Been using it 18 months. Have drawn out $20 so far. Be another 6 months till I get another $20 which is the minimum withdrawal. Network has been solid and nothing dodgy showing up in the firewall or on my DNS. It’s not amazing, but it’s free money

Current Self-hosted Setup

Hardware

Server 1
Trycoo / Peladn mini pc
Intel n97 CPU
Integrated GPU
32gb of 3200mt/s ddr4 (Upgraded from 16gb)
512nvme
2x 2tb ssd's (Raid1 + LVM)
Startech usb to sata cable
Atolla 6 port powered usb 3.0 splitter 
2x 8tb hdd's
2 bay usb 3.0 Fideco dock
Each 8tb HDD is split into 2 equal size partitions, making 4 x 4tb partitions
Each night, the 2tb SSD array backups to the alternating first partition of the HDD's .
Each 1st of the month, the 2tb SSD array backups to the alternating 2nd partition of the HDD's .

Server 2
Raspberry pi 4b
32gb SD card
4gb ram

Services

Server 1
Nginx web server / reverse proxy.  
Fail2ban.  
Crowdsec.  
Valutwarden
Bit warden reimplantation for storing credentials 
Forgejo
Remote federated git
Immich.   
Google Photos replacement.  
External libraries only.  
4 users.  
Radicale
Calender and contacts
Navidrome.  
Spotify replacement.  
2 users.  
Adguard home
1st instance
Provides Network wide DNS filtering and DHCP server
Unbound
Provides recursive DNS
Go-notes
Rich Text formatting, live, real time multi-user notes app
FMD
Find my device
Transmission
Torrent client
PIA VPN
Network Namespace script to isolate PIA & Transmission
Searxng
Meta search engine
StirlingPDF 
PDF editor
File browser
This is in maintenance mode only so I am planning to migrate to File Browser Quantum soon
Syncthing 
Syncs 3 android and 1 apple phone for immich
Custom rsync backup script
Darkstat
Real time Network statistics

Server 2
Fail2ban
Crowdsec
Honeygain
Generates a tiny passive income
I'm UK based and in the last 6 months it has produced £15
Adguard home
2nd instance
Provides Network wide DNS filtering and DHCP server
Unbound
Provides recursive DNS
Custom DDNS update script

I love podman quadlets, I didn’t do anything and it updated itself 😁

Mine just runs over my music directory on a cron and tags what it wants. I don’t pay any attention to it. I haven’t come across a mis tagged track yet. Maybe I will at some point?

There isn’t one. Build incrementally, and adapt and modify as it grows. Starting out, you have no idea where you will eventually end up. It’s a journey and a learning experience bespoke to you. Start with a basic dedicated device as a server that’s cheap. Add a service and get it safe and secure. Once you are happy with it and it is reliable and solid, add another service… Rinse and repeat.

Honestly, filebrowser or filebrowser quantum are what you need. Essentially a web UI frontend for sftp / sshfs. Really simple light weight.

From my perspective, self hosting is a hobby, we run services we feel we need, but it’s also something we do for fun. As such some people enjoy thinking about and deploying the most secure server possible, regardless of actual threats. However, to directly answer your question, yes there isn’t really a lot that can be stolen from a self host residential server, maybe if you hack a valutwarden instance and acquire all the credit card details stored in it and all the id’s stored in it. But the main hack isnt stealing, but deploying a bot net of some sort.

Can’t comment on ente. I looked at it originally along with many others and initially chose photo prism. Ran that for around 6 months then switched to immich. Have no plans on changing any time soon. I host 4 users on it. It works great, been using it over 12 months so been on it from v1, and been through all the changes to V2 and V3 and never had a breaking change. Have auto updates in in podman for it so I never manually touch it. It just works.

I switched from photo prism after 12 months on it, to immich. Much prefer it and offers more and better features from my perspective.

I don’t touch or maintain anything, my setup is completely automated.

I run navidrome as my music server. I use transmission, through a namespace with a VPN attached and port forwarded, all managed through systemd and I just turn it on and off as needed. I dump all music in any condition in my music folder and torrent dump music there once completed. Beets manages and fixes my music folder meta tags automatically.

I don’t want this feature! I use immich to get away from Google. I don’t want any interaction or overlap with Google photos at all. Immich allows you to share albums perfectly fine. The person you share with needs to be able to access your immich. This is the same as Google, people need to be able to access Google photos to see your Google albums too.

I looked at all the old thin clients and didn’t like their power consumption to performance ratio. Ended up buying a cheap mini pc with an n100 and it’s been amazing. CPU is max 15w, but mostly only 1 or 2w. Whole mini pc with an nvme draws only a few w most of the time. I bought it before all the craziness for £80, had it maybe 18 months now and no complaints. It’s been rock solid.

You used “I” a lot in that response! You seem to think you have the best idea of what everybody else would find valuable.

What is actually true is stupid, pointless, simple and obvious questions being posted and responded to means other people don’t need to post the same question again.

I use Bluetooth. Or if a device doesn’t have it, I will drop it into my server with scp or filebrowser.

Self hosting is as simple as hosting a service yourself on your own hardware and not relying on 3rd party servers. With that, Plex is partly self hosted, as you host part of it. But as a whole it is not a fully self hosted service. Discussing Plex in a self host group makes sense as part of it is hosted on your own hardware. Technically using a vps isn’t really self hosting, but if somebody sticks a service like immich or nextcloud onto a VPS to remove their reliance on Google, I still think posting in a self host group to discuss it is the best option.

You can use absolutely any HDD or SSD. I have a mini pc, with only a single m.2 nvme slot which holds the os and system only. Then I have 2 internal 3.5" hdd’s and 2 internal 2.5" SSD"s all connected over usb via powered docks and hubs. Been running over 12 months and been 100% reliable. Usb3.1 is slightly slower than sata, but it’s negligible. Usb3.2 is faster.

Permissions were a pain to get right for my volumes and data I migrated. Other than that, It’s really not that complicated, it was just a case of covering my compose files to systemd service files and starting the update timer.

I recently moved from docker compose to podman quadlets. Took a bit of effort, but fully foss, and for me it’s set and forget. Have about 30 containers across about 12 services. Have them set to auto update and it all runs through systemd.

Honestly it all depends on what you need both now and in the future.

I’m running lots of services on a cheap mini pc I got for £80, it’s an N100 CPU, 32gb ddr4 ram, 512nvme, then has 2x8tb hdd’s and 2x2tb ssd’s which are in a raid1 area served with lvm.

Running vault warden, immich, navidrome, adguardhome, torrent setup, sterling Pdf, filebrowser, radicale, WebDAV server, searxng, syncthing. This has 4 daily users.

It’s barely under any load running all that and is silent and draws a max of 15w. I feel I could double the services if I wanted

I personally plan on building a desktop pc specifically to be my server in the next few years as an upgrade to my current setup, but won’t be for at least another 18 months as currently have no bottlenecks or issues.

No, not at all as far as I am aware. It runs itself periodically.