I am working on setting up a home server but I want it to be reproducible if I need to make large changes, switch out hardware, or restore from a failure. What do you use to handle this?
I am working on setting up a home server but I want it to be reproducible if I need to make large changes, switch out hardware, or restore from a failure. What do you use to handle this?
I’m just using Unraid for the server, after many iterations (PhotonOS, VMware, baremetal Windows Server, …). After many OSes, partial and complete hardware replacements, and general problems, I gave up trying to manage the base server too much. Backups are generally good enough if hardware fails or I break something.
The other side of this is that I’ve moved to having very, very little config on the server itself. Virtually everything of value is in a docker container with a single (admittedly way too large) docker compose file that describes all the services.
I think this is the ideal way for how I use a home server. Your mileage might vary, but I’ve learned the hard way that it’s really hard to maintain a server over the very long term and not also marry yourself to the specific hardware and OS configuration.