An old HP Comaq 8200 Elite that I got off of Facebook Marketplace for $30. This server was mainly going to be used as a media server to backup my photographs, phone videos, old software projects, etc, but then became a playground for getting into self-hosting my own apps, integration testing, and playing around with mock AWS resources with LocalStack.
CPU: Intel i5-2500 (4 core CPU @ 3.1GHz)
RAM: 8gb @ 1333MHz
Storage: 500GB HDD (I have 2x 2TB HDDs waiting to be installed but got lazy)
OS: NixOS 24.11
NixOS - I wanted a way to make it easy to reproduce my server state just in case I get more computers, and want to run them in a cluster. NixOS was really appealing due to its declarative build order, package manager, and the fact that all of my server configs go in one spot (the nix config file), and I couldn’t be happier! NixOS was definitely a good pick, and I didn’t have to give up my beloved Systemd either.
Nginx - This acts as a reverse proxy for when I access my computer over the network. Can’t be mad, though I’ve been really tempted to use Caddy for its simpler configuration.
Nextcloud - Just a Google Cloud clone with a nice interface for hosting and accessing my files. Love the idea of not having Google snoop on my files, even if I’m giving up the safety of cloud storage.
LocalStack - A collection of mock AWS resources that feels identical to working with actual AWS resources. This is super nice for making sure you don’t incur a random $10,000 bill by leaving a cluster of EC2 instances open, or for when you want to mess around and send like 10GB of stuff to S3.
Pocketbase - One file MySQL database and auth handler. Super awesome for prototyping apps quickly.
OpenFaaS - Self-hosted serverless functions, this could be awesome to host on a vps, but I want to play with it on my home server first.
Redis - There’s no way I’m paying $5/mo for Redis per app when I just need it every once in a while.
Coolify - Self-hosted Vercel, really hoping this will simplify my CI/CD workflows. Will go to the VPS if this test is successful