this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
37 points (91.1% liked)

Selfhosted

56958 readers
1474 users here now

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.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've been interested in self hosting a small variety of services yet I'm so confused on where to start. What would you guys recommend for a server machine?

My main uses (and some of the services I think are appropriate for the use case) are:

  • 1tb photo, video storage, push/pull (immich)
  • 512gb total shared between downloaded music storage (navidrome) and pdf/ebook storage (calibre)—all pull only
  • 1tb movies/tv storage on a media server (jellyfin)
  • 512gb storage for random junk or whatever, plus a file transfer push/pull (syncthing..? or nextcloud?)
  • potential basic bio website hosting (near future)
  • potential email hosting (distant future)

anyways with that all said i have a few questions:

  • what server should i buy if i want to expand storage in the future? should i just build a pc with like 3x1tb storage, or 6x1tb storage w/ redundancy? totally confused about the concept of redundancy lol
  • any thoughts on the services im suggesting? especially for file transfer
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I would absolutely discourage the use of synology and probably any other brand in the NAS realm.

Synology has pulled of some really scummy things in the last few years with their certified SSDs where only a white list of SSDs could be used in an array or when they tried to push their own HDDa and show warnings and messengers to worry the user that something is wrong. Also they retroactively removed transcoding capabilities from their systems.

Those Systems are all quite limited for how expensive they are. They are great for just simple things but with the list OP posted, you would be heavily limited and have to jump through hoops in order to have a well functioning home lab/server.

[–] thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world -1 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I see your point but in this world there is only 2 options, or you have the skills, the knowledge and the time to do it by yourself, or you need to outsource it.

Assuming that the op is a real noob it is clear that the 2 first prerequisites are missing making that option unacceptable, then you can only go to the buy something easy enough for the general public.

And in top of that, in a homelab, the most sacred thing is the data, not the service, the data. If you misconfigure a nas or the automated backup system it could lead into the worst scenario: the data is lost forever.

Weighting everything I still recommend what I did. Although if instead of synology you prefer ugreen or asustor... Well that's depends of your taste

[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I see your point but in this world there is only 2 options, or you have the skills, the knowledge and the time to do it by yourself, or you need to outsource it.

But your not, outsourcing it?! You just choose a proprietary provider for a docker compose file! and some raid configuration. Everything ia still on you to fuck up.

Assuming that the op is a real noob it is clear that the 2 first prerequisites are missing making that option unacceptable, then you can only go to the buy something easy enough for the general public.

Reading the Post again from OP, its clear that OP is clearly interessted in learning those things.

And in top of that, in a homelab, the most sacred thing is the data, not the service, the data. If you misconfigure a nas or the automated backup system it could lead into the worst scenario: the data is lost forever.

The exact same ia true for you synology NAS. + the limitations on how synology thinks you should do backups vs how it actually suits you.

[–] thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world -1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I think you are missing the point how easy is to fuck things up in a console with truenas when trying to activate de duplication or making a backup VS the same thing in a user friendly, already tested private solution. Of course from the noob point of view.

Installing truenas when having no idea about almost anything is cumbersome, dealing with the millions options (some of them incompatible between them) is frustrating, cryptic error codes are discouraging....

You want people jump in? Then make it easy for them, lower the entry barrier, if not, you will find yourself alone in your ivory tower.

The exact same ia true for you synology NAS. + the limitations on how synology thinks you should do backups vs how it actually suits you.

If you already know how to setup a proper backup system, balancing the pros and cons, with a robust and solid way to avoid data loss, then you don't qualify for noob.

If you don't know any of that and still makes yiur backup system, that's the recipe of the disaster and you have real probabilities of losing data with nay option to recover.

[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I think you are missing the point how easy is to fuck things up in a console

No i think you are. Why should a beginner ever even touch the CLI? You can also SSH into the synology and fuck things up.

Using a 'friendly environment' like synology is not gurantee to not fuck things up.

Installing truenas when having no idea about almost anything is cumbersome, dealing with the millions options (some of them incompatible between them) is frustrating, cryptic error codes are discouraging....

What millions of options? You select a drive, and set a password and your done? 1 Set fewer then on synology.

You brought up TrueNas. TrueNas for example also gives you safe boundaries and suggestions how to set up things. Same as synology. There is literally also a setup wizard for backups.

AND AGAIN just because you follow the synology wizards does not mean your data is safe either. You always can fuck things up if you want to.

[–] thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Oh I see, could you please point to that system that

  • it is free and not tie to any vendor
  • easy to use to the point that my grandma could use it
  • properly tested by an active q group
  • with safe boundaries
  • production ready
  • total flexibility
  • with a proper wizard / gui that is self explanatory, robust enough to make sure you don't select contradicting options.

If such system exist perhaps I move my homelab, who knows...

[–] ShortN0te@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 hours ago

Thats exactly my point. Both are not. But you keep claiming synology is compared to others.

Agreed. An old machine with extra drives is both way cheaper and more flexible. A little more work, but nothing you can't figure out with web searches and forum help.