A practical low-power home server plan for family use
The goal is a family that keeps documents, calendars, contacts, photos, music, and videos in one place. , with an online office tool, would handle calendars, contacts, and shared documents such as family finance files, e-books, and school homework. Movies are now played through Kodi on a laptop connected to a projector, but the plan is to move to local so any device on home Wi-Fi can watch video, mostly at 720p and sometimes up to 1080p, likely through Jellyfin.
Music would be streamed from with Navidrome. A shared photo gallery is also needed, with albums that can be filtered by tags and metadata from different devices. Expected use is light: no more than two video or music streams at once, sometimes while someone edits an office document.
The media library is about 10 TB. should be reachable from outside the home, while video and music should stay local. The main priorities are low electricity use and quiet operation, because power is expensive and the server will sit in an apartment without a separate server room.
Key points
- The server would run family documents, calendars, contacts, photos, music, and video.
- Video needs are modest: mostly 720p, up to 1080p, likely through Jellyfin.
- Expected load is light, with no more than two media streams at once.
- The media library needs about 10 TB of storage.
- Low power use and quiet operation matter most because the server will run in an apartment.