Question 1

What hardware do I need for a homeserver?

Accepted Answer

Almost any x86 computer works. The most popular choice is a mini PC with an Intel N100 or N305 processor ($150–250 new) — these draw 10–15W at idle, run silently, and can handle a full self-hosted stack simultaneously including Jellyfin with hardware transcoding. You can also repurpose an old desktop or laptop. Avoid Raspberry Pi for a primary homeserver — x86 gives you hardware transcoding support, more RAM options, faster storage, and broader software compatibility. Minimum recommended: 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD for the OS and Docker configs, plus additional storage for media.

Question 2

Do I need prior Linux or programming experience?

Accepted Answer

No. The StackBuilt course starts from absolute zero. You will learn to install Ubuntu Server from a USB drive, navigate the filesystem, use essential commands (apt, ls, cd, nano, systemctl), set a static IP, configure SSH, and connect remotely. By the end of the free foundation you have a working headless Linux server. No programming is required — you will edit config files and run commands, but you will not write code.

Question 3

What is a homeserver and what can I do with one?

Accepted Answer

A homeserver is a computer that runs 24/7 on your home network providing services to your other devices. Unlike a cloud service, everything runs on your own hardware and your data stays in your home. Common uses: Jellyfin for streaming your own media library (like a personal Netflix), Sonarr and Radarr for automated media management, Nextcloud for file sync and photo backup (replacing Google Drive and Google Photos), Vaultwarden as a self-hosted Bitwarden password manager, Pi-hole for network-wide ad blocking on every device, Home Assistant for local smart home control, Gitea for private code repositories, and Immich for automatic phone photo backup. A single mini PC can run all of these simultaneously.

Question 4

What is the difference between a homeserver and a NAS?

Accepted Answer

A NAS (Network Attached Storage) is primarily a file server — shared storage accessible to all devices on your network. A homeserver is a superset: it includes NAS functionality (shared drives, Samba shares) plus runs active services like media servers, download managers, web apps, and anything else you want in a Docker container. Products like Synology NAS also run apps, but a general-purpose homeserver gives you full Linux control, no vendor lock-in, cheaper hardware, and the ability to run any software. The NAS and Storage pack in this course covers mergerfs drive pooling, SnapRAID parity protection, and Samba file shares.

Question 5

How much does it cost to run a homeserver?

Accepted Answer

Hardware: $150–300 one-time for a capable mini PC, or $0 if you repurpose existing hardware. Power: an N100 mini PC costs roughly $3–8/month in electricity at typical US rates running 24/7. Compared to replacing cloud subscriptions: Netflix ($15–22/mo), Google One ($3–10/mo), Dropbox ($10–15/mo), Bitwarden Premium ($10/year), Backblaze ($99/year for backup) — a homeserver replaces all of these. Most people break even within 2–3 months if replacing multiple subscriptions.

Question 6

What is Jellyfin and how does it compare to Plex?

Accepted Answer

Jellyfin is a free, fully open-source media server. It serves your own movies, TV shows, and music to any device — web browser, phone app, Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, smart TVs. Plex is similar but closed-source and has a freemium model requiring a Plex Pass subscription for offline sync, hardware transcoding, and some other features. Jellyfin is completely free with no feature tiers, no telemetry, no account required on your server, and no data leaving your network. Both support hardware transcoding (Intel QuickSync, NVIDIA, AMD). This course uses Jellyfin.

Question 7

What is Sonarr and Radarr?

Accepted Answer

Sonarr manages your TV show library automatically — you tell it which shows you want to follow, it searches indexers, finds the best available version, downloads it via qBittorrent or SABnzbd, and organizes it into your Jellyfin library. Radarr does the same for movies. Prowlarr manages your indexer list (like Jackett but better) and syncs to both. Together these three plus a download client form the 'Arr stack' — the standard self-hosted media automation setup. The Media Stack pack covers all of this.

Question 8

What is Docker and why does everyone use it for self-hosting?

