In 2026, thanks to my old Windows 10 box which basically operated as a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device for my household deciding to have its OS drive die, which then cascaded into motherboard issues, I got deep into home lab deployments and self hosted software. I'm no expert but I've been spending time learning about linux, managing head-less machines via CLI and deploying a proper NAS using Unraid. Here's a look at what is running and how I've built it out so far.
Storage & Docker Philosophy
All the media and app data lives on network-mounted drives on a Terramaster NAS running Unraid. The local SSDs on each Docker host are intentionally locked down — if the NAS ever drops offline, containers get a clean "permission denied" instead of silently filling up the host's root drive.
Everything runs as Docker Compose "micro-stacks" — each logical group of services (media, monitoring, network, and so on) gets its own isolated compose file and directory, rather than one giant compose file for everything. I know that Proxmox is a popular alternative to running Ubuntu and docker containers, and I hope to explore that one day too.
Machines are networked together over Tailscale, and anything exposed to the outside world goes through Cloudflare Tunnels with Zero Trust access policies — no ports forwarded directly to any of this.
