I have some questions about selfhosting
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Hello,
i want to get into the self hosting game and have some questions about it. I hope that this community may help me (i already learnt so much by reading posts in this community).- I want to self host an NAS and some home server applications like Immich, Homeassistant, Jellyfin and parts of the *Arr stack. Would it be advisable to get a mini-PC and a separate NAS or can i put this on the same appliance together? Was thinking about getting a NAS from Terramaster and i am not sure if i need a separate mini PC.
- If i would go with the all in one solution, would TrueNAS Scale be enough? I saw some recommendations to get Promox and run TrueNAS Scale for the NAS management and Promox container for everything else.
- If i would go with the separate solutions how would i handle seeding? Since the mini-PC would run the *Arr Suite with qBittorrent would it be able to download directly to the NAS and hardlink the stuff there or would seeding require two copies, one on the mini-pc and another one on the NAS?
I hope my problems are clear, i tried searching for it but did not find a satisfying answer, which is why i am asking here. Thanks in advance
wrote last edited by [email protected]I would recommend DIYing your own NAS/server, if possible. How much storage are you needing? What's your budget?
-
Hello,
i want to get into the self hosting game and have some questions about it. I hope that this community may help me (i already learnt so much by reading posts in this community).- I want to self host an NAS and some home server applications like Immich, Homeassistant, Jellyfin and parts of the *Arr stack. Would it be advisable to get a mini-PC and a separate NAS or can i put this on the same appliance together? Was thinking about getting a NAS from Terramaster and i am not sure if i need a separate mini PC.
- If i would go with the all in one solution, would TrueNAS Scale be enough? I saw some recommendations to get Promox and run TrueNAS Scale for the NAS management and Promox container for everything else.
- If i would go with the separate solutions how would i handle seeding? Since the mini-PC would run the *Arr Suite with qBittorrent would it be able to download directly to the NAS and hardlink the stuff there or would seeding require two copies, one on the mini-pc and another one on the NAS?
I hope my problems are clear, i tried searching for it but did not find a satisfying answer, which is why i am asking here. Thanks in advance
Like you I lurked the self hosting communities until I made the dive myself. I bought a used HP Elitedesk Mink 800 G3, not a particularly powerful machine, and installed Ubuntu server. I started playing around with docker compose detuos for various services and eventually committed to running immich, qbittorrent, and Plex on it, along with hosting some dedicated servers for various games depending on what I felt like playing at the time. It all worked easily enough and I figured out things as I went along such as domain names (ddns), security hardening, and reverse proxies.
I picked it up around 100 euro, got a secondhand switch so I could have both my PC and it on the same line from the house router to my office.
I have two of them now so I can split game servers onto their own machine to save rrsourcss, and recently also picked up a Seagate expansion drive of 10Tb to use for media storage for the originak one. Still lots to learn, but that's the fun!
-
Hello,
i want to get into the self hosting game and have some questions about it. I hope that this community may help me (i already learnt so much by reading posts in this community).- I want to self host an NAS and some home server applications like Immich, Homeassistant, Jellyfin and parts of the *Arr stack. Would it be advisable to get a mini-PC and a separate NAS or can i put this on the same appliance together? Was thinking about getting a NAS from Terramaster and i am not sure if i need a separate mini PC.
- If i would go with the all in one solution, would TrueNAS Scale be enough? I saw some recommendations to get Promox and run TrueNAS Scale for the NAS management and Promox container for everything else.
- If i would go with the separate solutions how would i handle seeding? Since the mini-PC would run the *Arr Suite with qBittorrent would it be able to download directly to the NAS and hardlink the stuff there or would seeding require two copies, one on the mini-pc and another one on the NAS?
I hope my problems are clear, i tried searching for it but did not find a satisfying answer, which is why i am asking here. Thanks in advance
wrote last edited by [email protected]Hardware wise I'd go AIO. A mini and a pair of mirrored USB drives is my setup. I have an off-site backup running: another mini + USB. Finally, I have an inherited laptop as a redundant network box/local backup/immich compute. I have 5 households on my network, and aside from immich spiking in resources (hence the laptop), I have overhead to spare.
An n100 mini (or n150, n200, whatever) is cheap enough and powerful enough for you to jump in, decide if you want to spend more later. They're small, quiet, reasonable Value for Money, easy Wife Acceptance Factor, and can age into a bunch of devices if you decided self hosting isn't for you. I'd make a retro console out of any spare mini.
