Introduction
The ZimaBoard is a low-cost single board server that can be hacked to run various open source applications and services. It has both the expandability of an x86 SBC and the power of a micro server, and supports Linux, Windows, OpenWrt, pfSense, Android and more.
My homelab has been growing in size and complexity for about a year now, initially running on an aging QNAP TS-453A NAS. I recently doubled the RAM in the NAS to 16GB but the processor is struggling to keep up with the demands of my hosted services (the Intel Celeron Processor N3150 was launched in 2015).
I also have a passionate hatred for QTS 5, the OS of QNAP. It contains BusyBox which is a software suite that provides several Unix utilities in a single executable file. Not Linux. There are ways to hack around the massive limitations to the OS, such as Entware - a package manager to help replacing missing command line utilities. And of course QNAP bundle a ton of their own software bloat that is not removable.
So I decided to give the ZimaBoard a go and construct a personal cloud server. I went for the top end device with 8GB of RAM and installed minimal CLI Debian 12 server. I also purchased a couple of SATA SSDs and a 3D printed chassis.
I have now shifted the majority of my hosted services over to this device (including this blog) and am very pleased with the results.
I am strongly considering upgrading my old NAS to their interesting new device called the ZimaCube later this year. I will then use this ZimaBoard as a Firewall utilising pfSense.