IT Professionalism

I've now been self-hosting some stuff for a while. It started small, with an old not-very-powerful machine and the urge to replace Google.

Easier said than done, right? Well, some of the process of implementing a "homelab" is straightforward and some of it is even easy — but none of it comes without escalation. And my latest, as we moved into a new house, was to implement Unraid on a new machine.

The benefit of Unraid is that it allows you to mix and match as many drive sizes as you want, which to my ears means "you have the ability to fill your bays with whatever crap you have lying around." It maintains what's called parity, and this allows swapping of drives even in situations where RAID arrays might make it difficult. I don't know a ton about this stuff, but I know that it's got a great UI, some best practices for security, and a built-in Docker manager. What it doesn't have, obviously, is a guide for how to make it aesthetic.

The computer is a surprisingly powerful Beelink mini-pc with a 6-core Ryzen processor, and the drives are... again, what I have lying around. I am going to get a taller (8-space) bay to remove all these rando enclosures sitting around, but at the moment it's treating me well. Probably costs enough in power I could be paying Google, but it's the principle. Plus, it's really about control and privacy. Your stuff should be yours.

Favorite services: #

• Paperless-ngx
• Immich
• Navidrome
• Jellyfin
• CUPS (an oldie but a goodie)