I host a home server at my house. I use this home server for many important things, such as running a DNS server and running various virtual machines through the self-hosted program KASM. The way that I do this is through an old, retired laptop computer as well as a retired desktop PC. These devices are both running Proxmox, an open-source server solution for personal and professional use. I cluster these two devices, meaning that I allow them to work together to achieve certain tasks.
Recently, I decided that it would be beneficial to run my own cloud program, similar to Google Drive, in my own server. This allows me to keep files locally and securely on my own hardware. One important thing that I did was mount an external hard drive to my device. This allowed me to get an additional two terabytes of storage on my server. Using this, I created a virtual machine to host Nextcloud. This program gives me access to any of my files from anywhere on my home network simply through an internet connection. Once this was all set up, I started to back up important files, such as photos, school documents, and other files that I need, to my device. This experience gave me great insight into creating a large file share that hundreds of people could theoretically use as well as administering said file share. This is a project that I recommend for anyone who is privacy-conscious and has a lot of files that need to be backed up for future use.