You might be thinking: “Is this just a homelab?” And yes — technically, it is. However, running services in a self-managed environment quickly surfaces many of the same questions that appear in larger, production systems. Why? The motivation is straightforward: I needed a server that could run continuously (24/7) and host multiple long-running services, including: Jellyfin (media streaming) NAS services (storage) Aria2 (download management) Additional containerised applications running via Docker Rather than focusing on scale, the goal was to operate a real system with real constraints: limited hardware resources, a residential network, and services that should remain available without constant manual intervention. ...