9mo ago

Next step on my self-hosting journey

Hello everyone.

Well, I’m here to ask for your insights and knowledge.

I have been self-hosting for almost a year already. Mainly proving things like Jellyfin, jellyseer and all the ARRs. All of this with a modest Raspberry Pi 4b using DietPi OS (which I think is great!)

Now, I want to move to the next stage, acquiring a more powerful machine.

What do you recommend for:

A) Mini PC. I want it to fast and with a huge storage (being able to increase it easily) B) SSD or HDD. Which ones. C) Operative System. I would like to stay on Linux.

Any other recommendations?

Finally, I have an adjusted budget, but pretend to save a bit more to have something nice :)

Thanks!

34 comments

Regarding your question B:
I personally built a SSD-only homeserver, because of performance, noise and power efficiency. However, if you need much storage, the price difference gets really painful.
- That is exactly my fear. If I need to build my private streaming station, I will need too much storage (I still do not know how much exactly).
  Furthermore, I want to build on top a Minecraft server for my kid.
  Thanks for answering.
- I too swapped my HDDs to SSDs recently, and while they're in an enclosure, connected via USB, with ZFS they perform way better than a single NVME.

A) I've seen a lot of people recommending NUC100 computers, but the sata ports may be limited. I currently have my old computer doing the thing (an i5 6500) with Unraid OS, really happy with it BUT they are changing their paying model this week so I don't know I would have went this way. I don't like subscription models.
B) Why not both? I have two SSD of 512Gb for items currently downloading and two HDD for Capacity (each 8Tb) already 30% filled in 1month. Both set of hard drives are set in duplication mode to avoid losing any day.
- The n100 mini PCs are a fantastic choice for hosting media server software primarily because of its transcoding capabilities.
  The i5-6500 you have and the N100 perform very similarly with general compute tasks (though the TDW of the n100 is 6W vs 65W for the same performance). However, the N100 comes with the full Alder Lake Quick Sync engine compared to the Skylake engine on to i5-6500. If you review the hardware encode/decode table here, you can see Skylake HW encode/decode caps out at 8-bit HEVC (HDR 4K content is typically 10 or 12-bit HEVC), whereas the N100 supports even very recent codecs like 10-bit AV1. I recently set up Plex on a N100 mini PC I got for $150 (with 8gb RAM and 256gb NVMe drive included), and it was able to simultaneously do 2x 4K HDR transcodes with tone mapping while also doing a full library scan and credits detection. Of course, if you're picky about what clients are watching your content to ensure they always watch original quality, you may not need to transcode.
  That said, the N100 mini PC I purchased only has slots for 1 NVMe drive and one 2.5" SATA drive. In my case this was perfect because all my media is on a NAS which the N100 now access using a NFS mount, and I can easily back up the minimum persistent data on the N100 PC.
  But it sounds like it wouldn't 100% satisfy everything OP is looking for on its own. If they still wanted a N100 for the transcode capabilities, they may be able to use a USB HDD hardware enclosure to add additional storage capabilities without needing a separate system, but because I already had a NAS for my dedicated storage, it isn't something I looked into with detail.
  
  Just found this N100 as NAS looks good.
  IPC N100 The same on Aliexpress
  My I5 is around 25$ by year, so it would need to run for 10 years to break even with the cost of the motherboard alone.
  But that's incredible what they were able to do for low energy/compute.
- I was looking into Unraid OS, and it seems nice, and as you, I want to keep far away from subscriptions as much as possible.
  My doubt with HDD is their speed, high noise and energy consumption.
  Thanks for answering.
  
  Dont worry about speed, HDD is fine for media storage. Power consumption and noise is what you should worry about 😉 get small SSD for OS since they are cheap
  
  Yeah, but it's the storage capacity that is interesting. If you don't need a lot of storage, go to the NVME/SSD option for sure. If you need more, price/capacity is still on the HDD side.

I’m referring you to my quick “self-hosting guide” for security and whatnot: https://lemmy.world/comment/7126969
With that said,
A) HP Mini second hand. Low power in the "T" CPU models, some have 2 nvme slots that can be used for extra storage with a cheap adapter like this + a power supply for the hard drives. If you don't want to DIY it so much some also have USB type C ports (and Thunderbolt) that you can use to connect to an external drive enclosure or this one.
B) SSD for boot drive, run VMs etc, HDDs for long term storage
C) Debian as base system, no GUI. LXD/LXC as hypervisor to run all your stuff in containers and VMs. Or run everything directly on the machine.
Other recommendations:
Use BTRFS as filesystem as much as possible;
Aside from the big brands like HP and Dell there are other alternatives such as the trendy MINISFORUM however their BIOS comes out of the factory with weird bugs and the hardware isn’t as reliable - missing ESD protection on USB in some models and whatnot;

A really nice budget option is an old Lenovo or HP mini PC. These days they make thin client style machines that are absolutely tiny, use about as much power as a small laptop, and still have decent spec.
Storage wise, there's room to fit a 2.5" drive inside, and newer ones have NVME slots. You can buy them real cheap from a refurb supplier as businesses are offloading them all the time.
In the same vein, a HP, Lenovo or Dell small form factor tower PC will up your power consumption a little, but give you room for a couple of 3.5" drives as well as an SSD. That's enough to look at putting in a 12TB mirrored RAID for some serious storage. You've also got low profile PCI slots, so you can fit a GPU for faster re-encoding in Jellyfin.
- check university and government surplus. EBay is rich with good models too
  
  Good shout, yeah. I actually got mine for free because a friend who works IT in a different company snagged a few on the way to e-waste.

