If you are like most Americans, who spend almost more than a reasonable amount of money on home tech, it can be hard to dignify purchasing a server to go along with everything. Regardless, there are tons of people who are passionate about their servers and home networking setup. 

There are a few instances where servers make life easier: managing and hosting data. 

Automatically Back-up Data To Home Server

Yes, you can use a NAS or external hard drive to back up your data, but many servers also come with multiple, redundant storage compartments. When your server is connected to a router, you can directly and wirelessly transfer data back and forth between your devices and the server. 

Additionally, you can set your server as a backup location for any computer plugged into your network, and make sure everything backs up while you sleep. 

Access Any Data From Anywhere At Home

As long as your server or NAS has high throughput, you will be able to access anything from programs to music on any of your devices. CPU Modder was even able to stream game data from a NAS over WiFi with negligible stuttering. 

WiFi is the slowest way to pull data from your network, but it will easily be able to handle streaming audio, video, and music. So, if you’re the type of person who likes to re-watch home videos, it will be straightforward to open your phone, access the server, and stream a video. 

The high throughput of new servers comes in handy if you are a content creator or gamer. 

Self Host A Website With Your Home Server

Let’s say you are starting a blog but don’t want to pay for a hosting service or value being able to have full control over the site. A server will allow you to host a website with up to a certain amount of traffic. 

Self-hosting a website usually costs more than paying for a hosting service. This is because your server will be needing to run 24/7 to make sure the site is always available. The cost of electricity when running a small blog is generally higher than what you would pay for someone else to host it. 

So realistically, a majority of people hosting a site on only one server are likely either enthusiast or trying to avoid dealing with hosting services ToS. 

Host Online Gaming Servers At Home

Judging by search queries, Minecraft players are interested in hosting their servers. This is because when you host your server, the owners of the game can’t regulate what happens. 

World of Warcraft has tons of private servers designed by individuals who want to make levelling faster, have infinite money, and play for free. While it is against the game’s ToS to play on a private server, there isn’t much of a way to enforce it. 

Home Servers Are A Great Way To Learn About IT

If you are interested in learning more about computers or networking, exploring everything that your server is capable of doing is a great way to learn. It doesn’t need to cost very much either – there is a widely accessible market for used servers on Facebook Marketplace and elsewhere.