A blizzard was a good time to focus on my #icloudescape.

Picked up a pair of UniFi NAS units — one home, one remote, syncing nightly over site-to-site VPN.

Traded an M2 iPad Air I never touched for a M4 Mac Mini running Parachute, which incrementally pulls down my iCloud content so I actually have a real backup and not just a sync. iCloud is a sync service, not a backup — and getting into this mindset was the biggest ‘unlock’ in the project.

My UnRAID server handles daily working storage, media, Time Machine, and acts as a quick restore source.

Backblaze with a private encryption key sits at the end of the chain as an offsite layer I don’t have to manage.

I’m planning to explore Immich to manage and view the backup photo library when I have more time to dig into Postgres and associated dependencies but wanted to get the overall data pipeline configured first.

I also now feel more confident in safely storing my parent’s long term backup as they move away from having a home PC.

#SelfHosted #HomeNAS