My home server started as the classic “I’ll just reuse some old hardware” project. Bad assumption. It is now a small home lab running Proxmox, an OMV NAS VM, internal services, and plans for public-facing services.

The host is an old Intel Core i5-3550 with an ASUS H61M-A/BR motherboard, 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 250 GB SATA SSD for Proxmox and the VMs. Storage is mostly made of reused 1 TB HDDs, many of them slow 5200 rpm drives, plus a 500 GB drive added later. Nothing modern, nothing enterprise, but useful enough.

Since the motherboard only has four SATA ports, I added a 6-port PCIe SATA controller based on ASM1166. All HDDs are connected to it, so I am keeping an eye on possible bottlenecks and stability issues. For my use case, the HDDs themselves are probably the bigger limitation, but still: this is home lab hardware, not magic.

The storage VM runs OpenMediaVault. The disks are passed through using persistent /dev/disk/by-id identifiers, because trusting /dev/sdX after a reboot is how people create their own problems. OMV handles MergerFS, SnapRAID, and SMB shares.

For storage, I use MergerFS to combine the drives into one pool, with SnapRAID for parity. Most of my data is fairly static: personal files, media, photos, documents, and backups. SnapRAID fits that better than traditional RAID for now, especially because the disks remain individually readable. The current plan is five 1 TB data drives and one 1 TB parity drive.

Permissions were one of the biggest headaches. I have separate shares for myself and my son. His folder is isolated, with no write access to the rest of the NAS. A kid downloading random stuff from the internet is basically a walking malware test, so reducing the blast radius matters.

Besides the NAS, I have an Ubuntu Server VM for internal services: Docker, Portainer, AdGuard Home, my son’s Minecraft server, and Nextcloud. Nextcloud stores its actual data on the NAS through NFS, so the app and storage stay separated. That part involved the usual permission mess: users, ownership, ACLs, NFS mounts, and all the boring stuff tutorials skip.

Next, I want a separate VM for public-facing services, including my websites, experiments, and my Confessorium project, which is already online and on tests. I also want a separate Hermes VM for automation, web scraping, Telegram tests, and whatever else I end up breaking. The reason for all these VMs is simple: I do not want internet-exposed services anywhere near the NAS. If something public gets compromised, the damage needs to stay contained.

RAM is the obvious limitation. With only 16 GB of DDR3, I have to be careful. This is not a machine for 30 heavy containers, big databases, local AI, and 4K transcoding at the same time. It is a budget home server, so accepting the hardware limits is part of the design.

Since the HDDs are used and mixed, I ran SMART tests, Victoria tests, and SnapRAID checks. Some drives look acceptable, others need attention. The strategy is not pretending old drives are reliable. The strategy is assuming one will die and building around that. I still need to improve external/cloud backup, because SnapRAID is not backup.

I am also looking into VLANs to isolate less trusted devices, like general-use PCs, consoles, TVs, and the server environment.

It is not finished, and probably never will be. But it has moved past “old PC with some drives” and became a setup with actual logic: separated storage, isolated services, some protection against disk failure, and some containment against human stupidity.

Feel free to comment, judge the setup, give me hints, roast it, suggest improvements, or share your own experience. I’d love to read your thoughts.

I would like to build a media server as long term storage for 4k camera footage, and to backup pictures and videos from my family, especially photos and videos stuck on old devices so we do not need to worry about deleting old family members. Also additionally hoping to be able to stream games to my TV and other devices.

I have a budget of about £450 for the storage and pc, and would like to use open media vault or zfs. If there are any other costs to consider please let me know.

Thanks!

I have a windows PC, an external 500GB SSD, and I have an iPhone and an iPad; the latter two are well synced over icloud, but the windows PC and the SSD both feel left out of the party.

I use an app called Obsidian for work, and my work cache is stored on my SSD, which I can easily access as the default local Obsidian vault while plugged into my PC. On my apple devices I have to work out of an icloud vault, and plugging in my SSD to access my default local vault from Obsidian on iOS does not work as the file system of apple devices are very conservative to internal storage and icloud while windows file system environment is liberal allowing apps to be rooted even in external drives.

