Home Server and Self Hosting General - Technological Self-Sufficiency

[Big Fat Orange Cat]

I've never heard of that kind of port-blocking going on.
You can probably save money installing a GAN (like tail-/headspace) on a VPS or use a solution like ngrok as your reverse proxy.

Depends on your ISP. Mine definitely blocks incoming port requests on 80, 21, 443, 445 and 23. Probably more. I've connected my server directly to the modem and couldn't poll or connect to those ports.

 

[Stalphos Johnson]

I'm fine with just 2 HDDs right now. By the time I fill them up I should be able to afford a better system. I'm not necessarily set on an Optiplex, I'd be fine with the HP or Lenovo equivalents, but they seem to be more common online. Most of what I see are the 7th gen ones, and the service manuals show 2 spots for 3.5" hard drives, but I'd have to add on a second drive tray.

I ordered a Lenovo Thinkstation desktop that should work out well. A standard ATX power supply will fit and I just need to get a 10 pin adapter cable for the motherboard. It will also fit the 2 3.5" drives I want. I'm looking at a couple Seagate Ironwolf drives on Newegg. I have had bad experiences getting HDDs shipped in the past, but I haven't ordered any from Newegg. Has anyone had bad experiences with drives from Newegg? I could order them from Microcenter and pick them up but I probably won't have time to run to Microcenter for a couple weeks.

For the software, is running Jellyfin on top of TrueNas a good low maintenance option? I haven't messed too much with Docker and I want to make this as easy to maintain as possible.

 

[/AMP/]

I ordered a Lenovo Thinkstation desktop that should work out well. A standard ATX power supply will fit and I just need to get a 10 pin adapter cable for the motherboard. It will also fit the 2 3.5" drives I want. I'm looking at a couple Seagate Ironwolf drives on Newegg. I have had bad experiences getting HDDs shipped in the past, but I haven't ordered any from Newegg. Has anyone had bad experiences with drives from Newegg? I could order them from Microcenter and pick them up but I probably won't have time to run to Microcenter for a couple weeks.

For the software, is running Jellyfin on top of TrueNas a good low maintenance option? I haven't messed too much with Docker and I want to make this as easy to maintain as possible.

With latest TrueNAS version making jellyfin run is as simple as clicking install, setting up stuff like the IP and storage configuration and that's pretty much it. Haven't had trouble with it yet so in my experience it's not a bad option.
I'm confident to say that TrueNAS is one of the best choices for a home server right now, low maintenance and easy configuration. Shit just works 99% of the time just like it should.


I see you all are getting brand new hard drives for your servers so here's something to terrify you all lol

Spoiler

82 bad sectors on the thing (stable) and it just refuses to die. No worries though, I have cold spares like everyone else

 

[Post Reply]

For the software, is running Jellyfin on top of TrueNas a good low maintenance option? I haven't messed too much with Docker and I want to make this as easy to maintain as possible.

It works great for me.

 

[/AMP/]

I've found a good way of cheaping out yet again on a server part, this time it's hard drive caddies for Dell PowerEdge servers.
This should work for 11 to 13th gen servers (in my case, a Dell R730) and the whole trick revolves around doing a really simple mod of caddies dedicated for disk shelves.
These are usually much cheaper than typical caddies dedicated for the servers, in my case it was a third of the price of normal ones.

Spoiler: Modding

All it really takes is getting rid of a little bit of the metal on the right end of the caddy (facing front to the handle) just like shown on photo.
The server chassis has a peg blocking the caddy from sitting flush otherwise, so it's necessary to do.
The caddies themselves are thick metal, so you better equip yourself with some good metal cutters.

In the end you can get a whole lot of cheap caddies that stand out compared to normal ones. In my opinion this looks much better than the stock ones.
The LEDs work just fine, removing or installing the caddies doesn't require any force at all.

