Selfhosted
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (donβt cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
view the rest of the comments
I'd like to ask a clarifying question.
I'm interested in building a computer to self host from that would exclusively run on my local network. I would like to have some storage (on the order of 2x 16TB HDDs in RAID1 or 3x in RAID5) but also have the ability to host some other services, like Nextcloud, Arr stack, RSS feed, Immich for photos, and a Joplin server. I would probably put Wireguard on there to access these services remotely (but not the *arr stack).
Someday I might want to host some services that are accessible from the internet (not Wireguard), but I think that is for another time in my life.
I am gathering from your comments that, for more than strictly local storage, it is probably worth building a server with storage, rather than trying to stretch a Synology NAS to do all of this for me. Does that sound right?
I've been toying with this idea for a while and am not sure if I sound just go with a Synology or self build. But I think I have more interest in tinkering with the system than a Synology would allow. I'm not totally new to self hosting, I have a VPS that serves a few apps and my blog online, and use an RPi at home to serve a few things. I suppose a third option is to buy the NAS, but then build a computer to host the other applications using the NAS data.
My personal opinion is that the devil is in the details. What I mean by this is that it will depend on budget, what you want to do right now plus what you want to do in the future, how willing you are to "build and rebuild" over time, how much physycal space you have to keep your rigs at, etc. I like having full control of my devices, both at the hardware and at the software levels, and I'm well enough financially that I can change whatever I need or want without affecting my family's quality of life negatively. But I also dont just want to throw money out the window, so I research a lot when I want to add or switch something. Based on this, my preference is to DYI instead of choosing a pre-built server. For what you say you want to do, I think a QNAP or Synology NAS would suffice (I've had both, but I like QNAP better, although they are both very similar when you compare them at the same tier levels). However, if and when you decide to up your game, you already spent the money on the pre-built, and it's not always easy to sell them used to recoup a fee bucks (which is why I chose to give mine to my sister instead of going the "selling it" route.) I speak from my experience, and I understand that what works for me won't necessarily work for everyone else. But I like letting others know where I made kistaies in hopes that they can avoid them when the time comes. A good example is that you want to go the Raid way, whereas I have UnRaid because I like the array option much better (I think its a more flexible approach), which can also be achieved by using OMV. Your understanding of mybtrain of thought on this subject is exactly right. I personally prefer to have more control on as many components as possible in case I need/want to upgrade (RAM, storage, processor, GPU, TPU) because, in my experience, once I started self-hosting, I find something new I want to add almost daily (80% of the time I just test, end up not liking it, and remove, but this is how I've gotten my server to the state it's in today, trial and error mostly π€£π€£).
I think this is great advice. You've made me realize that I'm entering a stage of my training that is notorious for lack of free time, so maybe I'll leave the self build tinkering for another day. It is more important for me to get the local storage going sooner than later but I will plan on building a tinkering PC someday.
I'm genuinely happy I could help. I wish you the best luck with this, and above all, have fun. It is a lot of fun (until my wife starts wanting me to do something the moment I set my mind to start playing with my server or network, π€ͺ). You evidently have your priorities straight, and that's great to choose the best course of action for each step. Another hack, in case you're interested, I got my disks shucked out of some WD external drives that I knew were actually WD Red (3 10TB drives) and I ended up saving about 150 dollars total. But know that of you choose to go this route, you'll need to disable the 3v pins on each drive, either by covering them with some electric tape, or just remonif the pins altogether (which is what I did). Enjoy buddy.