Building My First Homelab

2026-02-17

Why I Started

I have always been a little OCD about my data. I like having backups of everything... just in case. For the last 8 years I have had everything on a single 3TB external drive that I would carry around. I would hardly use it because it was cumbersome to pull out and was never update to date because I would rarely pull it out. Every year or so I would pull it out and spend a day backing everything up. This was awful because I would burn out halfway through and would miss so much stuff in the backup. Now, I can have everything in one place with no hassle at all

Device Information

Hardware

Machine: Dell OptiPlex 5050
  • Intel Core i5-7500 CPU @ 3.40GHz
  • 8GB RAM
  • 128GB SATA SSD - OS Drive
  • 3TB USB External HDD - Data Drive

Software

  • Ubuntu Server
  • CasaOS
  • Cloudflare Tunnels for Hosting

Services Running

  • Jellyfin for Media Streaming
  • Immich for Photo Backup
  • Paperless-ngx for Document Backup
  • Crafty for Minecraft Server Hosting

Lessons Learned

I struggled to connect to the server even on the same network as my apartment building was blocking it in someway that I can no longer remember. I eventually found Tailscales and was able to bypass my networks blocks.

Future additions

  • Vaultwarden
  • Nextcloud possibly
  • Upgrades to the server like adding a second drive to allow for RAID setups and upgrading the server case and SATA connections to allow for drive expansion

More to come as I expand the setup.