Dear readers,
If (TLDR) { ISO: tech stacks advice + FOSS tech and tech educative material advice for self-hosting a basic home lab FT: an opportunity to build your profile’s tech expertise reputation. } else; { I would like to collect opinions about hardware and software stack options.
I would like to build a home server for basic purposes (file storage sync (family, work, movies, music, etc.).
Ideally, I would like to use the same machine for self-hosting: (a) a small lemmy community instance server, (b) a small chat server (e.g. XMPP)
I have accrued decent practice with html, css, javascript, and linux systems administration. For example, my home lab boasts 1 laptop file synced with 1 smartphone, and I have written a few very basic dynamic web apps.
That being said, the vastness, complexity and technicality of the various options seem to me daunting to make sense of, even with some basic clear goals.
Although I expect to have some more research to do, I suspect that someone with more competence than myself may find interest in disbursing a few easy comments of competent advisory opinion to narrow and expedite my research effort as an opportunity of building their own profile’s reputation.
Requirements:
FOSS tech, to the extent that that produces a top security and top quality solution.
Beginner friendly budget.
Early estimates of specs under my consideration: mini-pc, O-droid, normal form factor pc, laptop. ~ 16GB ~ 64 GB RAM. Storage: ideally minimum 5 TB, ideally minimum 3-2-1 rule. OS? FS?
} Sorry about the length of the post, sorry about solicitation of advice.
Thanks for the support.
Sincerely,
LinuxTurtle34
You’re asking a very general question, and will get a lot of general answers.
Figure out what you want to run first, get it running on what you have available, then adapt if you run into issues.
I wouldn’t be asking just what other people think you should do because you’re going to get a lot of noise.
Just install Linux on the laptop and start experimenting.
Yunohost is very easy, but something like Debian or Fedora Server Edition will be more flexible.
You didn’t mention your budget. That will impact things.
If you have a closet with a rack you have a lot of options, hardware-wise. If you’ll be running this in your living room, for sake of your sanity, something like an AMD mini-PC with a small NAS for additional hosted storage via NFS would probably be your best bet.
A PC with Proxmox could do this handily. I have a cheap Ryzen 5500u mini PC hosting my Plex server, audiobookshelf, home assistant, and DLNA server (AssetUPnP). It’s only 6 core/12 thread and32GB RAM but still has resources to spare. You could totally do an 8c/16t one and throw more RAM at it.
——
Edit - oh, and don’t forget that if you’re going to be hosting a public instance, you’ll need a good internet connection (with good up and down speed, generally fiber is good for that) and a public IP.
Use whatever you have and test different setups. I would start by installing Proxmox and setup ZFS on some drive that not the boot partition. For just checking it out with some lightweight VMs and containers any CPU that’s not 20 years old will suffice, the more RAM the better. Play with VMs, backups etc in small scale. You can use your old external USB HDD, etc, just to figure out things like ZFS.
Don’t buy anything before getting some experience and having some kind of plan.