What is "huge storage"? What is your budget?
- At least 12TB or above. For the budget... As cheapest as possible :)
  
  If your budget is as cheap as possible than the only answer is a 12TB HDD in a USB enclosure for your Raspberry Pi.

I'm a big fan of the Intel NUC platform, coupled with a fanless case and all-SSD/NVMe drives. They're low-powered, fast enough for most common tasks, and completely silent.
I have an NVMe drive for the OS (currently Proxmox, soon to be Debian again or Fedora), containers and VMs, and an internal 8TB SSD for data storage (whole disk encrypted). This may not meet your needs if you're intending to be a data hoarder, but I have a sizeable movie and lossless music collection accumulated over 25 years and I'm not even using 4TB yet.
You can of course still use a similar setup but keep even larger storage on a NAS device, or simply use a USB dock with a couple of 16TB drives. It's really down to whatever your needs are.
I love that the server, router, modem, and switch use such a small footprint and are able to be powered for up to an hour by an equally small and inexpensive 600VA UPS.
- This is what I'm doing but with a cluster of them and 12 TB in each node. One died in February and is coming back today for repairs. 3 year warranty came with it is insane.

Consider a used HP Elite desk SFF (small form factor) with a 6th Gen or later Intel CPU (or the equivalent from Dell or Lenovo). Space for 2x 3.5 HDD for data, an nvme m.2 slot for your OS drive, and a couple of pcie expansion slots.
1.) it's cheap and replacement parts are plentiful 2.) 6th+ gen Intel CPUs have Quick Sync for hardware accelerated transcoding 3.) fast interface for the OS drive, and room for a pair of multi TB HDDs in raid. 4.) some expandability 5.) power draw isn't horrible, but nor is it great.
OS wise, lots of options. Ubuntu server LTS is my general go to because it's easy to Google stuff for and is stable. And I don't need a desktop environment. I then run the services in docker.
Note about Intel Quick Sync when running headless: you may need a display emulator to get the system to enable it. The HP bios (and maybe some others) don't have the option to permanently enable quick sync. The display emulator tricks it into thinking a display is plugged in. You can get them on Amazon for under $10.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
LTS	Long Term Support software version
LXC	Linux Containers
NAS	Network-Attached Storage
NUC	Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
NVMe	Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
Plex	Brand of media server package
RAID	Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
SATA	Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
SSD	Solid State Drive mass storage
VPS	Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting)
ZFS	Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

11 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.

[Thread #621 for this sub, first seen 22nd Mar 2024, 22:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Any sort of tiny/mini/micro, 6th gen Intel or better for jellyfin transcodes.
Usually you can get a laptop HDD plus an nvme in there, but check specs. Put the OS on the nvme drive, use the 2.5" HDD for backups, CEPH, etc.
For the OS I'd use Proxmox and just make each service an LXC.

The greenest/cheapest way is to recycle an old laptop. They're pretty efficient and unless you're transcribing video anything in the past 10 years will be plenty powerful. Also the built-in battery is great in case of a power outage.
Then, just get one of those multi-disk USB HDD enclosure and pop some drives in.
For an OS, I like CasaOS which runs on top of Debain. It is a single-line install, and makes running docker apps very easy, for the services you mentioned and many others it can be set up entirely using the GUI.

My question would be, why do you need a more powerful server? Are you monitoring your load and seeing it's overloaded often? Are you just looking to be able to hook more drives to it? Do you need to re-encode video on the fly for other devices? Giving some more details would help someone to give a more insightful answer. I personally am using a Raspberry Pi 4, Chromebox w/ an i7, an old HP rack server, and an old desktop PC for my self hosting needs, as this is cheaper than buying all new hardware (though the electricity bill isn't the greatest haha, but oh well). If you are just looking for more storage, using the USB 3.0 slots on the Raspberry Pi 4b you can add a couple extra SSDs using a NVMe to USB 3.0 enclosure. For most purposes the speeds will be fine for most applications.
As for SSD vs HDD, SSD hands down. The only reason you'd pick an HDD is if your trying to get more storage cheaper and don't mind a higher rate of failure. If your data is at all valuable, and it almost always is, redundancy should be added as well.
And as for running Linux, if it can't run Linux I wouldn't want to own it.
Edit: Fixed typo

Two or more ssds, the biggest you can afford, on a j-bod USB3 or USB-C enclosure. Raid them together on Linux software raid. As hardware, I use a power horse laptop, its more practical, but I had it spare. Buy a nice compromise between CPU power and power comsumpion, that depends on your feelings.
And use Gentoo :)
I have documented most of my steps here https://wiki.gardiol.org
- This is terrible advice, especially for someone moving from an rpi bruh
  In what fucking world are you living
  
  Why?

Have you considered a VPS?
I have one that is pretty basic but works very well for about $4US a month. Mine runs Ubuntu 22.
- He specifically mentioned huge storage, I'm guessing that you have less than 100GB for that price. Also he mentioned ARR stack, I wouldn't host that on a VPS.
  
  Why are the ARR a bad idea for a VPS?
  Yeah storage suck on mine but you can get a seed box for storage and run the apps in the VPS. But that's another subscription.
- Thanks for the suggestion; however, a VPS is out of my options, despite its functionalities, it is a subscription and the storage will be too limited.

orange pi looks very promising

34 comments