Selfhosted

Arch server

here's your issue.

My first homelab server is running unRAID. No real complaints from me. It's been running for years no issues other than the crap hardware it runs on (i7-3770, 32GB RAM). I have some file shares, docker, and some VMs. The UI makes it really easy to do stuff, especially if you don't want to have to research and manage everything.

Self hosting on a rolling release platform? No way. Give me Debian, 4 hours work every 2 1/2 years. Arch is crazy and only doable if you only have a few single server

I use Ubuntu Server -> dm-integrity -> mdadm -> ext4. Super easy to set up (it just takes forever to do dm-integrity on the drives, but you don’t need to watch it), works great, easy to maintain. Everything I run on it is dockerized with docker compose and sits behind nginx-proxy-manager, so it’s also super easy to maintain.

Arch is very easy in this context.

Why would I pay for Unraid when I already have a smooth-running Proxmox cluster and an OMV-based NAS?

After having some issues with TrueNAS killing containers after updates, I went to Unraid and have never been happier. TrueNAS file sharing permissions also never did make sense to me. I got them to work but never quite grok'd them. Unraid performs exactly like I'd expect. I hand rolled a NAS using Ubuntu way back in the day and didn't have the desire to tinker on the NAS side of things too much.

On Unraid, I roll a larger xfs array for all of my media and large storage, then I have a two disk ZFS array for my more important documents and pictures. That gets archived up to the xfs array and my cache nvme drives have their own ZFS pool. I don't gain a ton by doing this, it was just fun to set up and I feel reasonably secure with my personal data.

I also run a smaller, lower powered machine with Proxmox and I run Home Assistant on it. Mostly because of tinkering with hardware support in Home Assistant, I didn't want it messing with my NAS needing restarts and such. But, Unraid is my workhorse. Day in, day out, it does exactly what I suspect with no surprises. I've had drives go bad and need replaced. I've had the whole machine just die and had to build a new machine. Unraid did exactly what I expected and needed every step of the way. The docker support is fantastic and super stable. Running multiples of the exact same container by duplicating and with only different port settings works great. I can't say that for my independent docker installs without a bunch of tinkering on things I couldn't seem to find enough about when I ran into issues.

I tinker on the things I enjoy. I do not enjoy having an unusable server. The anxiety is actually pretty insane for me. I would pay for Unraid many times over to get this combination of factors.

Reading that is wild

Why are you doing Arch on a server? You want to tinker forever and read the update notes like a hawk lest the server implode forever?

Arch isn’t gonna be noticeably leaner than Debian.

Get Debian, install docker and/or podman, set unattended upgrades, and then install Incus if you need VMs or containers down the line. You can stick on ZFS and it’ll be fine, you already have BTRFS for basic mirrors. Install Cockpit and you’ll have a nice GUI. Try not to think you have to fiddle with settings, the maintainers for each package/service have set it so it works for most people (and we’re most people!); you’ll only need to intervene on an handful of package configs. All set and it’s not proprietary.

To me it seems like:

• you want to do a lot of stuff yourself on arch
• but there's quite some complicated stuff to learn and try

I'd try Proxmox VE and, if you're also searching for a Backup Server, Proxmox Backup Server.

I recommend these because:

• Proxmox VE is a Hypervisor, you can just spin up Arch Linux VMs for every task you need
• Proxmox VE, as well as Proxmox BS are open source
• you can buy a license for "stable updates" (you get the same updates, but delayed, to fix problems before they get to you)
• includes snapshots, re-rolls, full-backups, a firewall (which you can turn on or off for every VM), ...

I personally run a Proxmox VE + Proxmox BS setup in 3 companies + my own homelab.

It's not magic, Proxmox VE is literally Debian 13 + qemu + kvm with a nice webui. So you know the tech is proven, it's just now you also get an easy to use interface instead of virsh console commands or virt-manager.

I personally like a stable infrastructure to test and run my important and experimental tuff upon. That's why I'm going with this instead of managing even the hypervisor myself with Arch.

Switched years ago and now things just work, no looking back for me and I am as happy as a clam.

I went with proxmox and various LXCs for either individual services or docker stacks with several things on a minimal os (I'm comfortable with Ubuntu server so that's what I go with generally as the unpriv LXC)

For the time being I'm content with my little raspberry pi 5 running debian. I can stream 4K on my home network and that's all the performance I need for now.

How close are you to "fck it, im just gonna pay for unraid"?

Extremely far. Maximum distance. My self updating debian with an sftpgo container and some RAID HDDs slapped onto it has been rocksolid for years.