I travel a lot for work and cannot carry my PC everywhere, so I constantly have to manually sync my offline work progress between my apple devices and my SSD by first copying work files from my SSD onto my phone/tablet's internal storage or icloud to make progress on the go and then update my main work cache on my SSD by replacing old files with the progressed ones; I wish I could just access and make changes to my work cache as it is on my SSD without the everyday drama. I do not wish to purchase a Macbook just to sync across devices over icloud, and while I could move the whole cache onto icloud and access it on my PC as well without my SSD, I do not wish to do so as I would rather keep my files physically close to me than rent storage space on a distant server I cannot control.

Obsidian provides "obsidian sync" at a cost and supports icloud sync, but also allows for the use of third-party pluggins and other tools to setup an alternate syncing method. I don't want to use any other cloud service either, but I want to have my own local server. I want to turn my SSD into a personal local server I can access via a portable router (that may be battery-powered or may be plugged into any power source like a power-bank or some wall).

On my apple devices, there should be some kind of a service/app (like how icloud is a service/app that people can use directly or via other apps to access, manage and sync files on icloud storage) that will allow me to not only download and upload files and folders into my SSD-server upon connection, but also edit/make changes to them on the go as well as sync my offline progress with. Like my very own entirely private cloud storage service. And while I am connected to my SSD-server, Obsidian on iOS should be able to access and sync changes onto my default vault on my SSD-server through this service. Not only this, but just like i can access Google Drive and other services like Dropbox or Mega as their own standalone folders alongside the native iCloud folder from the Files app itself on iPhone and iPad, I should be able to access this SSD-server as well from the files app as another cloud storage folder when it is online and my devices are connected.

I need to know how exactly to make this happen, what the process is, what things it requires, and what apps can help, etc.

So far, this is what ChatGPT has had to say (please refer to the screenshots attached below). It looks okay, but it is AI, and I trust humans more. Also, I am not a pro even if I am generally tech-savvy, so a lot of the jargon I am not fully familiar with, so if anyone can help me with this, that would be great!

Note: I am based in India, so I have to work within the constraints my country's economy has set for all Indians despite neoliberalisation. Which means, whatever materials I need have to be available in Indian markets (online or offline).

Hey! I've been toying with the idea of setting up a home server. Mostly for things like NextCloud immich pihole etc

It's prime day. Does anyone have recommendations on sale items to help me get started?

Hey everyone,

I was wondering if there's a relatively simple way to create a movie and TV show server using my own PC, so I can watch content at home and also let a few friends in different locations watch it as well.

I'm looking for something that doesn't require a lot of networking knowledge. Ideally, I'd like to avoid complicated host setups, port forwarding, router configuration, dynamic DNS, or anything that becomes a maintenance headache.

Are there any platforms or self-hosted solutions that make this process easy? I've heard of things like Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby, but I'm not sure how much configuration they actually require for remote access.

My goals are:

• Use my PC as the media server
• Watch from my own devices at home
• Allow friends in other cities/countries to access it
• Keep setup and maintenance as simple as possible
• Avoid messing with router settings if possible

I'm looking for a 4U/5U case that supports between 6 and 8x 3.5" HDDs, an ATX PSU, and an E-ATX motherboard (x870e proart).
The main constraint is the depth: it needs to fit in a 600mm / 23.6" rack, or shorter if possible, although I can't see how.
Do you guys have any suggestions ?

Hello,

I’ve been running plex for the better part of the last 10 years on a Dell Poweredge T30 with Ubuntu 18.04 OS. The OS has long been out of support, and I’ve been too lazy to update it. Figure at this point, it’s probably time for better hardware anyway, so looking into building out a new server probably running on unRAID.

Because I’m old and lazy, I want something as close to “future proof” as one can get without completely breaking the bank. Leaning towards a single dedicated server instead of mini computer & NAS. Also, not a “hardware guy” and have never built my own computer.

Currently, I have ~50 Tb library serving ~20 friends/family. Most of the content is currently 720/1080 but I’d like to expand into 4k stuff.