Spoiler: Server

Have any of you found any other interesting ways of saving money on similar stuff?
Mine is the whole server pretty much, the parts dedicated for it (like a dual 10G NIC) are laughably cheap resulting in the whole server not exceeding 250USD.
If anyone has any questions on the hardware or power consumption I am happy to expand on it

 

[Curry Teafag]

82 bad sectors on the thing (stable) and it just refuses to die. No worries though, I have cold spares like everyone else

Sounds like something I'd buy for a dolla (or a handful of), then throw into a RAID 0 setup. #yolo

 

[seri0us]

If anyone has any questions on the hardware or power consumption I am happy to expand on it

Have you put you your rack next to your waterheater to utilize the servers's waste heat

 

[DavidS877]

Have you put you your rack next to your waterheater to utilize the servers's waste heat

It's probably more useful to put the server in the room with a heat pump water heater, water heater cools and dehumidifies and server warms it back up.

 

[Curry Teafag]

Have any of you found any other interesting ways of saving money on similar stuff?

I buy used 'enterprise-grade' SSDs to serve as my OS drives. They are sub-$10 and come with robust MLC NAND and, in a few cases, full power loss protection (though I also have two APC UPSs; new non-branded batteries are around $20 and last a good few years).

With these SSDs, if one fails, I simply get another one from the drawer next to my desk. No need to worry. Life is good.

 

[/AMP/]

Have you put you your rack next to your waterheater to utilize the servers's waste heat

Honestly it's not even that bad even though it's running with dual v3 Xeons (soon to be replaced). I don't obsess over power draw that much, but with eight 7.2K HDDs and some simple expansion cards it pulls a bit under 150W.
Features like iDRAC and stable operation is something I need much more than low power consumption as it's not just a 24/7 home server, but also a box to learn a thing or two in the meantime.

I buy used 'enterprise-grade' SSDs to serve as my OS drives. They are sub-$10 and come with robust MLC NAND and, in a few cases, full power loss protection (though I also have two APC UPSs; new non-branded batteries are around $20 and last a good few years).

With these SSDs, if one fails, I simply get another one from the drawer next to my desk. No need to worry. Life is good.

Good idea to get a dedicated UPS for my server, though no doubt that thing is getting drained fast when I actually max out the machine with extra stuff.
What interface are these SSDs? SAS? I went the lowest effort option for a TrueNAS boot drive, just a simple M.2 SATA drive connected into the internal USB port on the Dell.
It's just 32 gigs and MLC, but I don't worry too much about it dying, I got frequent backups and cold spares. Might replace this solution with something better in future, but unfortunately the server only has space for eight 3,5 inch bays, so no way to try out classic 2,5 inch SSDs right now.

Also, it's surprisingly quiet for a 2U rack server, I know it all depends on the fans but no lie I had 4U / 5U solutions that were much louder.

 

[DavidS877]

Good idea to get a dedicated UPS for my server, though no doubt that thing is getting drained fast when I actually max out the machine with extra stuff.

The only point for a UPS is to survive very short power blips and to shut down safely for anything longer.

 

[Curry Teafag]

What interface are these SSDs? SAS?

2.5" SATA. Should work with SAS, too.

The only point for a UPS is to survive very short power blips and to shut down safely for anything longer.

Exactly. A UPS is not a power generator or laptop-battery equivalent. It's just there to prevent catastrophic failures from the usual power-delivery shenanigans.

 

[Big Fat Orange Cat]

I ordered a Lenovo Thinkstation desktop that should work out well. A standard ATX power supply will fit and I just need to get a 10 pin adapter cable for the motherboard. It will also fit the 2 3.5" drives I want. I'm looking at a couple Seagate Ironwolf drives on Newegg. I have had bad experiences getting HDDs shipped in the past, but I haven't ordered any from Newegg. Has anyone had bad experiences with drives from Newegg? I could order them from Microcenter and pick them up but I probably won't have time to run to Microcenter for a couple weeks.

For the software, is running Jellyfin on top of TrueNas a good low maintenance option? I haven't messed too much with Docker and I want to make this as easy to maintain as possible.

Which model Thinkstation did you get? Most of them are workstation-class desktops with tool-less architecture, and the motherboard/PSU/case are proprietary. I myself have a P520, and the PSU has an edge connector to connect to the mobo, and no cables, they're all connected to the mobo itself (PCIE, SATA).

