Starting Over on My Home Server

My old home server, an Ubuntu box, had expanded organically over a couple of years with various self-hosted applications like Immich, Jellyfin, and Nextcloud. It was a mess of Docker Compose files scattered across the filesystem, each edited individually in place, leading to a lack of documentation. The server's state lived within itself, with no backup or record of the truth.

The author decided to rebuild the setup, aiming for a more reliable and maintainable infrastructure that could be recreated from a Git repository. This would prevent the issues caused by manually editing files over time and make it easier to know what was running and why at any given time. The author's single rule for this rebuild was that the Git repository would be the source of truth, and nothing would run without being defined there.

To achieve this, the server was transformed into a Proxmox hypervisor, with all services running on a single Debian VM. Deployment is handled by Komodo, which synchronizes the server's state with the Git repository, eliminating the need for SSH or manual deployment commands. Secrets, such as passwords and API keys, remain outside the repository and are injected during deployment.

The new setup utilizes an Intel i5-14500 processor, 64GB of RAM, and two WD Black SN850X 2TB drives in a ZFS mirror for reliability. The author's experience of waiting too long to purchase components led to higher costs and slower performance, serving as a reminder that planning is essential for a successful project.