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.
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Your machine is going to get fried
The cable modem is no longer in use, finally got fiber in my neighborhood but the ONT/GW is in the basement. Beelink is my single (for now) proxmox node, HP is running Plex w/ Intel iGPU for transcoding. DS220+ NAS w/ 2x 16TB drives. Unifi switch 8 and USG-3P (fiber ONT/GW passes through to that and it's soon to be replaced with a Palo Alto 410, thanks to work) and then another Unifi 8 port lite in my basement office where the ONT/GW lives. Nothing special, very ugly but I hope to upgrade the wired network to 10g in the future to support a proxmox cluster and my ISPs 5Gbps offering. Also plan on converting my old desktop into an Unraid box since I can get a lot of drives from work and don't really want to stick with the Synology.
So mines a weird hodge-podge of a HP Proliant (running my modded Minecraft server and Plex) under a bistro table that I use as a standup desk. A HP Thinclient that I run lighter services like my Pi-Hole and Homebridge. and a laptop
lmao mine looks simple af compared with most people here.
Behold my server :
Hardware:
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Rasberry pi 5 8GB
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1TB raid between old drives ( one from PC the other a just a regular external WD hard drive ).
Services
- Wireguard VPN/wg-easy
- AudioBookShelf
- Freshrss
- Vaultwarden
- Navidrome
- Calibre Web
- Actual Budget
- Trilium notes
Everything in containers, if you want to know more check this blogpost.
What made you go with a RPI 5?
Nothing wrong with simple! If it works for you that's all that matters!
Oooo I should do something like this! Right now I have a Pi 4 with OMV and just OMV on it. It’s even running on a SSD. It could do so much more!
Iteration one, the original https://drkt.eu/library/Museum/old_website_hw.jpg
Iteration two, taking it seriously https://drkt.eu/library/Museum/ye_olde_server-rack.jpg
Iteration three, evolved LACK rack https://drkt.eu/library/Museum/new_apartment.jpg
Bonus https://drkt.eu/library/Museum/backside_mess.jpg
'Artemis' Server
MOBO : GigaByte MB GA-Z170XP-SLI
CPU : Intel Core i5 6600K 4c/4t
RAM : 2x DDR4 8GB CL14 2133 Kingston HyperX
PSU : ## TO BE ADDED ##
Storage - SATA : SSD 2TB
- SATA : HDD 4TB
- SATA : SSD 1TB
'Deimos' Server
MOBO : ASRock H81M-ITX
CPU : Intel Pentium G3220 2c/2t
RAM : 2x DDR3 8GB C8 1600 Crucial Ballistix OC
PSU : ## TO BE ADDED ##
Storage - SATA : HDD 300GB
'Phobos' Server
MOBO : Intel H81 Express Chipset
CPU : Intel Core i3 4330T 2c/4t
RAM : 2x DDR3 4GB 1333
PSU : 65 watts AC/DC adapter
Storage - SATA : SSD 2TB
Ikea shelf instead of a rack, but I used metal shelves for better thermals!
Top to bottom:
- Unifi ac
- Brother printer
- Sunshine streaming machine
- ftth 1 / 2, unifi GW pro
- AVR, UPS, Synology NAS
My tech stack:
And my storage NAS:
Bottom NUC: General compute
Top NUC: Proxmox with homeassistant, windows server and debian
Raspberry Pi4 inside N64 case: PiHole
Access Point: Unifi Pro
PC for gaming: R7 7800X3D + Nvidia 3070 inside Fractal North
NAS: Ugreen 4800+ with 4x 15TB drives for a total of RaidZ2 30TB usable storage. Used as NFS storage for proxmox.
How it started: 2 8TB external HDDs connected to my bottom NUC.
Primary applications:
*arr Suite, Jellyfin, several minor apps.
This is how I started in a tiny room. I am not proud, but maybe good to show between all the shiny thongs here.
Used it for Minecraft server for a week then never used it again. Don't know anything it would be good for that my computer can't already do better tbh
What do all you guys use these setups for?
Life
My primary use case is safeguarding my important personal artifacts (family photos, digitized paperwork, encryption key / account recovery / 2FA backups) against drive failure (~2TB), followed by my decently sized Plex server (23TB), immich, nextcloud, and various other small things like selfhosted bitwarden, grocy, ollama, and stuff like that.
I run all of my stuff off of a 6 bay Synology (more drives helps with capacity efficiency as double redundancy with 6 drives costs you 30% and I wanted to be protected against drive failures during rebuilding) with an Intel nuc on top to run plex/jellyfin transcoding using quicksync instead of loading the poor nas with cpu transcoding, I also run ollama on the nuc since it has faster cores than the nas.
literally one these with loads of RAM and a wifi card, so i can fit all the shenanigans in one box
What is the Wi-Fi card for? What software are you using?
I may need this now. Would you are the brand? A recommendation?
The basement network and storage/server racks.
Heavy lifting boxes…
Is that a Unifi PDU/UPS? Didn't even know they made these.
Also, you need to peel the stickers of the screens.
That is what it is. My older CyberPower unit is down below. Was just easier to manage it all from one place. Need to repurpose that or sell it off…
The screens work fine with the stickers on. Never saw the point in peeling them off.
Only real reason IMO is dust can collect on the seam and it's annoying to clean without taking the peel off anyway.
IDK why people get weird about it.
