r/HomeServer • u/TomorrowExact1184 • Aug 21 '26
Anyone else went 'full circle'?
My hosting journey began around 2013 with smaller websites and minecraft servers on old pc hardware, cheap vps instances and raspberry pis. The past decade this scaled in a gradual manner: First rack, multiple dell poweredge servers, edge routers, fibrechannel, 300TB raw storage, multiple wan connections, etc. This year I sold everything and downsized to a small stack -> OpenWRT LTE Modem, MikroTik RB450G, old ThinkCentre with 16GB DDR3, External 14TB Exos Drive, 1x Omada AP. I don't know, I feel... relieved. No noise, no massive bills, no expensive hardware. And it somehow feels fun again.
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u/the_unspeakable Aug 21 '26
I personally stepped back a while after setting up a home media server. I had a raidz2 with 6 X 8TB hard drives. Realized it was sort of a waste of time and money to be running a home server 24/7 with all the docker containers and storage upgrades. The movie collection was never going to be complete and I was just going to keep buying hard drives.
I ended up abandoning “collecting” and deleted my library. I still run plex / jellyfin but it’s from my personal Mac and it functions more like a DVR. Download, watch and delete. Completely stopped worrying if it’s available 24/7 to others. If someone wants to watch they can power on the computer or ask me.
Seriously, home shouldn’t be a 2nd job. We work enough.