This way, when spending £x00s on a server, you'll have some idea on what you actually need/want. The n100 can the age into a firewall/network box/local back up/etc if/when you upgrade.
All that said. An AIO storage-compute box is where I'm headed. I now know I need a dedicated graphics card for the immich demand. I now know I want a graphics card for generative AI hobby stuff. I know how much storage I need for everyone's photos, and favorite entertainment, permanent stuff. I know how much storage I need for stuff being churned, temporary stuff. I now know I don't care about high availability/clusters. I now know... Finally, the 'Wife' has grown used to having a server in the house: it's a thing I have, and do, which she benefits from. So, a bigger, more expensive, and probably louder box, is an easier sell.
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Use both.
I use both, and I've found Usenet to be significantly better for old content. Not even close.
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Hello,
i want to get into the self hosting game and have some questions about it. I hope that this community may help me (i already learnt so much by reading posts in this community).- I want to self host an NAS and some home server applications like Immich, Homeassistant, Jellyfin and parts of the *Arr stack. Would it be advisable to get a mini-PC and a separate NAS or can i put this on the same appliance together? Was thinking about getting a NAS from Terramaster and i am not sure if i need a separate mini PC.
- If i would go with the all in one solution, would TrueNAS Scale be enough? I saw some recommendations to get Promox and run TrueNAS Scale for the NAS management and Promox container for everything else.
- If i would go with the separate solutions how would i handle seeding? Since the mini-PC would run the *Arr Suite with qBittorrent would it be able to download directly to the NAS and hardlink the stuff there or would seeding require two copies, one on the mini-pc and another one on the NAS?
I hope my problems are clear, i tried searching for it but did not find a satisfying answer, which is why i am asking here. Thanks in advance
wrote last edited by [email protected]I am currently moving from a Synology DS920+ to using my Mac Mini M4 + DAS with hardware RAID. The Synology is great, but I want to get away from the proprietary RAID that it's using. I was running Plex on it, as well as all my *Arr's etc via docker, but Plex and all of these services on the Mac Mini run like greased lightning compared to the Synology. Sonarr/Radarr load instantly versus taking a minute to load the library on the Synology.
I think doing it this way rather than an all in one device is easier to maintain and upgrade. Run all the services in docker so you can make them on any device that you might upgrade/change to, and just have a big RAID array of drives. Plus this way I can use Backblaze personal and backup the entire 50TB for like $99 a year
-
Hello,
i want to get into the self hosting game and have some questions about it. I hope that this community may help me (i already learnt so much by reading posts in this community).- I want to self host an NAS and some home server applications like Immich, Homeassistant, Jellyfin and parts of the *Arr stack. Would it be advisable to get a mini-PC and a separate NAS or can i put this on the same appliance together? Was thinking about getting a NAS from Terramaster and i am not sure if i need a separate mini PC.
- If i would go with the all in one solution, would TrueNAS Scale be enough? I saw some recommendations to get Promox and run TrueNAS Scale for the NAS management and Promox container for everything else.
- If i would go with the separate solutions how would i handle seeding? Since the mini-PC would run the *Arr Suite with qBittorrent would it be able to download directly to the NAS and hardlink the stuff there or would seeding require two copies, one on the mini-pc and another one on the NAS?
I hope my problems are clear, i tried searching for it but did not find a satisfying answer, which is why i am asking here. Thanks in advance
I virtualized my nas for memes but honestly you don't even need to do that. Just run proxmox and use zfs then build whatever lxc/VMS you want on top of it
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I would recommend DIYing your own NAS/server, if possible. How much storage are you needing? What's your budget?
I will use the server for photos, videos, backups from my PC via borg and as a media server so i wanted to start with approximately 6TB. Budget without the harddrives is under 500€, currently looking at a refurbished optiplex 3060 with an Intel I3-8100T as a miniPC for server usage and then some used NAS system from Terramaster. Do you mean building a multibay NAS myself? I looked into it and it didn't seem really cheaper compared to buying used/refurbished.
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Like you I lurked the self hosting communities until I made the dive myself. I bought a used HP Elitedesk Mink 800 G3, not a particularly powerful machine, and installed Ubuntu server. I started playing around with docker compose detuos for various services and eventually committed to running immich, qbittorrent, and Plex on it, along with hosting some dedicated servers for various games depending on what I felt like playing at the time. It all worked easily enough and I figured out things as I went along such as domain names (ddns), security hardening, and reverse proxies.
