Previously I ran a server rack on a 1000/1000mbps symmetrical service to my home (Ethernet provisioned from an ISP) to provide a number of personal media services to myself, friends and family.
Having had to relocate across 3 properties in the last 12 months however, drastically changed things – and I’ve since fallen back to a single 4RU server that’s packed to the gills with storage, and uses generic off-the-shelf consumer parts to keep going. There’s been a lot of benefits to this actually.
- It’s simple to get replacement parts
- Noise is kept to a minimum
- Reliability and up-time is a little less than enterprise hardware, but otherwise acceptably usable
With my recent trip to Japan and return – I’ve found the need to actually back up all my photos and media into a singular place that’s much easier to manage. So now I just run a single monolithic server called JT-SERVER which provides all the services I need.
Services I’ve built up to use nowadays are:
- Plex Media Server
- Nginx Proxy Manager – which routes to:
That’s it – nowadays there’s very little I do in the way of other things. A game server is still desirable but it’s not the highest priority for now. Maybe in the near future I might run:
- Minecraft (resuming previous efforts)
- Satisfactory (occasional)
- Factorio (occasional)
But otherwise most gaming requirements and needs for my “village” of friends and family aren’t necessary.
I think over the course of 2024, I’ve had to be much leaner, out of necessity. And I’ve come to find that some things just aren’t that necessary for “me and mine”. As I go into 2025, I head in with the goal of not buying any new technology, but rather just maintaining the status quo of what I have, and building a necessary platform of services for myself and my loved ones. It’ll be minimal, and a lot more wallet friendly, I think.