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built this to never pay for cloud storage again 💀
Aaand that may never pay off at this point 💀 But I was very curious after seeing Umbrel Pro as a home server option, so I set out to make my own at a slightly better price. And since UmbrelOS is open source, I chose the Beelink ME Mini to do this since it has 6 NVMe slots.
Here’s how I did it (VERY technical):
1. Install UmbrelOS - Flash umbrelOS USB installer with Balena Etcher → boot mini PC → install to internal NVMe → http://umbrel.local setup done
2. RAID 5 NVMe Array - Install 4x 4TB NVMe SSDs → SSH umbrel@umbrel.local → mdadm RAID5 LVM → ext4 format → mount /mnt/lvm-storage (11TB) → /etc/fstab persistence
3. Immich Photos - App Store → Immich → edit docker-compose.yml volumes to /mnt/lvm-storage/immich folders
4. OpenClaw Automation - App Store → OpenClaw → configure workflows
5. Samba Network Share - SSH → sudo apt install samba (App Store version broken)→ add [Umbrel-Storage] share to /etc/samba/smb.conf pointing to /mnt/lvm-storage → sudo smbpasswd umbrel → cron @reboot sleep 60 && systemctl restart smbd (fixes Umbrel killing it) → \\\\umbrel.local\\Umbrel-Storage from Windows
Not going to lie, this was extremely complicated to setup and made me doubt if umbrelOS was even worth it but it’s working and I’m happy lol.
Transcript
This mini PC means never paying for cloud storage again, but that might not be your best option right now. So with things like iCloud, you pay a monthly subscription, or you can use local storage on your device or backups, which has the potential to run out and may not even have redundancy. And let me tell you right now, storage is not cheap because the PC part market is insane. So I built a home server using this Beelink ME mini. Four four terabyte NVMEs. Please do not ask me how much that cost me. And I installed Umbrel OS on it and set it up as a Rank five no that if any drive fails, I'm covered. Now here's the honest part. Umbrel OS is gorgeous. The interface is so simple. Apps are so easy to install from the App Store. But if you're not using Umbrel's hardware like an Umbrel Home or Umbrel Pro, getting it set up like this is complicated. Using the command line, SSH, Linux knowledge, lots of tweaking settings. Now with Umbro Pro, it's seamless, but that's also $699 versus this $250 mini PC. But you really have two choices, pay a subscription forever or pay once, deal with the potential friction, and have something that you own. I picked friction. My entire photo library is tier, every single device. Some of my projects live on tier. Side stuff like my open claw agent lives on here. Now if you wanna try this, I've documented the full best of steps in the description, but you might not want this friction. And that's fair, especially in this economy, but just know you have options.
