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Building the Ultimate Home Server – Part Six - Uptime Monitoring

It’s been a while since I have written a blog post about my home server. I’ve been working away on my personal project for a while now, adding more features and more integrations - cool ways to make data do cool things.

I recently had a power outage at my apartment. I keep my server on an uninterruptible power supply to ensure that I don’t lose any data. I also keep my modem and router on the UPS but typically when the apartment loses power, the internet goes down as well. This means my server isn’t accessible - and the external services I’ve configured to depend on it may have a service interruption.

I could use a cloud service like Uptime Robot to check if my services are currently functional and up - it would automatically check if my service is accessible from the view of a third party. These cloud-hosted products cost money and are against my ethos of self-hosting everything I can.

Building the Ultimate Home Server – Part Five - Fixing my Docker Compose Situation

In my last post, I discussed how I was using Docker to deploy web apps on my home server. In the past month since then, I've continued to tinker with my process, and I've learned a little bit more about making it a little easier for myself.

Building the Ultimate Home Server - Part Four - Creating a Docker Framework

In my last post, I discussed why I decided to move my server from TrueNAS to Ubuntu. Perhaps the largest software-based reason was the ability to use Docker to manage the software on my server. This post is a hybrid between a narrative telling how I got my server working and a guide to do it yourself. If you'd like any help with any of the stuff I list in this guide, feel free to reach out! I'd be glad to help.

Building the Ultimate Home Server - Part Three - Why I Switched from TrueNAS to Ubuntu

In my last blog post (approximately 4 months ago), I talked about the build process and the software installation of TrueNAS, an open-source Network Attached Storage (NAS) software based on FreeBSD. Since then, I have switched away from TrueNAS to Ubuntu Server. I genuinely liked a whole lot of TrueNAS, but there were several reasons that I switched to Ubuntu:

Building the Ultimate Home Server - Part Two - The Build and Software Install

In my last blog post, I talked about why I built a home server. I also went through the part selection process. Check it out here if you missed that post. This time, I’ll discuss the joys of actually putting a computer together and the process of installing TrueNAS, a free open-source NAS software based on FreeBSD.

Because I am blogging this after the fact rather than extemporaneously, I don’t have a ton of pretty pictures to show you of the building process. Please accept my apologies and enjoy this photo of Data intensely staring at his cat, Spot. (This is the only photo I saved to my phone on the day I built my server.)

Even Androids love cats

“You must talk to him. Tell him that he is a good cat, and a pretty cat.”

- Data to Worf on how to cat-sit for Spot

Building the Ultimate Home Server - Part One - Part Selection

Data makes the world go round.

According to the International Data Corporation, a research company dedicated to studying how worldwide data is created, 59 zettabytes of data was created in 2020. That’s a ridiculous amount of information, and it takes vast numbers of huge datacenters all across the globe to store it somewhere. I personally have a huge amount of data I’ve created since I’ve started using personal computers at age 4. Because of this ever-increasing amount of data I have created, a few years ago, I decided to sign up for the Google Drive for Business unlimited storage plan. In mid-2020, Google made the announcement that these plans would no longer be unlimited. By that point, I had uploaded near 13TB of data to Google Drive and I needed somewhere to put it.

“I might be considered a digital hoarder.”

— Me, If I'm being honest