What's on my Home Server? MUST HAVE Services!

hello everybody this is teca in this

video what we're going to be doing is

checking out some of the services that

i've been running on my home lab for

about the last year or so

first what is a home lab well for me

specifically it's this cabinet thing

behind me which houses a couple

different mini pcs a nas a synology nas

and some other little gizmos and gadgets

that all work together to give me these

services that i have on my home network

now for you it can be something as

simple as a little raspberry pi or a

full-fledged rack of servers hosting a

ton of different services from home

monitoring security systems whatever it

may be now for me even though this is a

huge cabinet that's behind me it's

really not that complicated there's only

two systems that synology has in a mini

pc that's running some of these services

that you see on the screen now i do have

an empty computer case rack mount

computer case that i'm going to be using

as a giant proxmox server in the future

and at the end of this video i'm going

to talk about some of my future plans

because some of the things i have set up

are going to be changing eventually and

before we dive too far into this list of

the services that i currently run we're

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back into the services that i currently

run on my home lab first things first

this dashboard that you're seeing is

heimdall now it is a very simple

dashboard there's not a whole bunch of

configuration options but i really like

how easy integrates with some of these

applications to give you data within

your dashboard such as jellyfin here i

have the amount of movies and episodes i

have on my server with the transmission

you can see i can see the download

speeds leaching seating pi hole i can

see the block queries and some other

data and depending on the services that

you run there will be more options for

those integrated applications so you get

a really good rundown of what is going

on on your home network now i'm going to

go kind of out of order here the very

first thing i'm going to talk about is

yacht yacht is a wonderful service to

easily go ahead and spin up docker

images this i have running on the mini

pc which runs some of the services such

as jellyfin heimdall itself

transmission openvpn some of the other

things i'm going to be talking about but

this is really nice because actually

spinning up docker images is as easy as

going over to templates going to the

self-hosted pro template and picking

really whatever you want if i wanted

something like guacamole or even homer

which is a another kind of a static

dashboard you just hit deploy run

through the configuration options like

you normally would with the docker image

this just kind of walks you through the

process and then it will spin it up and

if i go over here to dashboard to

something that's pre-existing such as

heimdall here you can see all the

different links to the dashboards what

ports they're on all the different

variables and information as well as our

processes here you have access to all

the logs and then specific status for

these individual docker containers and

then you have the option to start stop

them really whatever you want

very nice way to manage docker with a

gui it's kind of like something similar

to rancher but with a lot less features

that works really good in just a

individual hosted environment so with

that for now i'll be sticking with

things that are on this mini pc and the

next and probably one of my favorite and

must have of these is jellyfin i've been

using jellyfin for some time to host all

my media throughout my home network as

well as sharing the media for some other

people i have this blurred out but i

have uh my mom here i have a separate

account for children and then we have my

niece here so if i just log into mine

real quick you could see what's going on

i got all my movies got latest kids

movies latest movies and latest shows

that i have on this server and there's

really a lot you can do with this i'll

have a links to my full guides on how to

set up jellyfin those are the

traditional install this is set up

through a docker image using yacht with

some custom configuration you could

probably tell based on the dashboard

here we have over 3000 shows 200 movies

and the hard drive on my home i mean on

my mini pc is just about two maybe 128

gigabytes and what's really cool is i

was able to link up my nas as a folder

within my home directory so it will act

as if the media is on that server when

it's actually on the nas so if i do ls

for example and i cd into media you'll

see i have kids and adults if i go into

adults and then cd into movies you can

see all the different movies that i have

there and even though it's showing up in

my home directory like i said it's not

actually there if i did a sudo nano etc

fs tab right here you can see how i have

that linked up this is the ip address

for my nas into the media directory and

i have it connected to my home brand and

media and my credentials are saved in a

specific file to easily and

automatically log in you can see where

that's located just in the credentials

and you can see some of the variables i

have attached to that to get it to work

perfectly the only real con to doing it

that way is if my nas powers down i lose

access to all my media

and if i have everything powered down i

need to make sure the nas completely

boots up first before i turn on the mini

pc otherwise it won't boot because it's

in there in that fs tab and it will just

not continue with the booting process if

it can't access all the data and if you

didn't know jellyfin is a free and open

source fork of envy and personally i

like it a lot better than plex because

what you get is your media you don't

have a bunch of extra added crap from

plex so with that sticking with what is

on the mini pc here we have transmission

transmission is a bittorrent client you

can see here i have fedora workstation

and neon testing i have both those

seating to kind of

share some of my bandwidth and the

really cool thing about this docker

image basically everything here is

docker images this docker image also

ships with openvpn so i was able to log

in with some private internet access

credentials so this docker image this

transmission client independently has

its very own vpn which for uh

peer-to-peer sharing and downloading

these uh linux iso's is awesome because

