Home Servers Have NEVER Been This Easy: CasaOS + ZimaBoard 

I AM AWARE that I held up a CFL light bulb and not an LED lol. I had it in the script and then realized that was the only bulb I had on hand and went with it thinking I one would care. I was clearly wrong haha. That being said, I appreciate when people correct me on things. Just figured I would clarify since I’ve gotten so many comments on it. 😂

No need to use sudo for passwd, unless you're changing other users' passwords. If you type just "passwd" it'll just assume you want the current user

Your production skills are top notch, bud. I like the direction the channel is going.

I'm using a PC with clean OpenMediaVault Instalation and after that,installed CasaOS and Portainer for management,its PERFECT

Just wanted to thank you for the time and effort you put into when making your videos. I really enjoy watching them and the detail you go into is super helpful.

I’ve only been following you for a little while but I’ve enjoyed your honest approach to these videos. Tinkering with what you have and buying cool tech to improve our lives has been a lot of fun! Thanks for the content

@3:35, "That's less than a standard LED light bulb." As he holds up a compact twist CFL bulb Lolz! We'll just call it a "placeholder". Keep up the good work, always informative and entertaining while striking a good balance of techsplaination that allows novice to expert to understand and learn.

Thanks! This video is so good. I've watched it many times while configuring my zimaboard. This should be the official tutorial of the product, and they should pay you for the support they do not provide enough of! Thanks again! 🎉

Just discovered your channel today and I'm super impressed. You are well versed in so many different tools.

You are amazing and you teach so well, you actually give detailed information and want to help! THANK YOU !

Great tutorial on securing things and explaining in simple terms

this is incredible. Thank you for being so thorough and easy to follow. I have so many ideas for this.

Perfect timing, I m going to do this with my deskmini x300. BTW I love the intros. They are so chill.

I just got my Zimaboard and this video was very helpful. Thank you!

Great video man, explained clearly and easy to understand. Keep it up 👏🏾

Totally Happy to see how far you have come since i started looking at your channel last year. I though I was subscribed, but I wasn’t. I am now. Congratulations!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH! you helped me build my own server! I watched videos for like 3 hours straight and this is only one that is easy and user-frendly. THANK YOU SO MUCH!😊

Thank you for the videos! They are so helpful as guides and for discovering new things

I am using OMV on a laptop with a few attached external HDDs and learning a lot of new tricks watching this video. Niiice!

Man, I love your channel! Thanks for sharing this!

Fantastic guide for beginners like me that have little knowledge. I went out and bought a ZimaBoard and managed to get a Jellyfin server up and running from your very comprehensive guide. Be good if you could do more step by step guides like this.

I'm probaby not going to be running CasaOS any time soon, but this video solved my tailscale exit node and subnet problems. It now works as advertised (pun intended). Thanks for that.

I do love the simple GUI this has, but I still would recommend one of the TrueNAS versions on an old desktop. If you have two drives, they are treated like one and is mirrored all the time. When one inevitably fails, you simply just install a new one and click replace. Your data is safe. While I prefer to mirror drives, TrueNAS does offer the ability to set up a raid array.

I've been watching your videos for some time now, thanks to you I bought a slim PC AGAIN just to be able to play with it xD Casa makes the fun turn into a real deployment so thank you with all my heart for showing all of this, I got into it seriously which made my your wallet hate you, but I'm having a lot of fun :D

Boss i love the way that you explain the things I really first time watch that long video on RU-vid love from India ❤

I cant say it enough, I LOVE your intro

Thank you so much Haven, I learnt quite a lot from this. It took me days to digest all this stuff such as samba shares, media streams, vpn config, etc. I really love that I can access my LAN from outside, but I have noticed that leaving tailscale on all the time on the iPhone, I wasn't getting connected automatically to the internet on data connection. So I toggle it manually now, but it would be nice if it works seamlessly in the future.

Great content, great video editing. Really helpful. Thanks for sharing

love these videos keep up the good work. I really want to expand my knowledge on back-end computer workings, and you help me a lot. also love the server stuff because I want to eventually set up a server for me and my friends on a couple games. the only question I have with servers is how do you protect your local network while also sharing server data with friends or is this a non-issue and I'm worried about nothing?

