We have a realme laptop (2021) at home - not that old - but it was quickly becoming tethered to the wall due to significant battery drain issues. Instead of changing the battery, I decided to give it a new purpose: a dedicated home server. It's not your typical home server setup, but it suits my needs perfectly, and I'm quite happy with the result. ## The setup  Since the laptop can be conveniently powered by a Type-C adapter (a big win), I removed the ailing battery. With the hardware sorted, I partitioned the drive and installed Ubuntu Server. ## EasyPanel and Cloudflare(d)  I wanted a simple, web-based management system, so I installed EasyPanel. For secure universal access, say `panel.custom.tld`, I implemented [Cloudflare](https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-networks/get-started/) Tunnel. My `config.yml` for EasyPanel looked like this: ``` url: http://localhost:3000 tunnel: credentials-file: /root/.cloudflared/.json ``` I ran the tunnel using: ```cloudflared tunnel run eplocal```.  Then I routed EasyPanel to a custom domain, then configured the experimental Cloudflare tunnel settings within EasyPanel. This lets me point each containerized project to its own custom zone in Cloudflare. ## Results and next steps The setup is working well. `tmp.mgx.me` is a containerized status engine currently hosted on this machine. Uptime is almost 48 hours. I am satisfied with the stability. I've ordered a new wattmeter from Pinduoduo and am looking forward to getting the average power usage information after a thorough test. I know this isn't an ideal homeserver, but I like the solution. I already use my Mac Mini in a similar fashion -- it's always on and sometimes runs for months (unless there's a major power outage or an OS upgrade is due). With an ideal idle power consumption of around 5W, it's incredibly efficient. I'm hoping to get close to that efficiency with this setup.  The screenshot represents `powerstat -R`. These numbers (for CPU + DRAM) come from Intel's RAPL interface. Curious to see the actual efficiency in the coming days. Update --- **Update:** I got the wattmeter. The system averages 2.5W, which isn't bad at all when running headless with Ubuntu accessed remotely from my Mac.