An old home server reaches the best problem: it just works
An old desktop tower with an i7-3770 processor, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD was turned into a after two 1TB drives were added. was installed, and the two added drives were set up as RAID 1 so the same data is kept on both drives.
Docker now runs a family dashboard, Immich, Jellyfin, Nextcloud, a for internal routing, the Arr media tools, and . A separate 3B+ runs Pi-hole, while from outside the home is handled through Tailscale.
n8n handles and stats, ntfy sends , and Beszel shows live hardware monitoring. The main issue is that everything works, the family uses the services every day, and there is no clear need to add more hardware or spend more money.
Key points
- An older i7-3770 desktop can still work well as a family .
- The setup covers photos, media, files, documents, ad blocking, , alerts, and monitoring.
- Tailscale is used for instead of exposing services in a more complex way.
- The family is using the services daily, and the system has been stable.
- The best next step may be improving backup and recovery, not adding more services.