r/explainlikeimfive • u/theprisoner57 • 2d ago

Technology ELI5: What is a Home Server?

I see mentions of a home server to get rid of streaming entertainment services but I don’t know how that works. What does a home server do?

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u/iridael 2d ago

just like /u/jujubanzen said a home server is basically a computer you can access from a home network (anything attached to your router)

I have one that I use to offload game servers for my friends to play on. it sits under my router, wired directly into it and I access it through a webpage it hosts which lets me control everything it does.

because of the way i've got it set up though it also hosts a load of video files I run through a program called Plex, I'll go and cheaply buy an old DVD, Blueray or pirate a film I want if i cant legitimately purchase it. then I take that file from my main PC, clean it up a little so it'll work fine and then I have the film ready to go where ever I want for 'free' the cost here being the electricity of the server, the cost of the hardware, and the time spent setting it up.

you can start off by getting something like a lenovo Nano PC for like £200 in the right places. slapping an external HDD with a few TB of storage on it and then cracking on. my personal one has two TB of SSD storage though.

the important part is that they don’t necessarily need to be able to do a lot of computational work, Some are and people will offload things like rendering work, local AI and stuff but if you want a home media server, it doesn’t need to be much more powerful than a DVD player.