Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago

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Aaand that may never pay off at this point 💀 But I was very curious after seeing Umbrel Pro as a home server option, so I set out to make my own at a slightly better price. And since UmbrelOS is open source, I chose the Beelink ME Mini to do this since it has 6 NVMe slots.

Here’s how I did it (VERY technical):

**1. Install UmbrelOS** - Flash umbrelOS USB installer with Balena Etcher → boot mini PC → install to internal NVMe → `http://umbrel.local` setup done

**2. RAID 5 NVMe Array** - Install 4x 4TB NVMe SSDs → SSH umbrel@umbrel.local → `mdadm` RAID5 LVM → ext4 format → mount `/mnt/lvm-storage` (11TB) → `/etc/fstab` persistence

**3. Immich Photos** - App Store → Immich → edit docker-compose.yml volumes to `/mnt/lvm-storage/immich` folders

**4. OpenClaw Automation** - App Store → OpenClaw → configure workflows

**5. Samba Network Share** - SSH → `sudo apt install samba` (App Store version broken)→ add `[Umbrel-Storage]` share to `/etc/samba/smb.conf` pointing to `/mnt/lvm-storage` → `sudo smbpasswd umbrel` → cron `@reboot sleep 60 && systemctl restart smbd` (fixes Umbrel killing it) → `\\umbrel.local\Umbrel-Storage` from Windows

Not going to lie, this was extremely complicated to setup and made me doubt if umbrelOS was even worth it but it’s working and I’m happy lol.