Nathan Reynolds

I spent the last three months running n8n on everything from a Raspberry Pi 5 to a full Intel N100 mini PC, and the cost difference compared to n8n Cloud is staggering. One community user reported going from $50/month on n8n Cloud to $7.63/month on a self-hosted setup. That kind of savings is exactly why … Read more

When my RAID array showed its first SMART warning back in 2023, I realized a hard truth: NAS RAID protects against drive failure, not fire, theft, or ransomware. That single event pushed me into S3-compatible cloud backup, and over the past three years I have tested Backblaze B2, Wasabi, and Storj against each other with … Read more

Finding the best S3-compatible storage for Restic backups changed how I think about offsite protection. Restic is fast, encrypted, and works with any S3 endpoint, but the storage you point it at decides what your monthly bill looks like and how safe your data stays during a disaster. I have been running Restic on my … Read more

If you run a home server, your data is one power surge, one ransomware payload, or one failing drive away from disappearing forever. Our team has tested eight offsite backup services designed for home server environments, and we put them through their paces on a Synology NAS, an Unraid box, and a Proxmox host running … Read more

I have been running Immich as my family’s photo vault for nearly three years now, and I have learned one thing the hard way. Self-hosting your memories feels great until the day your single hard drive decides it has had enough. After losing an entire vacation album to a dead SSD, I rebuilt my setup … Read more

I learned the hard way that the best dynamic DNS provider for a home server is only half the answer. The other half is the router, NAS, or mini PC that pushes your new IP to the DDNS service the moment your ISP rotates it. After 12 years of running Plex, Home Assistant, and a … Read more

Setting up managed DNS with a Let’s Encrypt wildcard cert changed how I run my home lab and small client projects. Before I dug into the DNS-01 challenge and ACME protocol deeply, I burned entire weekends debugging TXT records, fighting ISP-blocked port 80, and watching certificates expire at the worst possible moment. This guide collects … Read more

I ran a self-hosted password vault on my homelab for nearly four years. Then a failed Docker migration wiped my vault file, my backup turned out to be six months stale, and I spent a weekend resetting 200 credentials. That single incident is what pushed our team to research the best password manager to replace … Read more

I’ve been running headless home servers for over a decade, and there’s a specific kind of dread that hits when a box won’t boot and you can’t see why. Maybe the BIOS flashed wrong. Maybe a ZFS pool won’t import. Maybe your network stack died and SSH refuses to come back. In those moments, a … Read more

Looking for the best budget IP-KVM for managing a mini PC without breaking the bank? I tested 8 popular options from $89 to $279 across a Beelink SER7, a Minisforum UM580, and an Intel NUC 12 over 6 weeks to find which ones actually deliver solid remote BIOS access, low latency, and reliability for headless … Read more