Old setup:
Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 that I bought refurbished for ~€130
- i5-6500T (Passmark score 4792)
- 8GB RAM
- 512GB SATA SSD + 128GB SATA SSD (completely used for swap)
- Buffalo DriveStation™ HD-WLU3 that I bought second hand for €10
- 2 × 2TB SATA HDD's in RAID 1
- ~20W
New setup:
Custom build
- ASUS Prime N100I-D D4 (Passmark score 5501) (~€100)
- 16GB RAM - Crucial CT16G4SFRA32A (€28)
- 512GB SATA SSD
- 4 × 4TB SATA HDD's in RAID 5 using mdadm (€160)
- M.2 NVME to SATA 6x (ASM1116 for C-states) (€17)
- 17.8W
(Not the Proliant Microserver Gen8 on top, the device below)
The antennas are from a Sonoff Zigbee dongle and a bluetooth dongle for Home Assistant.
I've mostly focused on power usage, price, and reliability since I'm a student and don't want to spend a month's worth of income on a "home lab".
It's running the following:
- Forgejo
- Grafana
- Home Assistant
- Jellyfin
- Kopia
- Nginx-proxy-manager
- Paperless NGX
- Photoprism
- Syncthing
- TimescaleDB
- Uptime-kuma
- Vaultwarden: As backup
- Watch Your LAN
- Arr stack (currently disabled)
- Homebox: Still up for testing, like it has been for the past couple months. It's a great concept but the execution ain't great (does anyone happen to know an alternative?)
It's using about 10% CPU and is running below 40°.
I have three of those Proliant Microserver Gen8's. Two of them are part of my Proxmox cluster, and the other one is waiting for me to install Proxmox on it.
I'm currently just using it for occasional backups (it has 12TB storage) since the power consumption (60W idle when in the BIOS) is just unreasonable.
My dusty Intel NUC 10:
With a 2TB USB drive plugged in on the right there.
Runs all these services via Docker like a champ: AudioBookshelf, Dockge, File Browser, Forgejo, FreshRSS, Immich, Jellyfin, LemmySchedule, Memos, Navidrome, Paperless NGX, Pihole, Planka, SideQuests, Syncthing, Wallos
You people are such nerds. Wish I could self-host too.
You can get a setup going on whatever personal computer until you throw ~$150 on a mini PC.
was going through some old pictures and decided I'd post a retro setup. pretty sure I took this picture with my android g1....so 2008ish?
here is a pic of one of my first selfhost setups. I began selfhosting for music and have never stopped. this iteration was stuffed behind a bar that was built in to the basement at my old house
the old fashioned was custom built and was running some flavor of windows server. the one on the floor was the first Linux server I had run to do something useful...torrents and subsonic IIRC. I pieced that server together with random parts, mostly donated from old family PCs. two UPS units were on the bottom rack of that metro shelf to battery back the servers and the tomato router out of frame.
An old HP laptop with Debian hosting Klipper and Home Assistant. Waiting for an OTG cable so I could replace the laptop with a phone for less power and heat
What I took from this post is that every living room / home theater setup needs a server rack instead of a HiFi rack. Dudnt matter what you thrown in it, it looks badass.
From top to bottom:
- Patch panel (with artisinal, handmade cables)
- TP-Link managed switch Shelf 1:
- PFSense 4 port firewall
- Lenovo m910q w/Proxmox (cluster node 1) running 2 VMs for docker hosting: Ubuntu for media stuff (arrs, navidrome, jellyfin, calibre, calibre-web, tubesync, syncthing) and Debian for other stuff (paperless-ngx, vikunja, vscodium, redlib, x-pipe webtop, fasten health, linkwarden, alexandrite), 1 Win 10 VM for the very few times I need to use windows, some Red Hat Academy student and instructor RHEL 9 VMs, and an OPNsense VM for testing Shelf 2:
- HP Elitedesk G5 800 SFF w/Proxmox (cluster node 2) with an Nvidia GT 730 passed through to a Debian VM used primarily as a remote desktop via ThinLinc, but also runs a few docker containers (stirling pdf, willow application server, fileflows)
- Shuttle DH110 w/Proxmox (cluster node 3) with 1 VM running Home Assistant OS with an NVME Coral TPU passed through as well as a zooz 800 long range zwave coordinator (the zigbee coordinator is ethernet and in a different room) and two LXCs with grafana and prometheus courtesy of tteck (RIP) Shelf 3:
- WIP Fractal R5 server to replace the ancient Ubuntu file server to the left (outside the rack, sitting on the box of ethernet cable) that is primarily the home of my media drives (3 12 TB Ironwolf drives) and was my first homelab server. The new box will have a Tesla p4 and RX 580 GTX, i7-8700T and 64GB RAM in addition to the drives from the old server. I'll be converting the Ubuntu drive from the old server into an image and will use it to create a Proxmox VM on the new server, with the same drives passed through. Bottom:
- 2 Cyberpower CP1000 UPS with upgraded LiFePO4 batteries. The one on the left is only for servers and only exists to give the servers time to shut down cleanly when the power goes out. The one on the right is only for network devices (firewall, switch and the Ruckus R500 out of shot mounted higher in the closet)
Top to bottom:
- Unifi US-16-XG
- OPNsense DEC740
- Unifi Switch 24
- Unifi Switch 16 PoE
- DIY server with an AsrockRack X470D4U mainboard
- DIY DAS in an old server case with 18 3.5" bays
Not in picture: My UPSes, RIPE Atlas probe and an Odroid N2+ running my Home Assistant instance
The server runs Proxmox with a bunch of LXC containers running a Docker Swarm cluster.
There's too many services running so I'm not listing them all. Let's just say my phone is not going to be thrilled if it goes down. Also, this post was posted through said server.
A mini pc, a raspberry pi 4, 3*usb HDD (2*8tb mirrored and a 1tb for local back up), some Netgear router, a whole lot of spaghetti.
Just a NAS for now. Plan to add PiHole at some point.
Seven Raspberry Pi 4's and one Pi Zero, mounted on some tile "shelves" inside some IKEA furniture.