I picked it up around 100 euro, got a secondhand switch so I could have both my PC and it on the same line from the house router to my office.
I have two of them now so I can split game servers onto their own machine to save rrsourcss, and recently also picked up a Seagate expansion drive of 10Tb to use for media storage for the originak one. Still lots to learn, but that's the fun!
Did you connect the expansion drive via USB or how are you doing that? AFAIK the G3 only supports 2.5 HDDs which are not available with 10Tb, are they?
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I virtualized my nas for memes but honestly you don't even need to do that. Just run proxmox and use zfs then build whatever lxc/VMS you want on top of it
Is that viable? I read that doing it with proxmox can be problematic because it doesn't offer such great NAS and Raid options out of the box, making it harder to maintain.
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Is that viable? I read that doing it with proxmox can be problematic because it doesn't offer such great NAS and Raid options out of the box, making it harder to maintain.
ZFS is objectively the best disk pool solution, where did you read that?
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Did you connect the expansion drive via USB or how are you doing that? AFAIK the G3 only supports 2.5 HDDs which are not available with 10Tb, are they?
Via USB yep! The SeaGate expansion is a 3.5HDD, I believe. I spent a lot of time worrying about read/write speed and such but in practice, there is no issues streaming media from it. Even fully remote from my network there is no stuttering or issues.
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Hello,
i want to get into the self hosting game and have some questions about it. I hope that this community may help me (i already learnt so much by reading posts in this community).- I want to self host an NAS and some home server applications like Immich, Homeassistant, Jellyfin and parts of the *Arr stack. Would it be advisable to get a mini-PC and a separate NAS or can i put this on the same appliance together? Was thinking about getting a NAS from Terramaster and i am not sure if i need a separate mini PC.
- If i would go with the all in one solution, would TrueNAS Scale be enough? I saw some recommendations to get Promox and run TrueNAS Scale for the NAS management and Promox container for everything else.
- If i would go with the separate solutions how would i handle seeding? Since the mini-PC would run the *Arr Suite with qBittorrent would it be able to download directly to the NAS and hardlink the stuff there or would seeding require two copies, one on the mini-pc and another one on the NAS?
I hope my problems are clear, i tried searching for it but did not find a satisfying answer, which is why i am asking here. Thanks in advance
openmediavault and casas are good noob-friendly OSes for NAS purpose. Much faster and simpler to get it running than some Proxmox and True NAS overkill solution.
You can also just install whatever Linux OS you like, and plug-in some screen, keyboard and mouse and do your setup this way, like any other computer!
For Hardware, I recommend to build a computer out of standard parts. For what you said, a small motherboard with an integrated Intel N100 CPU and a nice looking case like the Jonsbo N2 will sever you well. This is very close to my current setup, using an older j5040 CPU and it runs everything just fine with no effort (Jellyfin w/ light transcoding, *arr stack, Usenet and torrent clients, syncthing, SMB and NFS filesharing, and more)
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I will use the server for photos, videos, backups from my PC via borg and as a media server so i wanted to start with approximately 6TB. Budget without the harddrives is under 500€, currently looking at a refurbished optiplex 3060 with an Intel I3-8100T as a miniPC for server usage and then some used NAS system from Terramaster. Do you mean building a multibay NAS myself? I looked into it and it didn't seem really cheaper compared to buying used/refurbished.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Okay then I will recommend the new Beelink ME mini
https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-me-mini-n150
And also the "pocket NAS" from CWWK.net
currently looking at a refurbished optiplex 3060 with an Intel I3-8100T
Those are fine but will be less power efficient than the mobile CPUs.
Do you mean building a multibay NAS myself? I looked into it and it didn't seem really cheaper
It definitely is. Also most NAS have a very weak CPU. Because a "NAS" really doesn't need one.
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ZFS is objectively the best disk pool solution, where did you read that?
I read some more about it and yeah ZFS seems like a great solution. Do you happen to know how easy it is to upgrade storage with ZFS? E.g. i start with just 2x4TB but later I add another 2x4TB, would that be easy or would this result in a total rebuild?
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I read some more about it and yeah ZFS seems like a great solution. Do you happen to know how easy it is to upgrade storage with ZFS? E.g. i start with just 2x4TB but later I add another 2x4TB, would that be easy or would this result in a total rebuild?
You usually need to trigger a total rebuild to make it part of the same pool, but you could always make it separate vdevs.
The best route would be to start with the number of drives you want at least, and upgrade them via replacement as you go.
