---
title: "Running a home server in the crawl space under the floor"
language: en
topics: ["SSH", "cloud", "creating", "data", "hacking", "howto", "lifestyle", "linux", "networking", "programming", "server", "vim", "work"]
full_article_url: https://willem.com/en/2017-08-31_clouds-below-my-floor/
---
# Running a home server in the crawl space under the floor

*A dry spot below the floor works fine for backup hardware.*

> Yes, if the space is dry. I run a Debian backup server on concrete tiles in the crawl space under my floor. Check for moisture first, a cheap humidity sensor settles any doubt.

The server began life as a power efficient, silent desktop. I removed the optical drive to make room for extra memory and hard disks, and it now holds two 8TB drives, 16TB in total. It runs Debian GNU/Linux, the same software as my corporate servers, so HTTP, SFTP, SSH and rsync all work as on any normal server.
The crawl space is reached through a hatch near the front door. Years of utterly dry dust told me it had seen no moisture, and I stacked concrete tiles into a small tower to lift the electronics off the ground. Electronics and water do not mix.
Connected with shielded CAT6 to the router, rsync moved about 104 gigabytes in an hour, peaking above 230 megabit. I use it purely as an additional backup for production files and databases, never for production computing: a real datacenter offers redundancy in power and connectivity that a house cannot match.