For a long time I had the idea of setting up a home server that would also replace my router. Recently I discovered the NanoPC T6 SBC: it has 2 network interfaces, a powerful ARM processor and an NVMe slot, so ideal for my setup.
My current setup works as follows:
The setup is mostly automated, and the scripts have been made available on Github and include the full instructions to set it up. They have only been tested on the NanoPC T6 but I imagine it shouldn't be hard to make it work on similar hardware if desired.
My current setup works as follows:
- The server is also a router (uses OpenWRT with Docker)
- Selected services on the home server are made externally accessible using CloudFlare Zero Trust tunnels. You don't need a fixed IP address or DDNS setup; it will work even behind NAT. (perhaps if you put a 4G/5G modem in it you could even use it on the move, but I haven't tried that yet)
- All services running on the home server use HTTPS both locally and externally. Traefik is used in combination with DNS challenges so that you can use HTTPS even on services that are not publicly exposed.
- Adding and removing services is easy. Each service has its own directory with its own docker-compose file. The proxy (Traefik) will update itself automatically to support the changed services.
- All data is automatically backed up to Backblaze every night. Backups are end-to-end encrypted (using Restic). A restore script is available to restore everything in case of disaster.
The setup is mostly automated, and the scripts have been made available on Github and include the full instructions to set it up. They have only been tested on the NanoPC T6 but I imagine it shouldn't be hard to make it work on similar hardware if desired.