Your intro is so satisfying.... It reminds me of my dad's old windows xp desktop startup... Btw it still starts and runs till date

great informative ,all my questions are covered in one place great job

Looks nice. I hope that it will also have the choice of BTRFS or ZFS.

I love the Conner countdown. Is like completing my own project soon. 😊 your voice is clear and straightforward lines. Nice device also. But how I wish instead of PD. Why don't use type c as power supply. So many different type of cables at home already.

Love it man! Keep it up.

Only recently come across your channel and really enjoyed the honest reviews .. This does kind a fill the spot of what I been looking for to finally make a very small lab, and use the equipement I already own (A very capeable QNAP NAS ver 4 box which I have invested in to but too scared to use it as controller) but on a tigher budget and cant afford to spend the bigger boy mini low powered computer as well of the time to be able to learn all the acclinary items (private dns / adguard network protection / tailscale VPN / pfsense router) so I can set up a small 1GB / 2.5GB lan on CAT5E / 6 cabling on a switch, use my cable supplied router in modem mode and stop them spying on me.. (with allowance for expansion - better than 100Mb service and the possibilites of going up 1GB in the future - but too costly and would be waste) This seems a more affordable, suitable and easier to learn option to investmenet in, and not become "a when I get around to it, sit on the shelf project and too scared to set it up becuase I might screw it up and expose my mini lab to the horrible things out there.. (to have unlimited bank funds and the extra over kill processing power that drags us in, but wont really be used) The "better than I have" .. but "not bigger than I want" syndrome lol - Still scary and need to keep reasearching , but its nice to find a solution which is mid level entry, rather than going to ebay for over skilled old reconnitioned solution , or feeling pushed in to go low budget like a TP/Link - smart switch solutions .. that sounds good. but you then start looking deeper and it seems too locked down , and too many flaws (espescially security) or drooling at all the other kit that real time pro / content providors have been sent for review / purchased and have a better understanding of how to setup , before doing it as a "learner" .. Just need to find a UK supplier and wait for an amazon prime day salel ;-) Thank you and great work !

You held up a fluorescent light bulb when you said LED light bulb, big difference in power usage and efficiency. Good video and info for setting up and using a home server.

CasaOS really is a game changer! You inspired me to get old desktop pc i had laying around and turn it into a home server with your papermc video! Now I am wondering if I can run CasaOs on the same hardware as my UbuntuServer PC, because it is just incredibly convenient. Maybe I can deploy casaOs in a container, which then itself deploys it's containers, dockerception.

Thanks so much for share it,looks really nice

Excellent tutorial, one of the best I've seen. Running CasaOS/Pi-hole on Pi4 (8) with 512GB M2 and 6T HDD. Looking to add Home Assistant with MotionEye add-on. An in-depth tutorial on that would be nice.

I'm playing with this on a Pi4/4GB and so far it's looking like a good stepping stone into self-hosting. One tip: want to boot your Pi4 from USB drive? turn off the "automount USB drives" in Casa's settings or it won't work.

Very useful 👍😁 Thank you so much!!

Nice work man! Don't worry about what "other" people find interesting, just do what you want to do,... I find it interesting ;)

Great tutorial for a start but not having raid support on casaOS is a pretty big deal so i hope they add it soon

Great video, you cover a lot of things I'm trying to do myself. Like you, I'm a Windows guy. But I've got a decent Intel NUC that I've wiped and want to do exactly this... Docker containers for dev work, as well as for some home automation. Hopefully I can get past the Debian issues I had prior! Thanks for making such a clear and consider video!

RAID; "redundant array of inexpensive disks"or "redundant array of independent disks" It is useful to discuss the redundancy as well as the price. Collections of disks need not be redundant or independent. Good stuff.

This helps a lot, have a lot of old pcs with i3 or I-5 2-6th gen from my dumpster and i also needed a Nas and server set some up as a Nas but needed a server, my ol pc is a homeassistant server and the others are file servers and minecraft servers

Definitely an alternative for me when raid support is implemented. I’m using UNRAID at the moment and would like to downsize the rig I’m using. Only thing to figure out is the how well transcoding will work with the hardware you suggested. I can have up to 5 people streaming at a time outside my network.