Accepted Answer

Docker packages each application into a container — an isolated environment with its own dependencies, libraries, and configuration. For homeservers this means: no dependency conflicts between applications, easy updates (pull new image, restart container), simple backups (copy config folder), easy migration to new hardware (copy files, docker compose up), and clean uninstallation (remove container and folder). Docker Compose lets you define your entire stack in a YAML file and start everything with one command. It has become the standard for self-hosting because it makes managing dozens of services manageable.

Question 9

What is a reverse proxy and why do I need one?

Accepted Answer

A reverse proxy (Nginx in this course) sits in front of all your services and routes traffic based on the domain name. Without it, you access services with ugly port numbers: http://192.168.1.100:8096 for Jellyfin, :8989 for Sonarr, :7878 for Radarr. With Nginx: https://media.yourdomain.com, https://tv.yourdomain.com — clean URLs with SSL. It also handles SSL termination (one certificate covers all subdomains) and adds security headers. The reverse proxy is the traffic cop for your entire stack, covered in Chapter 6.

Question 10

What is Cloudflare Tunnel and why use it instead of port forwarding?

Accepted Answer

Cloudflare Tunnel (cloudflared) creates an outbound-only encrypted connection from your server to Cloudflare's network. Your services become accessible at yourdomain.com via HTTPS with no ports open on your router. Traditional port forwarding exposes your server's IP directly to the internet, making it a target for automated attacks, DDoS, and scanning. Cloudflare Tunnel: hides your home IP completely, provides DDoS protection automatically, works through CGNAT (ISPs that don't give you a real public IP), and is free for personal use. Chapter 5 covers the complete setup.

Question 11

What is Tailscale and do I need it?

Accepted Answer

Tailscale is a zero-config VPN built on WireGuard. It creates a private network between all your devices — phone, laptop, server — that works anywhere in the world without any port forwarding or VPN server setup. Uses: access your server while traveling, use your home Pi-hole as DNS from cellular, SSH into your server from anywhere. Cloudflare Tunnel makes services publicly accessible; Tailscale makes your server privately accessible to just your devices. Most people use both: Cloudflare Tunnel for sharing Jellyfin with family, Tailscale for SSH and admin access.

Question 12

Is self-hosting safe and secure?

Accepted Answer

Yes, when done correctly. The course teaches a layered security approach: Cloudflare Tunnel (no open ports on your router, your home IP is hidden), UFW firewall (default deny incoming, only explicitly allowed ports pass), Fail2ban (automatically bans IPs that fail authentication repeatedly), SSH key authentication (cryptographic keys instead of passwords — impossible to brute-force), and optionally Authelia (adds 2FA to every service with one login). The course's approach is more secure than typical setups that just port-forward everything.

Question 13

What is Pi-hole and how does it block ads?

Accepted Answer

Pi-hole is a DNS sinkhole. Every device on your network asks a DNS server to translate domain names to IP addresses before loading anything. Pi-hole acts as your DNS server and returns nothing for known ad and tracking domains — the ad request never even leaves your network. Unlike browser extensions, Pi-hole works for every device automatically: phones, smart TVs, game consoles, smart speakers, every app on every device. You configure it once on your router as the DNS server and all devices benefit. Chapter 10 covers Pi-hole setup plus DNS-over-HTTPS via cloudflared to encrypt your DNS queries from your ISP.

Question 14

What is mergerfs?

Accepted Answer

mergerfs is a union filesystem that combines multiple physical drives into a single mount point. Instead of /mnt/disk1 (4TB), /mnt/disk2 (8TB), /mnt/disk3 (4TB) as separate drives, mergerfs presents them all as /srv/storage — one big 16TB pool. Apps see one drive, mergerfs handles which physical disk files actually live on. Unlike RAID, drives can be different sizes, you expand by just adding a drive and updating one fstab line, and files are never split across drives. It is the standard storage solution for homeserver media libraries, paired with SnapRAID for parity protection.

Question 15

What is SnapRAID and how is it different from RAID?

