In a few months, I will have the space and infrastructure to join the selfhost community. I’m trying to prepare, as I know it can be challenging, but I somehow ended up with more questions than answers.
For context, I want to run a server with torrents, media (plex, Jellyfin or something else entirely - I didn’t make a decision yet), photos(Emmich, if its stable, or something else), Rook, Paperless, Home Assistant, Frigate, Adguard Home… Possibly lots more. Also, I will need storage - I’m planning for 3x18tb drives to begin with, but will certainly be adding more later.
My initial intention was to set up a NAS in Silverstone CS382(or Jonsbo N3/N5, if they’re in a reasonable price). I heard good things about Unraid and it’s capabilities of running docker. On the other hand, I’m hearing hood things about Proxmox or NixOS with NAS software running in a VM, too - but for Unraid, it seems hacky. Maybe I should run NAS and a separate server? That’d be more costly and seems like more work on maintenance with no real benefit. Maybe I should go with TrueNAS in a VM? If I don’t do anything other than NAS, TrueNAS shouldn’t be that hard to set up, right?
I’m also wondering whether I should go with Intel for QuickSync, AMD and Arc graphics or something else entirely. I’ve read that AV1 is getting popular, is AMD getting more support there? I will buy Intel if it’s clearly the better option, but I’m team Red and would prefer AMD.
Also, could anyone with a non-technical SO tell me how do they find your selhosted things? I’ve read about Cloudflare Tunnels and Tailscale, which will be a breeze for me, but I gotta think about other users aswell.
That’s another concern for me - am I correct in thinking Tailscale and Cloudflare Tunnels are all I need to access the server remotely? I will probably set up a PiKVM or the Risc one aswell, can it be exposed aswell? I will have a dream machine from Ubiqiti, anything that needs to run to access the server I may run there. I’m not looking to set up anything more complicated like Wireguard - it’s too much.
For additional context, I’m a software developer, I know my way with Docker and the command line and I consider myself to be tech savvy, but I’m not looking to spend every weekend reading changelogs and doing manual updates. I want to have an upgrade path (that’s why Im not going with Synology for example), but I also don’t want to obsess over it. Money isn’t much of an issue, I can spare 1-2k$ on the build, not including the drives.
Any feedback and suggestions appreciated :)
Been running Unraid for almost a year. I was previously running Windows with nearly zero insight into the health of my apps, RAID, etc. Made me very nervous. Unraid makes it all so easy.
I’m running many of the apps you mentioned and the implementation of docker on Unraid is easy to install, update, etc. I used docker on Windows but it was not the same. I’m not a software dev, so I’m not sure why you said Unraid’s docker implementation is hacky. It seems good to me.
The reason I switched to Unraid was I had to add more storage to my RAID and that was impossible in Windows without destroying the RAID and losing my data. I considered TrueNAS, but my understanding is the same is true. They’re supposed to be adding that capability soon ™️ but who knows when that’ll actually be available and reliable. Unraid let’s you add more storage whenever and the drives don’t have to match. I love the flexibility.
I use Nginx Proxy Manager docker to access my apps externally. My SO is not tech savvy and after setting up the individual apps with the domain I have, it’s usually smooth sailing. If I ever need to do any mucking about with the server itself, I turn on UI teleport. I also have a PiKVM but have only needed to use it a couple times. It’s just not necessary with how reliable Unraid is.
My server has an i5-6600 and utilizes QuickSync, which is great. More energy efficient than a dedicated GPU. I’ve considered adding a GPU but I haven’t run into a situation where I need it.
Tldr: highly recommend Unraid.