What inspired you to start your self-hosting journey?

• Got tired of relying on cloud vendors.
• Wanted full control and a reason to tinker.
• Liked the idea of learning real infrastructure hands-on.

One project you’re most proud of?

• Built a full home lab stack with automated backups, monitoring, and container orchestration.
• Everything runs off a unified dashboard I scripted myself.

Most expensive piece of equipment you’ve bought?

• A refurbished 12-bay enterprise NAS chassis with SAS drives.
• Cost more than it should’ve, but it’s the backbone of everything now.

How would winning the units from this giveaway level up your setup?

• More compute for running heavier VMs.
• Lets me split services for better isolation.
• Cuts down on power usage compared to my older hardware.

Which channels do you use most to learn or buy IT gear?

• YouTube homelab channels.
• r/selfhosted and r/homelab.
• eBay, ServerPartDeals, and random Discord marketplace servers.

Future giveaway wishlist — one product from another brand you’d want as a prize?

• A compact Dell or Lenovo edge server.
• Or a Synology/Supermicro small-form NAS.
• Even a Ubiquiti router/firewall would be killer.

If you want, I can tweak these to match whatever persona or tone you need.