A Mac Guy Gets Into Self-Hosting

Before 2025, my self-hosting experience had been limited to running the media server software, Plex, on a 2009 iMac. When I retired that machine, I didn't resurrect Plex on my new Mac, although I did hang on to all the media files. I retired myself this year and resolved to start self-hosting some services as a learning experience. My home network consists of three Mac laptops, a Lenovo ThinkPad, that 2009 iMac I mentioned, plus five iOS devices and an Amazon Kindle Fire (Android). 

I elected to use the ThinkPad as a server, although the platform I chose, Unraid, will also run on a Mac. Many of the services it hosts are fully accessible on Mac and iOS devices. I picked Unraid because I have contacts who use it. It is not FOSS. A license that allows you to connect six hard drives in a RAID array is $49. 

Unraid Benefits

• 1 year of free OS updates 
• All Unraid OS features 
• Perpetual Starter license 
• Access to Community Apps 
• VM and Docker Management 
• Integrated Tailscale + VPN Support 
• Network-Attached Storage Dual Parity Protected Array, ZFS, BTRFS, XFS Pools 

In the two weeks I've been using it, I have installed a media server (Plex), a photo management server (Digikam), file sharing (Syncthing), and the Mac compatible VPN, Tailscale that allows geographically distant devices to interact as if they were on a LAN. 

Other services I plan to investigate are: 

• Nextcloud - a personal alternative to Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive etc.
• Self-hosted Calibre ebook server
• Paperlessngx - a document management system

In seeking advice from experienced self-hosting folks, I received this detailed answer from a friend on Mastodon, @phillip@omg.lol
 

Unraid

"Unraid is probably the easiest turnkey solution if you have the cash to throw at it. Easy App Store, Docker, VMs, NAS, etc. It stays easy while leaving you tons of headroom to grow. There’s also a huge community with tons of resources and docs behind it. The main con here imo is money. Some have complained about performance issues, but afaik that’s only in larger NAS setups."
 

yunohost

yunohost.org is pretty slick and even has its own App Store to make downloading new apps dead simple. However, it doesn’t use Docker containers (harder to switch to another platform later like Unraid) and seems to prefer opening ports publicly. That not may be a con if you were already planning on doing that anyways.
 

Yacht

For free + docker, I’d recommend a dashboard app like Yacht (or Dockge for even simpler). You’ll need to manually configure your apps, but it’s generally pretty straightforward and a “set it and forget it” kind of thing.