The Ops Community ⚙️: Rajesh

My Home Server Setup [ part 5 ] : Cool software

Rajesh — Sun, 05 Jun 2022 17:49:34 +0000

So far we've discussed what are the benefits of having a home server and how to set one up. Now I'll share some of the cool software/projects that I have found and I've found interesting.

You can download these software as Docker containers (my recommended way) or manually install them.
To you download pre-built Docker images from registries.
Checkout out linuxServer.io and Dockerhub.
I recomment LinuxServer.io for your Home server needs and Dockerhub for your Programming needs

NextCloud

It's a cloud storage platform, but one you can host on your own! It's FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). You can kind of think of it as a replacement for most of the Google Suite, especially Google Drive. And boy does it have a lot of features. In my experience I liked it a hella lot more than Google Drive. It's awesome. It also supports extensions made by the community to further enhance your experience. It also has a bunch of other things to replace other Google products like Google Calendar, chat etc. You can also host OnlyOffice to have a replacement for Google Docs, sheets and a ton more. I recommend it a lot. If you wanna try out a free hosted version of Nextcloud, try visiting. OpenDesktop

JellyFin

It's basically a self-hosted streaming service (like Netflix, but self hosted). All your media presented to you a clean and appealing interface and it automatically tags it and downloads cover art and album art and subtitle of the movie/series. Host it in your home network and you can watch all of you library from any device on your network, like your phone, your tv, your dad's phone etc etc.

Heimdall

A portal for to list all your self hosted apps in a single clean pretty page.

Pi - Hole

Block Ads and trackers on all the devices in your network and much more

Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Medusa, Jackkett

Automatically download torrents of movies and TV series as they release. (Ofcourse I'm talking about free movies in the Open Domain, not pirated ones. Cuz that's the only things people torrent right? *wink. Seriously tho, I do not endorse or claim any sort of responsibility to what you do with it. I'm writing this for educational purposes 😌)

Airsonic

Think spotify, but of your own.

Wireguard, OpenVPN

Host your own personal VPN

EmulationStation, RetroArch

Emulate games of other platforms like GBA, Nintendo, Playstation etc

KDE Bigscreen

Smart TV software

Stremio

Torrent and stream movies/shows.

Home Assistant

The one-stop for your home automation needs

Mycroft

It's like Alexa, but privacy friendly and doesn't listen to you constantly and you don't have to worry about it sending things to Amazon's/Google's servers.

Piwigo

FOSS alternative to Google photos

Moonlight

Stream games from your PC to other devices on your network (eg: TV, Phone)

and a whole bunch more....
Seriously there's a whole bunch more.
Checkout LinuxFleet for some more cool stuff
Also tell me about the other cool projects you use or have found in the comments below!
Stay tuned for Part 6.

My Home Server Setup [Part 4]: Management

Rajesh — Sat, 04 Jun 2022 17:50:25 +0000

So far we have discussed what one can do with a home server and some of the platforms one can use to get started.

Today I'm going to discuss I manage your home server.
As I've previously mentioned, I chose to use Proxmoxx for home server needs. Proxmoxx offers ways to spin up Virtual Machines and containers using their web GUI itself. I'm running my home server on a 10 year old laptop I have lying around and quite frankly it's pretty weak by today's standards and will struggle if I use a lot of VMs at once. And since "Containers" are the buzz word in all of the DevOps space, I wanted to dive straight into it.

Proxmoxx lets you spin up containerd containers using it's web GUI. They're great. Containerd containers are linux containers. I've been reading a lot about docker of late and I really wanted to try it out. So I was bummed out that I couldn't use docker.

But wait!!!!!!!!! Proxmoxx is based on Debian Linux and since it should technically be able to run anything a linux computer should, there really isn't any reason it shouldn't be able to run docker.

So I spun up a terminal instance and installed docker and bippidy bappidy boo!, it works! 😃

PS. you should checkout Kubernetes and podman too. They're awesome!. (Perhaps even slightly better)

I also wanted to be able to use Docker with a GUI too. So I installed Portainer and it was awesome!!. So feature rich.
PS. Also checkout Rancher and Yacht. Yacht might be the best for beginners.

So I was ready to run containers of popular and not-so-popular projects I wanted to try.

Stay tuned for part 4 where I discuss some of the cool projects I've run into and fallen in love with and where to download them from.

My home server setup [part 3]: The platform(OS)

Rajesh — Fri, 03 Jun 2022 18:18:12 +0000

Okay, so we've established some of the things you can do with a home server. I'm pretty sure you're atleast a little bit interested. So there's lots of ways you can get started. Here I'll share the platform I chose.

So after much research, I shortlisted 3 platforms and I'm pretty sure all 3 of them are great for your needs.

1. TrueNAS core

TrueNAS core is the successor of the venerable FreeNAS, a free solution for your NAS needs. (NAS = Network Attached Storage)
It's based on FreeBSD and is stable and leverages the power of ZFS too. (google it, it's awesome!)
It also has an area where you can download and install docker images of popular HomeLab projects just with the click of a button. It also has a commercial version with more advanced features.

