One thing i’ve learned over the years is the way I did something when I was learning is usually not the best way of doing it, and I later go back and redo everything now that I have gained experience and knowledge. I have decided to ditch google photos, and was lucky enough to snag a free rackmount 2017 server from work with an i7 installed and 2 6tb drives on the way. But now comes the hard part of deciding what software I am going to end up learning on and hopefully living with. First and foremost I want a photo backup service, and I have debated between immich and xpenology, I also know that I want to run Pihole and would really like to self host my own website documenting my projects, even if no one will ever look at it.
If you had to start from the beginning, which OS, which container manager and which containers would you build. I would love the recommendations from those who walked so that I can run
I did start over recently - Dell R730 salvaged from work, 64 cores, 256GB RAM
Took the guts and moved it to a Machinist X99 motherboard in a Rosewill server case so I could put in silent fans and have room for 15 drives.
Proxmox hypervisor booting on 2x 2TB NVME drives.
Bought 6 x 16TB drives and a HBA to run them, then did HBA passthru to a virtual machine running Truenas which mounts everything as a samba share
Multiple other Ubuntu VM’s running docker compose. One VM runs utility / ARRS, 2nd VM runs Plex so that my media playback isn’t affected by utility. These servers mount the TrueNAS samba shares for file processing. That way they are booting/running on NVME but media is on spinning iron.
Also have LXC running Adguard Home for DNS based adblock/malware protection for the entire house. Also have a Raspberry PI as a 2nd DNS server.
Several Windows VM’s used for work (I connect to customer environments so I spin up a separate VM for each customer to keep their environments isolated.
Documentation.
Document how my drives are set up (like really… I don’t remember how they are configured XD I only know I haven’t ran out of space yet so everything is going the correct mount.)
Keep a propper list of what process uses which port.
Use containers from at the start.
That’s all I can think of atm.
Currently doing that. Migrating from a raspberry pi 4.
Here is the plan:
Use the ASROCK N100DC-ITX motherboard+CPU for low power usage but enough power for a snappy web server. Add 32GB ram and 2tb m.2 ssd as well as 4+7tb external usb storage.
Install windows 11 as root OS and use windows subsystem for linux with ubuntu for any webservices, install those using docker inside cosmos. This way the device can be used to play simple 2d games via steam yet be used for plex and web services such as bookstack and kavita.
Do all my network configuration with ansible, terraform or something similar.
And I wouldn’t document anything but instead automate everything.
What is wrong with a Synology NAS or TrueNAS? Plenty of apps for photos on or using such.I am falling in love with NextCloud for many things reasonably integrated together. Can definitely self-host that and share it or parts of it with others and collaborate with them if you like.
Dockerize all the things. That and/or kubernetes. I hear nice things about Proxmox in home labs but haven’t got around to messing with it.