My Unraid Service Layout: NAS, Containers, Monitoring, and Daily Use

Unraid is useful because NAS storage, Docker services, and home automation can live on one machine. As services grow, layout discipline becomes necessary for migration, backup, and troubleshooting.

Layout Principle

Runtime configuration, persistent data, media files, and backups should be separated. Applications can be rebuilt; data must be recoverable.

flowchart TB
    A["Unraid Host"] --> B["appdata: container config"]
    A --> C["data: databases / business data"]
    A --> D["media: photos / videos / downloads"]
    A --> E["backup: snapshots / exports"]
    A --> F["monitoring: Prometheus / Grafana"]

Engineering Scenario

When blog, database, monitoring, and media services all run in Docker, rebuilding containers is not the main risk. Confusing data paths are.

Checklist

• Each service has a fixed appdata path.
• Important data is mounted separately and backed up.
• Monitoring and logs do not fill the main data disk.
• Containers can be rebuilt from documentation.