I'm having trouble finding a proper starting point for self hosting, so I am curious on any resources you'd recommend, or even some build lists / pre-built devices.
What I want to do:
Important
- Host some applications like TinyTinyRSS, Jellyfin, GitLab, and Nextcloud which I'd want to be accessible in my home network
- Use the computer as a NAS to back data up and have it easily accessible on my desktop and laptop
- Have a piHole
Optional
- Access my hosted applications from outside of my network
- Use tools like Radarr to automatically download things from torrent lists
- Use it as a seedbox
The reason the last three are optional is because for that I'd have to expose the computer to the outside network, which has a whole bunch of benefits, but also a whole bunch of risks I am likely neither capable of nor comfortable with working around, so unless there's an easy fix (number 3 might be able to be handled via a VPN?) they're a problem for future me. For anything further I think I can just go from here once those requirements develop
I have already skimmed through some articles, watched some build guides for both NAS and home servers and honestly I just don't know what I need, both in information, hardware, and software.
- Should I separate the NAS and Home Server, get a separate device for the piHole, or just have all three in one?
- What hardware would be suitable for this?
- Should I buy something off the shelf like a mini PC (for instance an Intel NUC) or one of these fancy prebuilt NAS devices where you just need to plug in some drives or build my own?
- Would it be smarter to go with a Linux distro as the OS, for instance Debian, or should I use something like Unraid or TrueNAS which from what I can gather make setup more convenient and even handle docker images for you?
I am somewhat comfortable with Linux and the command line and have a budget of about 1000€, but if I can get away with less that would be great, and I can also stretch higher if needed for my requirements. I am also very new to self hosting and my networking knowledge is not non-existent, but limited.
I'm just a bit lost and would love some beginner-oriented resources or direct advice, thank you!
Starting with a consumer NAS is a good spot, they come with a lot of upfront features that are designed to be easier to use for someone who isn’t already familiar with them. I have a synology and it did all the things you describe without issue (other than struggling with transcoding video in real time) and eventually graduated the heavier tasks like media and proper VM hosting to external secondhand mini PCs while still using the NAS as a network drive to store the data. The NAS itself includes docker and an easy to use repository browser that I use for things like pinhole or WLAN controller software, it has an onboard torrent client (which can use RSS and regex to automate downloads), and it has some other light hosting services, which it’s quite capable of. Starting with “just” the NAS and adding external devices as your use case shifts is always an option. Keep in mind that the best way of upgrading a NAS’ storage is leaving a bay open and upgrading disks one by one without having it do a “hard” rebuild from parity data, so 4 bays at least is a good starting point.
If you want to start with just an off the shelf NAS as an all in one device I would recommend making sure it either has or can take additional RAM (no such thing as too much), an NVME cache (more optional but nice) and an intel processor (quicksync transcoding, though the low end cpus will definitely still struggle with trying to turn 4K into 1080 for a stream). I’d be willing to bet most of the consumer NAS devices will all support docker at this point and have similar built in feature sets. Some of the newer models will support onboard 2.5gbe which is nice but probably unnecessary for a single user or family.
External access would be more of a job for your router/firewall which would use PAT to forward connections to your internal network, so that’s outside the scope of your NAS unless you’re building a true all in one box that acts as the central hub of your entire home network.