Raspberry Pi 5: From Hobby Board to Cloud Workhorse
Hosting SQL databases, remote tools, and storage off-grid
I built a headless Raspberry Pi 5 server that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. The board runs from a 128GB Samsung NVMe SSD using a Geekworm M.2 hat, and the entire OS has been migrated off the USB boot stick and onto NVMe.
Core Features
- 💾 PostgreSQL database hosting, accessible remotely via pgAdmin or CLI
- 📡 DuckDNS used to bind a static domain to a dynamic home IP
- 🔐 Fail2ban and firewall rules for basic security and brute-force protection
- 🖥️ Remote Desktop via RDP with optional GUI boot environment
- 📷 Local file/photo server under construction for iCloud migration
This project is part sandbox, part productivity tool. It lets me host lightweight DBs for apps or side projects without relying on Azure or AWS, and gives me fine-grained control over system resources. Plus—running SSMS queries from a Pi-backed database halfway across the country is just cool.