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?
A 3-way mirror is basically software level RAID 1 but you can lose 2 discs without losing data. This is the same redundancy level as RAID 6 / RAIDZ2, but it's less storage efficient. On the plus side, it's very low overhead, simple to think about, and will be faster at reading / writing.
So let's say you're doing a 4 TB disc buy and can choose between mirror and erasure coding, same level of redundancy at somewhat optimal setups for this scale.
For 3 way mirror: 3 discs, you have 4 TB useable storage and should really try to keep it under 80% utilization so more like 3.2 TB. Cost is 3 x drive price. You can add one disc at a time and restripe if using a software RAID that supports it or get 3 more discs to double storage. You can use ZFS or btrfs for this, maybe some others.
For erasure coding: 6 discs, you have 16 TB useable storage, 12.8 TB if staying under 80% utilization. Cost is 6 x drive price. This is harder to expand but it's sometimes possible, usually with a lengthy redistribution process. You basically need to use ZFS for this. You pay more for power due to the number of discs always spinning.
IMO you should figure out a reasonable guess at how much storage you need and then double it, then compare prices for the drives you'd need to get that with either level.
Is a 3 way mirror possible with one at a distance/on a different network or processor? Or is there some way I could make the 3rd of the mirror at a distance at a friend's house?
It is possible but performance is so bad and setup so complex that your definitely don't want to do it.
Ok so reliable saving of my data in a safe way is, instead of 3-2-1, actually 4-2-1 if I want mirroring for corruption check... damn
Kinda yeah the redundancy is less of a backup and more of a resiliency for your main data repository. 3-2-1 could be 1 off-site backup and a local backup within that NAS, e.g., so only 1 off-site drive needed.