Initially i went the Raspberry Pi route, and in a few months i had 4 or 5 of them running, which was where it started turning into a chore. While i enjoy tinkering, i don't particularly enjoy keeping a host of machine up to date.
Fast forward a couple of years, and my home setup now looks like this :
- UBNT EdgeRouter for that sweet affordable hardware L2TP/IPSec VPN.
- Intel NUC6, Running everything internet facing in FreeBSD Jails.
- Intel NUC7, Running everything internally available through Docker, along with Time Machine backups.
- Synology DS716+, Holds all data from both NUC machines, as well as personal files (documents/photos/music/movies)
Resilio Sync is running on the external NUC to provide an "always on" node.
I have a couple of ODroid HC1 boxes that holds my backups, one at home and one at a remote location.
The only thing i have yet to migrate is mail, which is still located at GSuite. I've moved several times, but every time i decide it's not worth the effort. Since "everybody" uses GMail every mail i send will eventually get indexed as well, regardless of where i store my own mail. I use GSuite for hosting 5 domains, and i've yet to find an alternative that doesn't require either lots of money or lots of administration from me.