> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.adamsooley.ca/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What’s Running on My Unraid Server in 2026 - URL: https://www.adamsooley.ca/whats-running-on-my-unraid-server-in-2026/ - Published: 2026-10-30T22:19:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-02T23:20:15.000Z - Author: Adam Sooley - Tags: Self-Hosting & Homelab At some point, my Unraid server stopped being a server and quietly became an entire IT department. What started as a place to store some files and run Jellyfin has gradually turned into the centre of a ridiculous amount of stuff around our house. Photos, home automation, security cameras, websites, passwords, recipes, media, backups and monitoring, there always seems to be one more thing I can self-host. [Storage Freedom Starts Here - Powered by Unraid OS - Unraid.net AccountPurchase and manage your Unraid OS license. Effortlessly manage your Unraid.net account, access license keys, view purchase history, update account info, and upgrade your Unraid OS with ease.![](https://static.ghost.org/v5.0.0/images/link-icon.svg)Unraid.net Account![](https://www.adamsooley.ca/content/images/thumbnail/seo-unraid-fd10a613-307f-4534-80db-ec4b31800308.png)](https://unraid.net/pricing?via=sooley) There are now dozens of Docker containers running on the server. Some of those are databases and supporting services required by the applications below, so I won't bore everyone by listing every PostgreSQL, MariaDB or Redis container separately. Here's what I'm actually running. ## Authentication & Security ### Authentik Authentik has become the authentication system sitting in front of a lot of my self-hosted services. Instead of maintaining separate logins everywhere, I can use Authentik to provide centralized authentication and control who can access different applications. There are actually several Docker containers behind Authentik, including its worker, LDAP service, database and Redis. They're all required to make the whole thing work, but from my perspective they're really one service. ### Vaultwarden Vaultwarden is my self-hosted password manager and one of those services that isn't particularly exciting until you think about how important it is. It provides a Bitwarden-compatible server while letting me keep the data on infrastructure I control. It's also a good example of why I self-host. It's not always about saving money. Sometimes it's simply about having more control over something important. ## Home Automation & Security ### Home Assistant and Frigate Home Assistant is basically the brain of our smart home. Lights, sensors, TVs, temperature monitoring, waste collection information, cameras and a growing collection of automations all eventually seem to find their way into Home Assistant. Frigate handles the security-camera side of things, including my Reolink cameras and doorbell. The two work extremely well together, letting camera events become part of the rest of the smart home rather than living inside another isolated app. This is probably one of the areas where self-hosting has made the biggest practical difference around our house. ## Photos ### Immich Immich has become our self-hosted photo-management system and one of my favourite applications running on the server. Photos from our phones can be automatically backed up to my own server instead of relying entirely on another company's cloud. It gives us the features you'd expect from a modern photo service while keeping the actual photo library at home. Immich also needs its own database and supporting services behind the scenes, but thankfully I don't have to think about those very often. ## Files & Documents ### Nextcloud and OnlyOffice Nextcloud gives me my own personal cloud for files and other data. It needs a database behind it, but once everything is running it mostly just sits there and does its job. I've also added OnlyOffice Document Server, which means documents can be opened and edited directly through the setup. Together they give me something much closer to a self-hosted cloud productivity platform instead of simply having a folder full of files sitting on the server. ## Media ### Jellyfin, Seerr and Jellystat Jellyfin is the centre of our self-hosted media setup. Movies and TV shows live on the server and Jellyfin provides the interface for watching everything around the house. Seerr provides the request side of the system, while Jellystat tracks Jellyfin statistics and usage. Jellystat needs a database as well, because apparently even watching TV needs a database and analytics now. ## Media Automation ### Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, NZBGet, qBittorrent and FlareSolverr This group handles most of the automation surrounding the media library. Sonarr manages TV shows, Radarr handles movies and Prowlarr provides indexer management. NZBGet and qBittorrent handle their respective download jobs, while FlareSolverr helps applications communicate with sites protected by certain web challenges. Once everything is configured properly, most of it happens quietly in the background. Which is exactly how infrastructure should work. Until something breaks at 11:30 at night and I suddenly decide that fixing Docker containers is more important than sleeping. ## Keeping the Media Library Under Control ### Maintainerr, Janitorr, Cleanuparr and Huntarr Of course, automating the addition of media eventually creates another problem: cleaning everything up. Maintainerr, Janitorr and Cleanuparr help manage that side of things, identifying content that can be removed and generally keeping the library from growing forever. Huntarr helps track down missing or wanted content and works alongside the rest of the \*arr ecosystem. Essentially, I have Docker containers adding things and another