My latest...

As part of my (soon to be ending) job, I need to have multiple VMs with different versions / configurations of a software package. I have all these on a pretty powerful Macbook Pro with 16GB / 1TB. If I'm working at home, I'd copy the VM onto my iMac and copy back when finished. Of course, sometimes I'd forget where I was up to, and I do not know which was the latest version.

"Use the cloud!!!" I hear you shout. I would, but it gets very expensive when you need 8-12GB Ram and 200GB drives as well as a relatively beefy processor.

Anyway, as I've got a server at home (with Windows 10 Pro), I've now moved all the VMs onto that, so I have my own cloud. It's got 32GB RAM, and I can run 3 VMs at the same time (I was pretty much limited to 1 VM on the laptop). Everything gets backed up to iDrive overnight, and I also have Acronis TrueImage that takes a local backup to a 1TB NVMe portable drive.

The PiVPN lets me get in remotely, and I've been using my MacBook 12 as a client (the MacBook Pro is going back to my company when my redundancy kicks in). The MacBook is pretty low powered, but it does the job fine.

So, I've now got my own personal cloud. God knows why I didn't do it sooner. Of course, this relies on me having internet access...