then other people won't be able to see

your ip address and it works pretty good

if i just want to add a torrent i

usually just paste in a url here and if

i run over to yacht real quick this is

how i installed this right here is

transmission openvpn

right now i have the source for the data

in my home directory brandon and

downloads and within the docker image it

just shows up as data but the torrents

we download are kind of mirrored between

my home directory and the data directory

within the docker image so if i delete a

linux iso for example from my home

directory it will also delete it from

the docker image so that is very nice

and then the last thing on this mini pc

we have uptime kuma this is a really

simple application i just got rid of

calorie bay calibre web i didn't really

use it that much it's a way to manage

your

ebooks and things like that it is pretty

good but i didn't use it enough but this

will give me information on uptime for

various services so synology nas you see

it's at 95 percent i did an update last

night so we can uh probably go ahead and

find where that downtime was if we

wanted to so if i go to 24 we see the

little red line right there so there it

is these are my this is my specific

downtime so this is really nice to

figure out when that was and to monitor

it and you could see it's just a tcp

ping to the specific port that that nas

is on and i actually did a video on

uptime kuma for the lenode channel so if

you want a lot more details on this you

can go ahead and check that out

you can add new monitors real easy and

there's a bunch of different types of

monitors that you can add you can really

fill this up with whatever you would

like so now with that we're going to

talk about what is on the nas and

there's really only two services on the

nas we have the synology products which

is the type and as it is and we have pi

hole running on the nas as a docker

image

first i'm going to jump into just

synology real quick sign in and if i

didn't have a synology nas i'd probably

be using something like true nas but

synology is really nice because of some

of the like a mobile applications so for

example synology photos here is just

like google photos except for i own the

data on my server so if i go to like

mobile backup this is all automatic

pixel 6 camera 2022 and if we go to five

you could see some of the latest

pictures i sold the truck so that's the

bulk of the pictures but synology photos

is awesome for uh basically hosting your

own photo backup solution and of course

within synology itself it gives you kind

of like a mobile not mobile a web based

operating system kind of layout up here

are the applications so i have synology

drive synology photos and i have docker

here so if i go into docker you can see

right now the only active container

that's running is pi hole gives you some

information it's really easy to go and

pull if i look at all the different

images this is everything that i've

tested out i did have the jellyfin

running on the nas for a while but i

ended up moving it to the mini pc just

so it performed a little bit better and

that's the primary con of using like a

pre-built nas solution is generally you

get really a really nice interface and

uh hardware to work with but within the

hardware the uh processor ram and all

that generally isn't the best but other

than the apps and docker it's really

easy to manage if i go into file station

for example go into media you kind of

see the same layout we saw earlier and

if we go to like control panel for

example shared folder these are my

shared folders and it's really easy to

link up homes for example and share that

with some of the file services such as

smb ftp really whatever you need and

what's real nice about this for example

my wife has her own account so she has

her whole entire separate photo library

backed up just as if she were to have

her own like google drive or a google

photos account it's really handy and if

you'd like to see a review on the

synology nas i have a video for that as

well now last but not least we have a

pie hole this doesn't have very many

logs because i actually just moved it

over to the docker image on the nas but

you probably heard a pie hole it is a

fantastic application for filtering out

trackers ads things like that i don't

feel too bad using it because i have

youtube premium and content creators get

more money off of that than ads anyways

but you can see down here the various

query types all the logs so like this is

in the middle of night so there's really

not much going on and then it's picked

up during the day as there's been more

internet usage we have our upstream

servers the uh topped block domain so

app measurement dot com we have google

ads uh double click some analytics stuff

top permitted domains is google one of

the reasons i moved it over to this

docker image i have all the devices

connected to it on a device by device

basis because my router is not very good

and it was having some issues with the

dhcp server stuff so i had to go ahead

and disable that for now but this is the

point where i'm going to talk about some

of the stuff that we're going to be

doing in the future this right here

this is a zimmer board i'm going to be

doing a full dedicated video on this as

well as a couple different tutorials

what i can say now about this little

board is i would highly recommend it

this right here you see plugged in has a

little pcie connector so it is very

expandable this is a 250 gig nvme ssd so

you just plug that in and before i set

it up for what its final use is going to

be i'm going to do a couple tutorials on

this doing like pie hole setting up a

couple services on this but the final

use for this which if i did my research

correctly i can use this as my modem

which is going to be fantastic with a pf

sense it's compatible with the um

whatever the configuration is that my

pisa garbage sentry link modem over

there uses so i'm really excited to get

this spun up it has a into intel celeron

processor which isn't like amazing but

it's definitely better than trying to

run on some of the stuff on like a

raspberry pi and right there you see it

has some uh sata ports so you can plug

in some hard drives too i'll be doing a

true nas tutorial uh with all that

subscribe like this video if you did

everything i mentioned including guides

and tutorials and all that will be

linked down below uh with all that i do

hope you have an absolutely beautiful

day and good bye