Accepted Answer

SnapRAID provides parity protection for your storage pool without being a real-time RAID system. Traditional RAID writes parity in real-time and requires matching drive sizes. SnapRAID calculates parity on a schedule (nightly cron job), supports any mix of drive sizes, has zero performance overhead during normal operation, and protects against drive failure, bit rot, and accidental deletion (if caught before the next sync). One parity drive protects against one data drive failure. It is used alongside mergerfs — mergerfs pools the drives, SnapRAID protects them.

Question 16

What is Nextcloud?

Accepted Answer

Nextcloud is a self-hosted cloud platform that replaces Google Drive, Dropbox, Google Photos, and more. It provides file sync (desktop apps for Windows/Mac/Linux, mobile apps for iOS/Android), photo backup and gallery, calendar and contacts sync, notes, collaborative documents, and hundreds of apps via its marketplace. Your files live on your server with no storage limits and no third-party access. Many people migrate from Google One to Nextcloud and pay nothing ongoing after the initial hardware cost.

Question 17

What is Vaultwarden?

Accepted Answer

Vaultwarden is an unofficial, open-source Bitwarden server implementation. Bitwarden is a popular password manager with end-to-end encrypted sync and excellent apps for every platform. Normally Bitwarden's premium features cost $10/year hosted on their servers. Vaultwarden lets you run the server yourself — all official Bitwarden apps work with it. Your passwords live on your server, encrypted with your master password, with zero third-party access. After setup you point your Bitwarden app to your server URL instead of bitwarden.com.

Question 18

What is Immich?

Accepted Answer

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video backup solution, widely considered the best Google Photos replacement. It has excellent iOS and Android apps that back up your photos automatically in the background, a full web interface with a timeline view, face recognition, smart search, albums, location map, and sharing. Your photos upload to your server instead of Google's servers, with no storage limits and no subscription. The machine learning features (face recognition, CLIP search) run locally on your server.

Question 19

Can I run a homeserver on a Raspberry Pi?

Accepted Answer

You can run basic services on a Raspberry Pi 4 or Pi 5, but it is not recommended as a primary homeserver for several reasons: no hardware video transcoding support (Jellyfin will struggle with 4K content), ARM architecture means some Docker images are not available or have issues, limited RAM (4–8GB max on Pi 5), slower storage than NVMe SSDs, and higher cost per performance compared to mini PCs. For the same price as a Pi 5 with accessories, you can get an Intel N100 mini PC that is faster, supports hardware transcoding, and runs any x86 Docker image without compatibility issues.

Question 20

Do I need a fast internet connection?

Accepted Answer

For local use (within your home network), your internet speed is irrelevant — everything streams at LAN speeds (100–1000 Mbps). For remote access (watching Jellyfin away from home), your home upload speed matters. Streaming 1080p Jellyfin requires about 10–25 Mbps upload. Direct play (your remote device can decode the format natively) uses whatever bitrate the file is. Transcoding (server converts the format on the fly) uses about 10 Mbps upload. Most modern home internet connections have sufficient upload for 1–2 simultaneous remote streams.

Question 21

How do I set up hardware transcoding in Jellyfin?

Accepted Answer

Intel N100 and similar Intel processors support Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) for hardware transcoding. In Jellyfin: Dashboard → Playback → Transcoding → select Intel QuickSync. In your Docker Compose file, add the device: /dev/dri:/dev/dri under devices. This lets Jellyfin transcode 4K HEVC to 1080p H.264 in real time with minimal CPU load (2–5% instead of 80–100% for software transcoding). NVIDIA GPU support requires the NVIDIA container runtime. AMD GPUs use the VA-API interface. The Media Stack pack covers the complete hardware transcoding setup.

Question 22

What is n8n?

Accepted Answer

n8n is a self-hosted workflow automation tool — like Zapier or Make, but running on your server with no usage limits. It has a visual node editor and 400+ integrations: Discord, Telegram, GitHub, Google Sheets, HTTP webhooks, databases, cron schedules, and more. Example workflows: notify Discord when Sonarr downloads an episode, run a daily health check and send results to ntfy, auto-deploy your code when you push to Gitea, or trigger any action via a webhook. The Automation & AI pack covers n8n setup and example workflows.

