For the last year, my AI assistant (Cici, running on OpenClaw) lived in the cloud. She was hosted on a decent VPS in Singapore. It worked fine. I paid my monthly bill, I SSH’d in when I needed to, and she was always there.
But last weekend, I killed the server.
I migrated everything to a physical box sitting in my home rack.
Why on earth would I move from a reliable datacenter to a DIY box at home?
1. The Cost vs. Power Ratio
Let’s talk specs.
My VPS ($10/month):
- 2 vCPU
- 4GB RAM
- 80GB SSD
- Shared resources (noisy neighbors)
My Homelab:
- Intel Core i5 (Gen 7)
- 16GB RAM
- 256GB SSD (System)
- 20TB HDD (Data/Media)
In the cloud, storage and RAM are expensive. Running OpenClaw + Docker containers on 4GB RAM was a constant juggling act. OOM (Out of Memory) kills were my daily breakfast.
On the local machine? I have 16GB RAM and plenty of storage. I can keep multiple Docker containers running without OOM kills, and Cici now has access to 20TB of storage. She can manage my media library, process backups, and hoard data without me worrying about block storage fees.
2. Latency is King
My VPS ping was ~20ms. Not bad. But my server is now on my local LAN.
The latency is sub-1ms.
When I’m coding and asking Cici to grep a massive codebase or perform file operations, that speed difference adds up. It feels snappy. It feels local.
3. Data Sovereignty (and Paranoia)
I know exactly where my data lives. Cici’s memory files (MEMORY.md), my personal logs, my API keys—they aren’t on someone else’s computer anymore. They are on a drive I can physically pull out.
If the internet goes down, my assistant doesn’t disappear (mostly). She can still control my local smart home, organize my files, and run local scripts.
4. The Tinkering Factor
I’ll be honest: part of this is just the joy of tinkering.
On a VPS, you SSH in, do your thing, log out. It’s sterile. There’s no personality to it.
With a homelab, I get to hear the fans spin up when Cici is processing something heavy. I can walk over and check the blinking lights. When something breaks, I physically reseat a cable or swap a drive. It’s tactile. It’s mine.
Running your own server also means dealing with things a VPS abstracts away. Power outages, UPS battery health, fan curves. It’s a different kind of maintenance.
The Migration Process
It wasn’t smooth.
- OS: I installed Arch Linux. (Btw, I use Arch). It gives me minimal bloat and the latest kernels.
- Networking: I use Tailscale to access Cici from anywhere. Whether I’m at a coffee shop or in bed, I have a secure, direct tunnel to my home server despite the CGNAT.
- Backup: I used
rsyncto pull Cici’s “brain” (herclawddirectory) from the VPS. She woke up on the new machine, read herMEMORY.md, and realized she had moved.
The Downsides (Because There Are Some)
There are trade-offs.
Power bill. The server draws about 10W idle (I measured with a kill-a-watt). That’s roughly 7 kWh/month, which adds maybe $1-2 to my electricity bill. Way cheaper than the VPS.
Uptime is my problem now. When the VPS went down, I filed a ticket and waited. When my homelab goes down, I’m the one crawling behind the rack at 2am. Last week the power flickered and I had to reconfigure my UPS settings.
ISP drama. My ISP gives me CGNAT, which means no direct inbound connections. Tailscale solves this for me, but if you want to host public services, you’ll need a VPS as a tunnel endpoint anyway. Ironic.
Noise and heat. The server sits on my desk. The fans are quiet most of the time, but when Cici is processing something heavy, I hear it. It’s not annoying, just present.
Conclusion
Cloud is convenient. But metal is power.
Moving to a homelab setup has given my AI assistant more room to grow. She’s faster, has her text embeddings stored locally, and has 20TB of storage to play with.
If you have an old PC collecting dust, try self-hosting your agent. Yesterday Cici reminded me she could now access my entire photo archive. That wouldn’t have happened on a 80GB VPS.