A couple weeks ago I bought a NAS because I wanted somewhere sensible to store my Plex library (which was sat on a flaky USB hard drive connected to my always-on Mac mini) and provide Time Machine backup for my two Macs.
That was the plan. Simple.
A nice, boring, responsible grown-up storage solution.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and I’ve accidentally-on-purpose built what can only be described as a budget enterprise media bunker with VPN mesh networking, internal DNS routing, automated torrent workflows, dashboard telemetry, HomeKit camera integrations and enough storage to archive a modest Principality.
As these things tend to go.
The heart of it all is a QNAP TS-464 stuffed with four 22TB Toshiba Enterprise drives in Raid 5. Which means:
- It stores an absurd amount of data, and
- One drive can die without me immediately entering a state of spiritual collapse.
Originally, the goal was just:
- Move Plex media off the randomly disconnecting USB drive
- Centralise Time Machine backups
- Stop relying on ‘vibes’ as a data resilience strategy
But once the NAS existed, it immediately became obvious it could far more than hold files, as my first job tinkering with the servers at an internet hosting company came screaming from the void of forgotten things in my brain to the forefront. Who knew you could have muscle memory for vi?
Plex moved off the Mac and became a proper always-on media server without having a computer running all the time. Then I added an HDHomeRun Flex Quatro, which basically turned the whole setup into a DIY Sky+/TiVo replacement. Live TV streams around the house now, Plex records broadcasts directly onto the NAS, and somewhere along the line I found myself learning far more about multicast networking than any sane person should. Particularly since I never really watch live TV, haha!
Of course, the second you start self-hosting things, IP addresses begin breeding in dark corners. Suddenly you’re trying to remember whether qBitttorrent lives on :8080 or :8090 and whether Homarr was .71 or .73 and honestly, life is too short for that nonsense.
So naturally I ended up deploying AdGuard Home and Nginx Proxy Manager to create proper internal DNS routing.
Now everything has delightfully nerdy addresses like:
- adguard.home.arpa
- nas.home.arpa
- router.home.arpa
- etc..
Which makes the whole thing feel dramatically more professional than it probably is (and certainly more so than it needs to be!).
Then came the dashboard phase.
I discovered Homarr and immediately lost a few hours redesigning widgets that nobody except me will probably ever properly appreciate.
But now I’ve got a mobile-friendly dashboard that surfaces quick links to the assorted things installed on there, NAS stats, services health and other telemetry so I can feel like I’m managing a tiny data centre from the sofa (which I suppose I am!).
It works beautifully as a web app on my iPhone.
And because I’m apparently incapable of leaving things alone, I also wanted all of this available remotely.
Securely, naturally.
Without opening horrifying holes in the router.
Enter Tailscale – which honestly feels like cheating. Suddenly my phone and laptop behave as though they’re still inside the home network even when I’m elsewhere. My entire Homarr dashboard, internal services and admin tools now work remotely as though the house itself has been quietly stuffed in my pocket.
The ‘tiny but brilliant’ things are probably my favourite parts though.
For example: I now have a non-HomeKit compatible doorbell camera appearing inside Apple Home because Scrypted is essentially digital witchcraft.
My torrent setup can accept magnet links emailed to a dummy address, automatically feed them into qBittorrent, then email me when the download is complete like some sort of shady digital butler.
The Nvidia Shield TV Pro has also evolved into an absurdly polished media appliance. Projectivy Launcher cleaned the interface of all the Google cruft, Surfshark selectively routes only certain apps through VPN, and assorted apps cover the combination of things I stream externally and internally on Plex. The whole thing feels smoother and cleaner than most commercial streaming boxes I’ve encountered.
Somewhere along the way I also accidentally reawakened the person who gets excited by:
- Reverse proxies
- SSL certificates
- DNS propagation
- Multicast traffic
- Graceful UPS shutdown behaviour
Whether dashboards have the correct border radius
I regret nothing.
What I love most is that it not longer feels like a pile of separate gadgets.
Everything talks to everything else.
The NAS handles storage and services. Plex handles media. HDHomeRun handles TV. AdGuard handles DNS. Tailscale stitches the entire thing remotely. Homarr surfaces everything cleanly. The Shield makes it pleasant to actually use day to day.
And underneath all the nerdy nonsense, the original goal still quietly works perfectly: the Macs backup automatically, the Plex library is centralised, and everything feels vastly more robust than it did before.
It’s just that the “simple NAS storage project” accidentally evolved into a full-blown self-hosted ecosystem somewhere along the way – thanks to a geeky tendency, awareness of the kind of things that could be achieved – that can, thanks to the power of AI assistants, be converted into clear step by step instructions to achieve what you need!
I’m sure there’ll be more tinkering to come…
Goddammit 
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