Question 23

Can I run AI models on my homeserver?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Ollama lets you run large language models locally — Llama 3, Mistral, Gemma, Phi, Qwen, and many others. Models run on CPU (slower) or GPU (much faster). An Intel N100 can run 3B parameter models at usable speeds on CPU. 7B models run at reasonable speeds on machines with 16GB RAM. Open Web UI provides a ChatGPT-like interface. Your prompts never leave your network. The Automation & AI pack covers Ollama and Open Web UI setup, model selection, and integration with your other services.

Question 24

What is Home Assistant?

Accepted Answer

Home Assistant is the most popular self-hosted smart home platform. It connects to 3,000+ smart home devices from hundreds of brands — lights (Philips Hue, IKEA, Zigbee), sensors, thermostats, locks, cameras, robot vacuums, and more. Automations run locally on your server with no cloud dependency — lights turn on without a server in California involved. It has an excellent mobile app and a flexible dashboard builder. The Automation & AI pack covers Home Assistant setup via Docker.

Question 25

How do I back up my homeserver?

Accepted Answer

The course covers restic, a fast encrypted backup tool. The key insight is backing up smart: /srv/docker/configs (all container config and data) and /srv/docker/compose (your compose files and .env secrets) are what matter. Media files (/srv/storage/media) are too large to back up and can be re-downloaded. restic backs up configs to local USB drives or cloud storage (Backblaze B2, ~$6/TB/month) on a cron schedule, with every backup encrypted before leaving your server. The Monitoring & Uptime pack covers the full backup setup including automated cron jobs with ntfy notifications.

Question 26

What is the Arr stack?

Accepted Answer

The Arr stack refers to a group of self-hosted media automation apps named with 'arr' suffixes: Sonarr (TV shows), Radarr (movies), Lidarr (music), Readarr (books), Prowlarr (indexer management). Prowlarr manages your indexers (sources to search) and syncs them to Sonarr and Radarr automatically. When you add a show in Sonarr, it searches your indexers, finds the best version, sends it to your download client (qBittorrent or SABnzbd), monitors the download, then moves and renames the completed file into your Jellyfin library folder. The Media Stack pack covers this complete automated pipeline.

Question 27

What is DNS-over-HTTPS?

Accepted Answer

Standard DNS queries are unencrypted plain text — your ISP can see every domain you look up. DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH) wraps DNS inside encrypted HTTPS connections, making them indistinguishable from regular web traffic. In a homeserver context: Pi-hole handles ad blocking at the DNS level, then forwards queries to cloudflared (Cloudflare's DoH proxy), which forwards them to 1.1.1.1 over HTTPS. Your ISP sees only an HTTPS connection to Cloudflare. Chapter 10 covers setting up cloudflared as a DoH proxy and wiring it into Pi-hole.

Question 28

What is the difference between Authelia and a VPN?

Accepted Answer

A VPN (like Tailscale) creates an encrypted tunnel between your devices and your server — services are only accessible if you are connected to the VPN. Authelia adds authentication in front of services exposed via Cloudflare Tunnel: a login page (with 2FA) that must be passed before the underlying service loads, without requiring a VPN connection. Use Tailscale for private admin access and SSH. Use Authelia for services you want to share publicly (Jellyfin, Nextcloud) with strong authentication protecting them.

Question 29

How loud and power-hungry is a homeserver?

Accepted Answer

A mini PC homeserver is essentially silent and uses very little power. An Intel N100 mini PC at idle draws 10–15W — about $3–5/month at average US electricity rates running 24/7. At full load it peaks around 25–35W. Compare to a desktop PC (60–200W idle) or a gaming rig (150–400W). Mini PCs are passively cooled or have very small fans that are inaudible from a meter away. This makes them practical to run 24/7 in a living room, bedroom, or closet.

Homeserver FAQ