Notes on a small home server
I replaced an old laptop with a fanless mini PC for backups and a few self-hosted tools. It draws about six watts idle, which matters with summer electricity prices.
Lessons so far: keep the setup boring, write down every change in a plain text file, and test restoring a backup before you need it. The third one is the one everyone skips, me included, until it hurts.
Next step is moving photo storage off the laptop entirely.