPE server, this time a DL380 with the following:

• 12 LFF SAS drive slots (4x1TB HDDs in RAID5 currently)
• Dual Intel Xeon E5-2640 v4 (10 cores, 20 threads)
• 32GB DDR4 ECC memory

No doubt about this being overkill now, but building it from scratch felt more rewarding than buying it outright. So worth it.

What I run

Server Number 1 (DL360)

Currently, server number 1 is dedicated to projects, websites, game servers, Docker containers etc. The current list is as follows:

• MariaDB with PHPMyAdmin as the database system for everything on my servers
• NGINX Proxy Manager as my reverse proxy
• Uptime Kuma for monitoring all my sites
• Speedtest Tracker to keep an eye on my internet speeds
• Scrutiny for drive health monitoring
• Pulse for monitoring my servers
• OpenSpeedTest to check my uplink speed across my network
• Databasus for database backups
• Karakeep as my bookmark manager
• A local instance of supabase for testing with TATYOU (blog post coming soon...)
• PiHole for network level ad-blocking and privacy
• A large number of websites, both for myself and friends (of course this website is hosted on it too)
• Crafty for minecraft servers
• Some Linux VMs including Arch (I use Arch sometimes btw) and Kali for learning
• Domain Locker for keeping track of my many domains
• Last but not least, Home Assistant so that instead of pressing a light switch, I can press a button on my phone that doesnt work 100% of the time

Server Number 2 (DL380)

Server number 2 is dedicated to media and file storage, so I run:

• Paperless for important documents
• Immich to replace Google / Apple photos
• NextCloud to replace Google Drive / iCloud

Very basic and unoriginal, but very helpful!

The list of services is constantly changing and evolving, with tools being swapped out, removed, added, all sorts. I'll probably find 2 new services this evening that I try out! But at this point in time, that's everything running!