2025-11-01 || Tags: self-hosting n100 umbrel docker
I'm a big believer in decoupling yourself from proprietary services. There are many reasons. Most of them come from a privacy angle.
Running your own server is often the best way to go about this. Unfortunately, this is often neither cheap nor easy. One standard (and very cost effective and one I recommend to look to do first) way is to use an old computer. But what if you don't have one because you've moved country and didn't bring your desktop with you?
There are a few other good options which I have tried:
These were good, but I had problems with all relating to power consumption, stability, cost and/or raw processing power.
I think that the best way forward is a simple N100 mini-pc running UmbrelOS.
NOTE: I am not recommending buying the Umbrel Home device that they sell on their website. I'm sure it's a good device and has good support etc - I just haven't tried it and it does seem a bit expensive.
N100 refers to a low power (computation-wise) Intel processor. It seems to be a bit of a favourite for mini-pc manufacturers at the moment.
I got mine from AliExpress for roughly £100 with 16GB RAM and 512GB NVMe - more than enough for what I need. Just these numbers alone really show how more powerful than a device like this is more powerful that a Raspberry Pi.
This is a very user friendly (as far as running your own server goes) "home cloud" device that very easily enables you to install and run various applications with only a few clicks.
UmbrelOS, I think, originally started as a Bitcoin/cryptocurrency focused operating system but don't let that put you off at all. It does provide those applications, but it does so so much more.
An excellent Dropbox replacement
An excellent photo storage and sharing solution
Fully-featured and self-hosted Github/Gitlab replacement
Password manager replacement
(note that this requires a moderate amount of networking knowledge to set up properly)
There are a few options to do this. Maybe not the easiest, but the most straight forward for me was to use the VPS I rent as a proxy. See this page for more info.
The only recurring problem I have encountered is the home-baked umbrel login system. By way of example, if you want to install Mealie, Umbrel automatically put a little log in window before you can access it.
If you were to only ever login to your local apps from within your network, then this is no problem. But I run a proxy thingy so that I can access my Mealie instance from anywhere in the world.
Accessing this app remotely via a proxy breaks though. Which sucks.
The fix is simple. Just add the following line to your docker-compose.yml file under the sections services > app_proxy > environment"
PROXY_AUTH_ADD: "false"
The actual frustration here comes from the fact that when you update your application, your docker-compose.yml file will be overwritten. Thus, you will need to add this line every time you update an app that defaults to having the umbrel login system.
Not the end of the world, just something to note.
There are other UmbrelOS-like systems out there which I'm sure do just as well. I have heard that CasaOS is really excellent too. If you have a TrueNAS server already running, their app ecosystem is also excellent.