The way I see this Micro PC is, its the homelabers portable test bed witch is why its soo modular the same way a PC enthusiast uses Primochill Praxis WetBench in the past or EDIY Open Air ATX PC Frame in a portable setting. In your case it fit perfect for you as you review/test hardware components.

USEFUL!!! Thanks, I’m subbing. I’ve been thinking of a solution for some time.

Interesting video. It's got me revisiting the idea of having a dedicated home media server again. Many years ago (Getting on for 20 of them) I spent about a week of evenings struggling to try and setup an old Compaq ProLiant as a file/media server using (IIRC) "Fedora core 1" to be used on my predominantly Windows based home network. The most constructive thing I can say about that whole fiasco is that I got an interesting crash course into how Linux networking was handled. It never worked as seamlessly under Fedora as I'd hoped, and eventually it had a spare copy of Windows XP Pro chucked on it just to get the (Almost) aggro free networking I'd hoped to get from Linux. It was also a very power hungry system to have running 24/7, so when you showed how this CasaOS does a fair amount of the setup itself, and said that the ZimaBoard idles at around 6W, you got my full attention. :D

Hardware haven is growing!

Excellent! Just what I needed. Thank you! If I use OpenVPN or Wireguard on my router, I should be able to connect to the server from my phone right? With vpn app or wireguard app enabled.

Good timing, I'm thinking about running a home server right now.

I went with mini-itx AM4 motherboard and 5700g that is downclocked, install it in the drawer of TV shelf together with one M2 SSD for OS and 4 HDDs for actual storage. Quiet and very capable. ideally you need to prepare raid volume before installing Casaos by using mdadm, so it is already there mounted as a volume.

It's more complicated, but I would personally use something like TrueNAS, Scale for the storage side of things (it supports ZFS and RAID), and set up CasaOS or Umbrel as a virtual machine within TrueNAS. The main downside is that it only supports x86-based platforms.

Awesome video & info! What's your solution for powering & connecting other hard drive 3.5"?

CasaOS IS SO CLEAN I LOVE IT. Installed it on a Proxmox VM

Lol. 15 minutes ago I definitely replaced this one with Fujitsu Q956, although it may find some use. ZB216 has nice 2.5W idle power consumption and 7.5W compiling Linux kernel including verbatim sata ssd disk. I found that this does not have too much power to handle https connection via nginx reverse proxy and for generating thumbnail on nextcloud at the same time, but I have to admit that (just like Raspberry PI) it's fine for many tasks. Fujitsu USFF PC consumes 5.5W idle, 8W with usb wifi and 37W at full load having i5-6500t processor which is quite powerful. What I've done with Zimaboard is that I've installed OpenSuse Leap on SATA SSD with docker+docker-compose. I left debian there basically for the system rescue mostly intact. For month it was running NextCloud, nginx-proxy-manager, two instances of mariadb and optionally OpenBox+tint2 as desktop via xrdp. In the end, I'm sacrificing additional 5.5W of idle power for having four to five times more performance and got both for pretty much the same price. Additional cost to zimaboard was SSD and display cable, with Fujitsu it got worse: USB wifi dongle, 1TB NVMe, 32GB of RAM (cca 135 eur for PC, 135 for ram and ssd, 23 for dongle). But it's surprisingly good desktop PC consuming fraction of what Ryzen5900x consumes. Ofc, it's another huge step in performance.

Great Video!

just yesterday i've bought a set of lenovo thinkcentres, 3 of them for $60 total, they came with i3s and 4gb ram each, definitely gonna give this a try

Good setup tbh See you in the next video!!

Interesting stuff !!!! THIS IS REVOLUTIONARY!!!

this is by far one of they besssst videos ive come across for home automation and server setting up.. honestly has me ready to completely change my current setup/plans.. and do this..

Thanks for this. I have a Truenas server running but I've been thinking about a small footprint / low power 2nd server for additional backups and docker.

