Hey all, I’ve been doing a bunch of research on selfhosting the last few weeks as I’d love to lean on more open source projects for my daily productivity & entertainment. My main goal is to backup all my personal documents, photos, and videos (around 1tb so far over ~5 years, so not too demanding) and host a few services to access files on local storage (Immich, Jellyfin) and personal (paperless-ngx, homeassistant, morss). Although I’m not afraid to mess around learning Docker, I’d like to prioritize low maintenance in balance with relatively low long-term cost so that I don’t run into an issue that takes more than a day to restore access to my files/backups. I’d rather save that time for the fun stuff, like endlessly configuring HA automations.
All that said, I figure a decent solution would be to run a local NAS in RAID 6 with a cold storage HDD to swap whenever I transfer a bunch of files from my camera for local backup, and a remote backup at either my parents’ home or maybe eventually on another friend’s NAS. The main thing I’m wondering right now is if a prebuilt NAS (Synology, Asustor, etc.) is worth it in comparison to a custom built system for simple maintenance, reliable and low-bandwidth remote backup and recovery, and solid file sharing options for friends and family? I’ve heard SFTPGo is a great project for file transfers if going custom built, so I’m not completely worried about the last point, but it’d still be a nice bonus to not have to worry about another service.
My greatest fear is having to explain to my parents what a terminal is, so I’d like something reliable with a good price which I can hopefully maintain without crossing that bridge. I know most prebuilt NAS systems aren’t as cost effective or flexible for hosting a bunch of services also, so if I did go with a prebuilt, I would probably pick up a micro PC like a NUC or an old Dell Optiplex to network with the NAS for Immich, and maybe use some internal storage to keep some movies to stream with Jellyfin (unless there’s a limitation I’m not considering). Any advice?
I ended up going with a synology Nas as i didn’t need high performance CPU and wanted a turn key solution. For what you get hardware wise, its low value, but if you factor in software and support, it works out to OK value.
You mentioned your parents will be using this. What services are you hoping to host? Outside network access is another rabbit hole.
Check the hardware requirements of the services you plan the host, but from what ir sounds like, you would likely be better served with decent pc 8th gen Intel with the storage in a 4 bay NAS or internal to the PC.
I suggested 8th gen Intel as a min for video transcoding (if needed)
My parents won’t necessarily be using the NAS, I’d just be using some kind of system (maybe even just a raspi) as a remote backup solution with a wireguard tunnel to my local NAS, but if a drive fails, I’d be about 700 miles away to manage it.
If it was a perfect world, I’d like to just ship a new drive to my parents and tell them to unplug the failing one and plug in the new one, then manage the rest automatically/myself remotely, but I assume that’s a pipe dream.
Built a NAS over 5 years ago. It runs UnRaid and configured with dual parity (tolerates two drive failures). If a drive were to go bad: shutdown the NAS, slide the drive out, slide the new drive in, power back up and the rest could be done remotely (via your WireGuard tunnel).
Unraid is capable of hosting your VMs and/or docker containers as well. I have Syncthing running in a container with a remote machine (also running Syncthing) and they sync backups.
One of the main perks of UnRaid is that you can mix and match drive sizes. You just have to make sure that your largest capacity drive(s) are your parity drive(s).