Table of Contents
Introduction:
Hello everyone and welcome to the website! In today's article, I'm excited to share my home lab journey so far, and explain exactly why I've decided to hit the reset button, throw out my current setup, and build an all-in-one home NAS server from the ground up.
Just so you know, I'll be documenting the entire planning and build process I went through right here on this website as well as in video format on our YouTube channel, complete with full tutorial guides, fixes, and much more. So, if this sounds like something you're interested in, make sure you hit that subscribe button and notification bell on YouTube so you're instantly notified when we upload new content!
Rather watch the YouTube Video?. Here it is:
Alright, if you're ready, grab yourself a drink, and let's get into this.
My Home Lab’s Humble Beginnings: The Raspberry Pi Era
To give you some context, you might be surprised to hear that my current home lab, prior to this new all-in-one server build, didn't actually involve any Raspberry Pi's . Now, for my seasoned followers who know I've covered Raspberry Pis extensively on this website/channel, this might come as a surprise.
My whole home lab journey really began by using Raspberry Pi devices purely as a way of learning. I wasn't intentionally trying to build a home lab or a server; I kind of just "sleepwalked" into it. I was simply enjoying tinkering with the technology and, in doing so, solving some small problems I had along the way.
As someone who works in IT, learning Linux was a direct benefit for my career, so I fully embraced the learning process.
As my knowledge grew and the credit-card-sized Pi technology evolved, I soon realized these tiny devices could do so much more for me. That's when I truly started to see the immense potential and benefits of creating a dedicated home lab. I quickly understood I could centralize applications and services, run them in a headless mode, and have them always accessible from any device on my network, or even remotely from work.
The real game-changer for me was when the Raspberry Pi 4 arrived. It finally resolved the major bottleneck present in previous models by separating the USB and Ethernet buses.
This transformed the Raspberry Pi from just a learning tool into a capable, full-stack NAS server for me. Docker containers, file shares, backups – it could handle it all! Fundamentally, it opened the entire home lab world to me, and for that, I'm eternally grateful to the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
Stepping Up: The Mini PC Phase
At this point, I had a Raspberry Pi 4 with a mains-powered USB hub and four USB hard drives connected. It all worked great for a while, but I eventually started to outgrow this setup. I quickly realized I needed more compute power and better hardware.
Since I'd already invested in those four 4TB USB drives and didn't have the budget to replace them, my next logical step was to upgrade to a Mini PC.
This was a huge leap in terms of hardware. As great as the Raspberry Pi's are, it's fundamentally an ARM device, and its major benefit – its low energy consumption – ironically became its downfall as a robust home server solution for me. Lower wattage generally means less power, which means less performance. I think you can see where I'm going with this.
I wanted more power, and a Mini PC delivered. With its x86 architecture, it allowed me to install more containers and truly level up my home lab.
I have to say, right now, that using a Mini PC as a home lab server is a fantastic option. It was rock-solid for me, and I honestly couldn't fault it. There are many great models on the market today that I still recommend, so check out the affiliate links in the description box below.
In fact, I purchased two of these Mini PCs. I started with the Trigkey G1 Mini PC in July 2022, which served as my main server for a year. Then, in August 2023, I upgraded to the Trigkey S5 AMD Mini PC because I wanted to run even more virtual machines and containers.
This beast featured a mobile Ryzen 7 5800H (up to 4.4 GHz) 8-core, 16-thread CPU, 16gb ram which I upgraded to 32GB of RAM and a 2TB NVMe drive (from its original 500GB).
I then repurposed the G1 as a Pi coin node miner, which it's still doing today. If you're interested in that, let me know in the comments below, and I might feature it!
This Mini PC setup was fantastic – truly flawless. Not one day of downtime. But, eventually, it became messy, and crucially, my data had no redundancy. In truth, it was a ticking time bomb.
I was running Proxmox as a hypervisor, a couple of Ubuntu servers for Docker and testing, and OpenMediaVault for my NAS storage needs. I kept this system going until May 2025, when a review of my home network sparked the realization that my entire home lab setup needed a complete redesign.
By this time, I had five 4TB USB 3.0 Western Digital drives and a single 20TB Western Digital drive all attached via USB ports and an external powered hub. This housed all my data. It was serving VPNs, Plex, Nextcloud, Immich, OpenMediaVault, file shares, and all my device backups. It had evolved into a bit of a nightmare.
So, this brings me full circle to today.
Why I’m Building an All-In-One Home NAS Server
I think you can clearly see from my journey that now was the absolute right time to evolve my set up and build a proper server.
I desperately needed to de-clutter, centralize, and simplify my setup, and most importantly, protect my data from loss. My old Mini PC system and those USB drives won't go to waste, though! I plan to repurpose them as an offsite backup system, which I'll also document right here on this channel, so stay tuned for that.
I want to create this all-in-one home NAS server with clear project goals in mind. Not only is this system being built to replace my existing home lab, but I want to design it from the ground up to perfectly fit my needs, give me full control of both hardware and software, and most crucially, be scalable so it can evolve and grow with me and my available budget.
I thought it would be a great idea to document this entire project and share every step of the way with you all, in the hope that it might help you with your own home NAS project or inspire you to take the plunge. So, once again, be sure to like and subscribe and hit that notification bell to be instantly notified when we upload a new video!
The benefits of having an all-in-one home NAS server are plentiful:
- Run separate Virtual Machines
- Host Docker applications
- Centralize, manage, and serve all your media
- Dedicated system for backups
- Save on cloud storage subscriptions
- Keeping control of your data and out of the hands of corporations
All these are a few great reasons to host your own home NAS server.
So, this is my journey, and these are the core reasons why I'm building an all-in-one home NAS server – and also why I think you should too!
Conclusion:
That concludes today's article.
Why not let me know about your own home lab journey in the comments below? I'd love to hear about it!
Also just to mention I have started a Discord channel. It's in very early stages, so be one of the first to join! I hope to build a tech community there, run competitions, and get your feedback on future content ideas. It's also a good place to get any help or support – just drop a question in the correct section, and I'll do my best to answer it.
All that's left for me to say is thank you for reading this article, and I'll see you in the next one!
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