NAS, Home Servers, and where do I even start?
NAS, Home Servers, and where do I even start?
I'm having trouble finding a proper starting point for self hosting, so I am curious on any resources you'd recommend, or even some build lists / pre-built devices.
What I want to do:
Important
- Host some applications like TinyTinyRSS, Jellyfin, GitLab, and Nextcloud which I'd want to be accessible in my home network
- Use the computer as a NAS to back data up and have it easily accessible on my desktop and laptop
- Have a piHole
Optional
- Access my hosted applications from outside of my network
- Use tools like Radarr to automatically download things from torrent lists
- Use it as a seedbox
The reason the last three are optional is because for that I'd have to expose the computer to the outside network, which has a whole bunch of benefits, but also a whole bunch of risks I am likely neither capable of nor comfortable with working around, so unless there's an easy fix (number 3 might be able to be handled via a VPN?) they're a problem for future me. For anything further I think I can just go from here once those requirements develop
I have already skimmed through some articles, watched some build guides for both NAS and home servers and honestly I just don't know what I need, both in information, hardware, and software.
- Should I separate the NAS and Home Server, get a separate device for the piHole, or just have all three in one?
- What hardware would be suitable for this?
- Should I buy something off the shelf like a mini PC (for instance an Intel NUC) or one of these fancy prebuilt NAS devices where you just need to plug in some drives or build my own?
- Would it be smarter to go with a Linux distro as the OS, for instance Debian, or should I use something like Unraid or TrueNAS which from what I can gather make setup more convenient and even handle docker images for you?
I am somewhat comfortable with Linux and the command line and have a budget of about 1000€, but if I can get away with less that would be great, and I can also stretch higher if needed for my requirements. I am also very new to self hosting and my networking knowledge is not non-existent, but limited.
I'm just a bit lost and would love some beginner-oriented resources or direct advice, thank you!
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Make a plan. Think about how much storage you need, whether you need redundancy and backups, and what server applications you need to run.
Here you also need to consider how much time you want to spend on maintenance. Premade solutions like Synology are set and forget. Using NAS operating systems mean having to do regular updates. Using just Linux is also an option if you want full control and are confortabile with the command line, but it's more work.
Then step 2 is getting the hardware.
My recommended route, if you want to spend the least amount of money, is to get a 2nd hand PC, preferably not pre-built (dells and hps have proprietary parts like power supplies). A 4 core cpu from the last 10 years should be fine, and 16gb of RAM is more than enough for most applications. SFFs or MiniPCs might be ok for nvme SSDs only, but if you want hard drives, get one that has enough HDD bays. Depending on what you find, you might need to replace a few things, like the power supply or case.
Servers are good and reliable and have nice features, like network management, redundant NICs, redundant power supplies, but are usually pretty noisy.