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Why Build a Home Mini Data Center?

Answering this question honestly, for each of us individually, is fundamental because it will determine the outcome and likelihood of success or failure. If you're building something just because you heard about it from the latest content creator, or because "everyone seems to be doing it," you're already off to a poor start.

What I've learned over the last two decades of my career is that if you're wondering whether you need something, you probably don't. These things usually come naturally as a result of the problems you encounter. The problem itself often guides you to the right tools, just like this one.

Rather than getting too deep into philosophy, I'll share my personal reasons for building a complete mini data center at home - from setting up the physical rack and hardware (Raspberry Pis and Mini PCs), to configuring MikroTik networking equipment, and deploying Kubernetes:

End-to-End Infrastructure Knowledge​

As my career moves towards a CTO role, having end-to-end knowledge of infrastructure is essential - from physical hardware and networking to container orchestration and application deployment. Understanding the complete technology stack inside out will enable me to make better decisions and interface more effectively with stakeholders, investors, and engineering teams.

Efficient Infrastructure Provisioning​

I want to be able to provision infrastructure in under 5 minutes while thinking as little about it as possible. My focus should be on building products, not managing infrastructure. Additionally, the infrastructure needs to remain cost-efficient. Right now, I'm paying 24 euros a month for Hetzner, which equals about 300 euros a year. Within two years, the hardware for my own mini data center (which I've already paid for upfront) will have effectively paid for itself through the savings.

Complete Control Over the Stack​

Building a mini data center gives me full control over every aspect of my infrastructure:

  • Hardware: Choice of Raspberry Pis and Mini PCs for different workloads
  • Networking: Custom MikroTik setup for advanced networking capabilities
  • Storage: Dedicated storage solutions
  • Orchestration: Kubernetes (K3s) for container management
  • Security: End-to-end control over security measures

Keeping My Skills Sharp​

Maintaining a complete data center forces me to regularly maintain and upgrade various components - from hardware and networking to software and orchestration. This helps me retain and sharpen the technical skills I've developed over time but might not frequently use in my day-to-day work. By continuing to use these skills, I ensure they remain active and relevant.

I see the future of infrastructure leaning towards on-premises​

As hardware becomes more efficient and cheaper to acquire, I predict that the future of infrastructure won't be cloud-only as it may seem now. While cloud solutions like GCP, AWS, and Azure are incredibly powerful, they come with high costs (even though they often save your engineers time) and may raise privacy concerns for some companies. As fiber-optic internet becomes more globally accessible and hardware costs continue to decrease, I believe that more companies will be confident enough to shift back to hosting on their own infrastructure, especially since modern tools make it significantly easier to manage and scale.

What Are Your Reasons?​

You now know my reasons for building a complete mini data center at home. It's essential for you to either find yourself in some of these points or come up with solid reasons of your own. I highly suggest having an internal discussion with yourself to figure out whether there's value for you in undertaking this journey.

Learning new things should never be something we question; we should always strive to learn. The real question is: Should I invest time in building and maintaining a mini data center, or would my time be better spent learning another skill that will provide immediate value?