 

[Almighty Space Duck]

My plan at the moment is to buy a Stormforge N10 with the goal of eventually having 2x 5 disk zfs pools. I will start with one 5x 14TB pool then add another later on. BLAH BLAH BLAH

Good news! The case arrived in one piece and I somehow didn't have to pay import duties on it. I have an Arc Pro B50 arriving tomorrow and the server upgrade will be complete. A word of warning about the N10, it is an absolute shit to build in, especially when you go overboard and try and cram 4 SATA SSDs into the top of the case. The 2 it is supposed to support is overoptimistic. Cable management is non existent too, so do yourself a favour and get a modular power supply. Once that is installed I can begin installing TrueNAS and pray that this is enough to get the drivers working for the GPU.

 

[Stalphos Johnson]

Which model Thinkstation did you get? Most of them are workstation-class desktops with tool-less architecture, and the motherboard/PSU/case are proprietary. I myself have a P520, and the PSU has an edge connector to connect to the mobo, and no cables, they're all connected to the mobo itself (PCIE, SATA).

I got the P320 and I checked the service manual and what a few other people online had done. Standard ATX power supply, just with a 10 pin instead of a 24 pin motherboard connecter. I got an adapter cable that seemed to have good reviews. I'm guessing that was a relatively recent switch than. Computer boots up fine, now I'm just waiting for the HDDs and the new power supply to arrive at this point. Funny how all these big OEM manufacturers make things as difficult as possible to keep their old equipment going and the lengths they'll go to do it.

 

[Big Fat Orange Cat]

Funny how all these big OEM manufacturers make things as difficult as possible to keep their old equipment going and the lengths they'll go to do it.

It's actually not for people like us, tbh, it's for ease of fru warranty work and downtime mitigation. Lenovo tech comes in, pops the side panel, lifts a lever and yanks a psu. Slide the new one in, lock the lever, pop on the side panel, 5 mins done. No cables except the mains to worry about.

 

[Squishie PP]

Due to the increasing number of age verification laws being passed in different jurisdictions,
I suspect that hosting your own software repository mirrors will be an extremely important skill to have.
I found a relatively straightforward guide for doing so on Debian: https://lazy-it.blogspot.com/2025/09/debian-setting-up-full-debian.html

 

[Steve(Not a Skeleton)]

I've recently been hit by youtube as being a teen, alongside the current state of trooncord asking for IDs I've decided to go full in on just using self-hosted services, not to mention I've given up github long ago after they decided to not accept commits using user+password as auth anymore.
My most recent additions were around self-hosted social media, currently have synapse for a discord alternative running completely cut-off from federation and mastodon for a twitter-like experience(so I've heard, I've never used twitter), these are on the heavier side of requirements and mastodons specially feel like I could use a better alternative, I'm using relays but I like the idea of "bubbles" some alternatives offer. So I've looked up about pleroma, akkoma and rebased, is anyone opinionated on any of these? I was personally inclined to use rebased but their gitlab doesn't even link to an existing page under "installation guide" and the lack of a ready-to-go docker makes me wonder if I'd be putting in effort for something that doesn't work in the end, has anyone had experience with it?

 

[Kurmudgeon]

Talk to me about offsite backups. One thing I'd love to host is my own password manager, but that's a scary thing to host. If I screw up somewhere along the line, which I will, I'm mega-fucked.

I have Proxmox and Proxmox Backup Server set up. I was thinking that I could host my password manager, let PBS back it up, and then take those backups and put them in some cloud storage, like Backblaze. It's $6/TB a month. If I ever need to restore, I pull the backups down, slap them into PBS, and let it ride. So, I guess my solution would be Backblaze+Rclone.

Do you offsite backup? How do you do it? And if you don't, then why the hell don'tcha?

 

[DavidS877]

Do you offsite backup? How do you do it? And if you don't, then why the hell don'tcha?

My Password Safe is just a KeePass file on my home hosted NextCloud.
That means there's already a copy on every NextCloud client I have.
Off-site is handled by periodically taking a pair of drives, writing an encrypted backup to them and then taking them to my friend's hangar at the airport and bringing the pair that's there back. And repeat.

Soon I'll have the Internet(tm) there and can just keep them in sync "live". Rsync to local pair. Gocryptfs. Rsync encrypted tree to remote "server". I was going to do block sync of encrypted volumes, but that's a pain in the ass. Sure there's some leakage of metadata with encyrption on a per-file basis, but rsync is simpler and it's worth it.