I am technologically skilled to some extent, but not nearly enough to justify the financial investment I'm about to make In a home server without checking that I'm not way off the mark. Reddit tech answers are usually useless, all jerking each other off about being the most vague and useless. So I'm here, just humbly asking if my plan will work before I waste a ton of money if it doesn't.
So I want to run immich, jellyfin, vaultwarden, and a couple other small programs (including backup automation) on a home server. The photos and videos are very important and I want off of large corporate cloud services for all the reasons you can imagine. There are about 2TB of important photos and data right now to backup.
So my plan: a mini pc with a low-level i3 or i5 chip but about 256gb SSD and 8gb ram. I will buy a UPS, a hub/NAS for 2 4TB HDDs, and a separate hub for backups elsewhere on another 4TB HDD. I already have a pc with an ok graphics card (only like 8 years old, but it was above average then) and good processor. My plan is to run the server with Linux, docker, and portainer on the mini-pc, and do the most intensive work (things like local Machine Learning on the photo library in immich) on the gaming pc. To save on energy, the mini pc is the only thing on most of the time, and I will turn on the old gaming pc to do the hard tasks.
I am hoping a friend will allow me to (somehow? I don't know how yet) keep a hub+HDD backup at their place which is updated weekly automatically whenever their computer turns on.
Is this all achievable? Am I missing something small or huge? Any tech people here know something that I'll likely miss on my first attempt?
Some points:
So in short I'd say dump the NAS, spend the money from that to instead get to more than 8GB RAM, get a recent intel chip with an iGPU that supports quicksync and if possible go for the i5 over the i3 as processors can lower their power states when not in use to save power so the difference when idle between it and an i5 is negligible but the extra power when in use may be nice.
Very good advice, thanks so much.
If instead of a NAS, I do a powered HUB, then I can just install software to utilize the HDD's in the powered HUB in a RAID1 configuration right? A NAS was my backup to this plan. Then of course a separate backup, I am luckily aware that RAID=/=backup
I wouldn't want to try a RAID array with multiple external USB drives. The USB protocol is IMO not reliable enough for that and I could see it breaking due to issues with that. Can it be done is less interesting than should it be done and my opinion is it should not be done. RAID should be done through a DAS over a single USB connection rather than multiple if you ask me. I have no experience with setting up RAID in such a situation so I cannot answer other than to say my instinct is to say I wouldn't do that personally with those finicky external drives.
My advice was tailored to the idea these were internal 3.5" drives not external USB drives which are generally inferior if for nothing else than their heat dissipation is awful (I and many others have 'shucked' or removed from enclosure certain externals which have viable internal drives such as WD elements (not all externals can be shucked, smaller USB power only ones especially)) though there are often other problems like lower RPMs and speed.
There are DAS units that themselves do RAID internally in hardware rather than via host software. Terramaster sells a DAS (2 bay only, their larger bay models don't do this) that has a RAID select switch on it as do some other brands. I think RAID via software to proper 3.5" internal drives in a DAS / multi-drive HDD dock should be fine as well if slightly less ideal.
Did I say something thay makes you think 'USB'? I was imagining connecting via ethernet to a powered HUB of 3.5" HDDs when I said it... am I missing something?
Well you mentioned powered hub which made me think powered USB hub. Maybe just a lost in translation thing.
Anything with ethernet for connectivity is a NAS not a DAS, not an external HDD dock and tends to cost significantly more (maybe you have a line on a nice used one or something though). I was advocating for a DAS/external powered HDD dock (with fan). But a NAS would work fine for what you're after as most of them do have RAID done by the NAS itself and configured via its software (often via a web page). For a non-networked DAS or similar you could do software RAID. Not something I have personal experience with so take this with a grain of salt but at most you might need to fiddle with some things like disabling quick removal/flagging the drives as removable in your OS of choice. On Linux especially I don't see this being a problem.
So to be clear there are two categories of things here:
OMG that was the piece I was missing. Every time I looked into NAS it felt like it was vague, but its literally about the connection type.... damn that was simple. Ok, now I get what you're saying perfectly. Thanks! Ok, so I was definitely looking for an external powered HDD dock which is connected by anything NOT USB. But that is sort of a non-existent thing? Is an external powered HDD dock always USB????
NAS is basically a mini-computer built around storage and serving up that storage over your network. Some of the more powerful ones offer transcoding (Jellyfin). DAS or HDD docks require a computer connected to them and on to serve up any files. This is why a NAS is going to tend to cost several hundred dollars.
External powered HDD dock with a fan would be best, you can technically add your own fan after (not as effective) but those with a built in fan are better IMO and you can get one for $50 for two drive operation (if you want one with hardware RAID support expect to pay more).
In the modern age basically all HDD docks or DAS units use USB. Why wouldn't they? It's ubiquitous, it has high speeds. There used to be a standard called E-SATA which was just an external SATA connection but you won't find those on mini-PCs or basically any other PC made in the last 10 years and you'd need a specialty PCIE card on a full tower or at least mini-tower build to add one. It's a dead standard. In thinking about this the options are basically USB or thunderbolt which just uses a USB-C connector so still USB really. Anything else is an exotic specialty connector.
I may have been a bit negative about USB but that's only in comparison to internal connectors like SATA. For external connections USB is pretty great, pretty reliable and I'd worry more about the quality of external drives in their own enclosures from the factory than USB. Use USB with a good device like a reliable multi-drive dock with its own power and you'll be good.
Ethernet is for networking so to enable it to transfer data you'd need a processor and some form of minimal OS on-board and at that point you have a NAS and might as well go all the way and build a proper NAS which is in fact all you'll find. But a NAS does not require a separate computer for serving files. Cheaper ones may be too weak to do things like immich, jellyfin transcoding (direct-play of files would work), etc but the more expensive ones can.
(Note costs are increasing and shifting rapidly so always check things out yourself before deciding what is cheapest) Cost wise a mini-PC with USB-C multi-drive HDD dock or used recent office PC would tend to win by a lot both in absolute cheapest and performance per $. You can get a basic mini-PC with i5 or similar that can handle 4 video streams simultaneous for probably $500 plus $50 for this dock we're talking about while a decent NAS that doesn't have the same amount of processing power or the ability to expand to 2 or 4 more drives by just buying another dock for another $50 would probably be $600.
NAS have their place, they're simple, relatively easy to use, dedicated devices for file serving and running some services depending on how beefy they are. Some can be upgraded with special caching NVME ssd drives to speed up file serving as well so on the high end a good NAS will tend to beat other solutions in serving files reliably, quickly, etc in a high demand environment. But unless you're hosting Jellyfin for >10 people I wouldn't worry about it as you won't benefit and it doesn't sound like you need to worry. So pick whichever seems most appealing from a cost and utility stand-point.
This is amazing info. Thanks so much. I think a powered dock with USB is then the path that I would prefer, but another person has almost convinced me to just make my gaming pc into a server itself, just wanna figure out how much extra energy that will actually cost...
But your help is amazing. I understand this hole in my knowledge so much better
In this day and age, yes.
Why do you want external HDDs anyway?
Just because I wanted to do a mini pc for energy efficiency, and they won't hold the 2 HDDs I had imagined for RAID1 configuration.
You can get the same parts in different form factors. The PC being small doesn't mean it uses less power.
And honestly modern hardware is pretty good about saving power when idling. Having a second power supply for the HDDs might be less efficient.
thanks for the advice, I might actually just use my PC. just feels weird because I had so long now imagined it not possible or useful for this lol