2. OpenMediaVault

OpenMediaVault(OMV) is a free and open source (FOSS) project to install on your home server or your NAS. It's built on top of the ever-so-reliable Debian Linux base. It also supports docker images and is actually a Linux install, where you could technically do/install anything you can on a normal Linux install. Henceforth, it is incredibly powerful.
It also has a vibrant community around it and chances are you'll find very beginner friendly comments and replies on their forums because OMV is used extensively by individual tinkerers like you and me.

3. Proxmoxx

Proxmoxx is a super powerful type 1 KVM hypervisor. It's a little different than the other two. Proxmoxx is incredibly powerful and is also used in data centres of big tech corporations. You can also use it to link multiple different computers together and use their resources and spin up virtual machines (VMs) on-demand. It also enables cluster-computing and has a ton of features for you to explore and, I repeat, is very powerful. It's also built on top of a reliable Debian Linux base. You can technically do/install anything you can on a Linux computer. It's more powerful as a hypervisor than type 2 hypervisors like virtualbox and vmware, as it provides more resources for the VMs to use as it is lightweight and host OS (proxmoxx itself) doesn't have unnecessary bloat and is a headless server, operated using a web GUI.

Which to pick?

All 3 of these are amazing projects and the first 2 are more beginner-friendly, while proxmoxx has a lot of capabilities that piqued my interest.
I highly recommend TrueNAS and OMV for peeps who're starting out with this kind of stuff.
I, personally, chose Proxmoxx as I was intrigued to try out software that run on industry-grade data centres.
TrueNAS and OMV were built for home server and tinkerers in mind too and thus are very beginner-friendly.
Me being a huge FOSS & Linux lover also influenced my choice.
I recommend all 3 of these.

My Home Server Setup [part 2]: What?

Rajesh — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 20:30:10 +0000

This is a continuation of my previous post.
So, what all can I actually do with a home server? 🤔

Well, technically anything you can run on a cloud server can be run here as well, cuz at the end of the day, both the cloud server and your home server are just computers. For those not in the know, Servers are actually just computers. They’re called servers, because often times they provide you stuff/data upon request.

Some things you can do with your own server:

spin up Virtual Machines (VMs), to try/test things out or tinker around without having it affect your original PC.
Setup your own personal VPN to have encrypted connection before accessing the internet, for safety/privacy reasons. I'm sure you've seen atleast one of the thousands of VPN Ads in youtube videos, you can actually set one up all on your end. Where you're gonna set it up is going to depend on what you want to do with your VPN
setup your own cloud streaming platform, like Netflix, that'll serve your movies upon demand.
setup your own cloud storage, like Google Drive.
Your own code management system, like GitHub.
Store your photos in the cloud, like Google Photos.
Block ads for all devices in your home network
Learn about containers & DevOps
Manage your smart home devices
Setup FOSS surveillance camera systems
Automated to Torrenting seed boxes for your cough Linux ISOs cough
Host your own gaming server (Valheim, CS Go, NSF MostWanted etc)
Setup collaborative editing like in Google docs
your own music streaming platform like Spotify
Messaging apps
personal audio book library like audible
Personal eBook library
Your own website hosting service etc etc.

These are some of the huge number of things we can do. And that too with your own personal hardware, perhaps even hardware you already have lying around. Think about all the possibilities.

Stay tuned for part 3.

My Home server setup [Part 1]: why??

Rajesh — Sun, 29 May 2022 15:37:39 +0000

Having a server in the cloud can have a lot of use cases. So why not have one in your home?

For those who want to get into cloud computing/DevOps, it can be pretty pricey to own a capable VM from a leading cloud provider (e.g.: GCP, AWS, Azure & my personal favorite Linode). They do offer free tiers but I, personally, stop myself from using them in fears that I might try things out and then forget to actually cancel my subscription and might end up with a big credit card bill in the end. (Don't be like me 🫥)

So I tried searching for alternatives and realized that they're actually offering me VMs (virtual machines) in the cloud and I have an old laptop lying around which can also run VMs, so is there a way I can become my own cloud provider??
(Spoiler alert: turns out, I can 😉)

So why did I even self-host?
Well, mostly because of monetary reasons and latency.

Advantages:

I can have a capable & powerful machine serving me instead of having a weak VM in the cloud. (Powerful VMs are really expensive)
Privacy: My data belongs to me. I don't have to trust anyone else with my data.
Latency: Because it resides within my home network itself, It'll be incredibly fast when serving devices in my home network.
Data consumption: I won't be consuming internet data when serving devices in my home itself. So I don't have to worry about a daily data cap if I have a cheap internet plan.
It can run on any hardware you have. e.g: an old unused laptop, a dedicated server rig or even on something as small as a Raspberry Pi.

Disadvantages:

Electricity charge: I'll have to keep that device turned on. (Won't be much of an issue, if you're using an old laptop or a Raspberry Pi, because they consume less power)
Should have a good internet plan to serve you content when you're on-the-go.

So, in this series, I'll show you my setup.
Stay tuned for part 2!!