My desktop serves as a backup file server, and I recently upgraded it from FreeNAS to TrueNAS SCALE for better performance and more features.

I plan to automate the backup process of my homelab services, I have connected an ESP8266 to the power switch of my desktop, enabling me to turn on the machine remotely using MQTT. I then plan to automate the Rsync backup process to match the boot times. That way all the photos that are on my Raspberry Pi Nextcloud instance can be backed up. Once the backup is complete, I will then get the the machine to shutdown automatically.

The only issue with the automation is that I would need to work out how to automate the sending of the MQTT command. I will likely spin up my own hosted MQTT server on my Pi in a Docker container. I will probably then integrate the automation into my Home Assistant setup.