group of Docker containers cleaning up after them. ## Websites ### Ghost-Sooley and Ghost-ATC Yes, the website you're reading right now is running on the same Unraid server. Ghost runs adamsooley.ca, and another Ghost runs the Across the Cove website. Both need databases behind them, but I run those separately and let Ghost worry about the website side. Hosting my own websites gives me considerably more control over the entire setup, although it also means that when something breaks I can't submit a support ticket and complain about the hosting company. I *am* the hosting company and that's unfortunate at times. ## Recipes ### Mealie Mealie hosts our recipe collection and is one of the more straightforward services on the server. Instead of recipes being scattered across bookmarks, screenshots, pieces of paper and websites containing someone's entire childhood before finally revealing how much flour you need, they can all live in one searchable place. ## Bookmarks & Web Archiving ### Linkwarden Linkwarden is my self-hosted bookmark manager and web archiving system. It lets me save useful websites and resources without depending entirely on browser bookmarks. It needs a database behind it, but otherwise it's a fairly simple service. It's particularly useful for things I actually want to find again rather than throwing another bookmark into a folder containing 600 links I'll never look at. ## Website Analytics ### Umami Umami gives me privacy-focused website analytics without needing to send everything through Google Analytics or another large analytics platform. It uses its own database and gives me the basic information I actually care about, visitors, pages, traffic sources and general trends without turning the whole thing into an advertising platform. ## Monitoring ### Uptime Kuma and Speedtest Tracker Uptime Kuma monitors the various services running around my network and lets me know when something that should be working isn't. Speedtest Tracker regularly tests and records my Internet connection performance. It also needs a database to store all those results. It's particularly useful when you suspect your Internet has been acting strangely and would prefer some actual numbers instead of saying: *"I swear it was slow yesterday."* ## My Server Homepage ### Homepage Homepage gives me a single dashboard for the homelab. Instead of remembering IP addresses and ports for dozens of applications, I can open one page and get links and status information for the services running on the server. With this many containers, a dashboard has gone from being something nice to have to something approaching a requirement. ## Useful Tools ### IT-Tools and Omnitools IT-Tools is basically a giant collection of useful little web utilities: converters, encoders, generators, networking tools and other things I regularly need. Omnitools fills a similar role with another collection of browser-based utilities for working with files, images, text and other everyday tasks. Neither is a massive application, but they're exactly the sort of thing that makes a homelab useful. Instead of searching Google for some random website every time I need a little utility, I can just use my own. ## Database Administration ### Adminer Even though I'm not listing all the database containers individually, there are quite a few databases running behind everything on this list. That's where Adminer comes in. It gives me a simple web interface for accessing those databases when I need to inspect something, troubleshoot a problem or make a change. Hopefully I don't need it very often, though history suggests otherwise. ## Backups ### ZeroByte ZeroByte is part of my backup strategy and helps make sure important data exists somewhere other than the primary copy sitting on the Unraid server. [How to Back Up unRaid: Appdata Backup, ZeroByte & Canadian Backblaze B2Self-hosting on unRaid is great, but parity isn't a backup. Here is how I set up automated local appdata backups and encrypted, Canadian-hosted remote backups using ZeroByte and Backblaze B2.![](https://www.adamsooley.ca/content/images/icon/A-1-76424a4c-b112-4ce5-bf37-bee10bd53474.png)AdamSooley.ca - Boring one person at a time!Adam Sooley![](https://www.adamsooley.ca/content/images/thumbnail/unraid-backup-1-e4023a30-3d74-47db-bbe1-17b2dc3c6cf7.jpg)](https://www.adamsooley.ca/how-to-back-up-unraid-appdata-backup-zerobyte-canadian-backblaze-b2-2/) Backups are probably the least exciting part of self-hosting right up until the moment you actually need one. After dealing with corrupted databases and other adventures over the years, I've become considerably less interested in learning that lesson again. ## So, Why Run All of This? Looking at the entire list written down makes the setup seem slightly ridiculous and maybe it is, but that's also what I like about self-hosting. There wasn't some grand plan where I decided I needed dozens of Docker containers running in my basement. The server grew gradually. - Jellyfin solved one problem. - Home Assistant solved another. - Immich gave us control over our photos. - Ghost let me host my own websites. - Mealie organized our recipes. - Vaultwarden handles passwords. - Nextcloud handles files. Then those applications needed databases, authentication, monitoring, backups and various supporting tools and suddenly here we are. The best part is that most of it is running on hardware I already own, sitting in my house and under my control. I'm relying less on outside cloud services, keeping more of our data at home and learning quite a bit along the way. The downside is that I've apparently become the system administrator for my own house. Nobody is paying me for this position and the users are demanding. > It's a lot and in the end, it's boring! And I'll probably install something else next week.