Hell yes, excellent video 😎👍

How are you running Pfsense in your local setup!? Do you recommend use Zimaboard for it!? Tks! Awesome content bro! 👏🏻

Great video, more videos on zimaboard are welcome :). Can you make a video on tailscale vpn and wireguard, mostly compare on speeds, etc ... and how to use vpn with docker containers

This is a great video! Had i not just rebuilt my servers i might snag one of these Zima boards! Wonder how Tailspin interacts with a firewall like pfSense...

Excellent video.

This is good, dietpi with casaos, using dietpi for supporting old printer and now it can be nas :)

Thank you! 🎉

Would you suggest using this on a Proxmox hypervisor as well? Or is the CasaOS only something you would use with the Zimaboard specifically?

Wanna see more advanced storage solutions in the near future that then it will be top tier.

for second I thought that you are Glen TWD lol! Thanks for great video!

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Zimaboard should pay you.

I'm curious to know - can the ZimaBoard run a Minecraft server through the Docker? Nothing extreme but a basic 5-10 player server? What is its performance like?

Thanks. Very informative. Won't use it because of RAID but good to know this exists. FreeNAS/TrueNAS rules.

New subscriber here. Really great video, thank you for that. I have one question about HomeAssistant. Can we somehow point to the external storage drives to be used by default by HomeAssistant even though the installation is in the internal storage? I'm having my solar production and electric consumption running 24/7 in HA and it's a lot of data for just 32Gb. Thanks

Just the video I was looking for. Great! Would you mind comparing CasaOS to Umbrel or other similar projects?

Great video! Does CasaOS have automatic enable SSL Certs like CapRover? How easy would it be to use a CasaOS homeserver to backup a VPS with Duplicati? Would Tailscale or other be required? Thanks.

Cool vid. Subbed!😊

This is beautiful, I use openmediavault but im a sucker for beautiful UI

Nice videos man Do you think you can make one with zimaboard running true nas with a wire guard vpn or should I just buy a mini PC with 32gb ram with 2tb SSD Can't seem to find a video for this if you can make one @hardwarehaven that would be great

I am waiting for your 100k celebration video!!!

Thank you

Thanks ❤

As much as I think the zimaboard is great, I think you could do a lot more with an older optiplex tower and installing CasaOS in that instead... but thanks for the comprehensive tutorial, appreciate you taking the time and being so thorough

I'm putting this here because I couldn't find direct confirmation anywhere before I bought my 8/32 zima: The external sata ports do support multiple disks via esata enclosures with sata to esata cables. I have 9x 4TB HDDs across the 2 sata ports on mine with 1x mediasonic and 1x syba esata enclosures running ubuntu 24.04 server on the board.

awesome video, i need to get a home server so bad.

Nice video! I am searching whether I can change the default app directory from the internal mmc to one of the connected sata drives but haven't found anything yet. Does anyone know? I don't want to change the container all the time just to change a path when I really want a default apps installation path on a specific folder. Any comments are appreciated.

Hi, thanks for the video. The dual drive enclosure is not available. Could you suggest a good alternative?

Have you tried mdadm to create the array in the os. I would think once you do that it would become available to casaos like any other drive

amazing video

10:56 i just completed the raid setup via the Linux command line. Its working perfectly..

Would this be something good to add along with my Synology as part of a backup solution? Either Synology-->>Zima Board or Zima Board -->> Synology.

Thanks for letting me know there is no RAID support at the beginning.

I'm just alittle curious if you ever tested a 3.5 drives or does it only support 2.5 drives through the sata adapter.

Found this on my recommended list and it looks like i want to setup a zimaboard server as well. One thing i'd like to know is can I install my games on this and then play it on any or multiple machine? this is one of my biggest question as i've seen some on internet forums that some may not be able to play games installed on a NAS. PS: I have games from steam, epic, and GOG.

YUNO host has been around for a while and also makes home serving just as easy

Do I see that there is an app for Unifi controller on CasaOS? How cool would that be. Any chance you might show that in the future? Cheers and thanks. Wanted to put it on a Pi, but this board and OS may be a good alternative, especially for price, availability and transcoding video.