UnRaid doesn't provide anything I am interested in, at all. Currently running TrueNAS for main storage and proxmox for virtualization, both ZFS based. If TrueNAS ever enshittifies, I'd run some bare metal Linux with ZFS. My workstations also run ZFS as the file system, making backups trivial. VM snapshots and backups of any system are trivial and take seconds (including network transfers).

I never understood why I'd even consider UnRaid for anything.

Openmediavault + mergerfs + snapraid is very similar to unraid storage in that you can add different disk sizes just like unraid. Admittedly it's not as 'plug and play' as unraid, but it's free, so can't really complain. Disk speeds using this config are also much faster if that matters.

I have considered truneas for if/when I need to rebuild, but this works for my jellfyin/arr stack needs.

At times i have felt that my distro was so not worth the flak.

But the thing that keeps me on it is i write it once and never half to dick with it again.

NixOS is really powerful, but the learning curve will push you to the edge!

I currently self host alot of stuff on my server which runs NixOS, theres some services that are as simple as ollama.service = true;

And others that you spend hours cussing at. But i feel the declarative nature is what makes switching to any other distro feel so unintuitive.

My linux journey had been,

Manjaro > ubuntu > arch > fedora > silverblue > opensuse tumbleweed > gentoo > nixos > opensuse tumbleweed > nixos.

I kept coming back to nix because i wrote what i wanted it to do and it did it that way every time. Its been a godsend for ZFS, although its not super bad to use ZFS on debian just mostly time consuming. The fact i dont half to worry about a update breaking DKMS and making my filesystem not work. I SWEAR SUN IF YOU COULD HAVE JUST DONE THE GPL INSTEAD OF CDL!!!

I have recently been exploring Guix, purely because of the NixOS drama. But i think nix is my main server OS

maybe try zVault (freenas fork)? heard it's great.

Weeeell, since they switched to a semi-subscription model, I'd recommend looking into TrueNAS (inb4 they start locking down their stuff)

Here, you lost this

u

Far. Fedora + ZFS for my NAS that's consumed by a 3-node bare-metal Kubernetes cluster running Talos. K8s has a ZFS provisioner that automatically creates new volumes when I spin something up. It more or less just works.

Debian?

Ive been using Unraid for years.

I am fully capable of running a Docker solution and setting up drives in a raid configuration. It's more or less one of my job duties so when I get home I'm not in a hurry to do a lot more of that.

But Unraid is not zero maintenance, and when something goes wrong, it's a bit of a pain in the ass to fix even with significant institutional knowledge.

Running disks in JBOD with parity is wonderful for fault tolerance. But throughput for copying files is very slow.

You could run it with zfs and get much more performance, but then all your discs need to be the same size, and there's regular disk maintenance that needs to happen.

They have this weird dedication to running everything is root. They're not inherently insecure, but it's one of those obvious no-nos that you shouldn't do that they're holding on to.

If you want to make it a jellyfin/arr server and just store some docs on the side, it's reasonable and fairly low maintenance.

I'm happy enough with them not to change away. And if you wait till a black Friday they usually have a pretty good sale.

I'll probably eventually move to a ProxMox and a Kubernetes cluster as I've picked up those skills at work. I kind of want to throw together a 10-inch rack with a cluster of RPI. But that's pretty against what direction you're looking to head :)

Nah. I have everything in containers so maintenance is a non-issue, since I can upgrade the host separately from the containers. I'm using openSUSE Leap with a BTRFS mirror for the storage and I never have to think about it. I'll probably move to openSUSE MicroOS when I get a new boot drive so I don't have to do the release upgrade every other year.

Not too close. My Proxmox server is basically set up, I can't fit anything more on it, so it's just back end and tinkering now. I'm comfortable with Proxmox.

That said, new box and a large windfall I'd have a look at Unraid. After donating to Proxmox at least that much first.

If Proxmox didn't exist (and TTeck didn't exist) I think I would have at least tested Unraid. I was comfy in Debian with Docker as a virtualisation host before moving to Proxmox anyways.

I'm sure it's good, I would like to give it a go. I'm happy where I am though.

I use Unraid. It’s great and a lot less hassle than back when I used just a regular distro for everything.

Not close at all.

OK, I got some missing bells and whistles in my current setup, which is just a poor man's NAS made of ZFS and samba, plus a nextcloud for convenience.

But I fell so much in love with ZFS that I would never replace it with unraid. For my next box I am looking forward to use TrueNAS instead.