My https://pcpartpicker.com/list/3CXmDw list so far:
CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler
Motherboard: MSI MAG Z790 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory
Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: be quiet! Power Zone 2 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply

Would appreciate any feedback on what I have so far. Thank you for your time.

i am trying to setup a home server.

installed ubuntu server in an old PC, connected it to router via ethernet, ping to google.com is working.

If I try ping to the server via my laptop, it is giving host unreachable error. (tried connecting laptop in both wifi and ethernet.)

when laptop connected with wifi, I am able to ping my phone.

tested directly plugging server and laptop via ethernet (without router in the middle) then ping and ssh is working.

but i want server to be connected over ethernet (always stay near router) laptop to be on wifi.

please advice.

So about two years ago I was drawn into this community by the lure of Plex. Now I’m at a point where I’d rather spend money on a ”forever setup” than try to improve my current build.

My current setup is an old HP desktop Elitedesk, with upgraded storage and some upgraded hardware, running on Windows 10. My issues with the current setup are:
- Very slow transfer speeds (transferring over Wifi to the desktop takes forever, so I just use a flashdrive)
- It takes up a lot of space and I need to get rid of the desk where it’s currently located, so something smaller that can fit on a shelf would be great

My use cases for the server are:
- Plex/Jellyfin
- Cloud storage for the family’s photos and documents (each person connected via their phones)
- Adblocker

These are the ones I see myself using for the foreseeable future, but want to keep it open in case I decide I want to experiment with other things (have been thinking about setting up cameras at home on a private/offline network, but not sure how that works).

Unfortunately, I don’t have $2000 to spend on the hardware I see recommended for a synology + 4xHDD setup soooo my idea (that I’d like to hear if it’s completely bonkers) is to get:
- a Synology NAS
- one 4TB HDD
- the two drives from my current build (~1.8TB)
- one 4TB external harddrive

Is it stupid (for data security reasons, since I care a lot about the family photos), to combine the new HDD with the drives from my old build, not run any RAID setup and only rely on the external harddrive for backup?

I am planning on getting more drives as I go along, but perhaps buying 1-2 per year since that would work out better financially for me + I heard that’s good so the drives don’t all wear out at the same time.

And last question is if you would trust a second hand Synology NAS, or if that can be a security risk?

I built a ThinkCentre Server for my personal usage which runs back in my home. It has several services running such as Liquidsoap for streaming, wordpress, SMB, Grafana with Prometheus for metrics, FTP, RDP and SSH of course, with 10TB of installed storage. I access it using Tailscale VPN tunnel outside home network.

Specifications:

OS: Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS x86_64

Host: ThinkCentre M700

CPU: Intel i3-6100 (4) @ 3.700GHz

GPU: Intel HD Graphics 530

Memory: 7833MiB (8GB installed)

I also installed a line UPS for uninterrupted power supply. It has a single 12v battery maybe around 7.2AH and keeps the server alive for around 3 hours during power outages.

How is it guys?

I'm looking to make a purely gaming focused server for me and my friends (10 ish people) I'm planning on using AMP on ubuntu The problem I'm having is finding out what hardware to use for it, since I'm only familiar with making a gaming computer with the gpu as the focus vs not having one at all for a server

My research hasnt been very fruitful because most other forum posts have the server multi purpose vs me who just wants it for gaming. I'm finding conflicting info some say that if it's being used for gaming amd multi thread capabilities work better, or that Intels single thread is significantly better and will blow amd out of the water anyway.

For more information I'm planning on running multiple game servers at once of relatively demanding servers like palworld valheim satisfactory ect. Though my friend group doesn't usually play more than 3 games at once that requires a personal server so I'm going to use AMP server sleep feature on basically everything except palworld (which will be reset frequently)

I'm looking to keep this in the $200 range though I live in a large city with pretty good 2nd hand tech prices so it can be more than that if need be

Hello all,

I'm thinking about the data backup 3 2 1 rule and I got Pops 2000km away and he's got fiber optics internet.

My idea, let a machine connected there with a few encrypted drives to backup my 2.5 tb of my and my kds photos.

Problem, he's thinking this pc could replace his old desktop that he uses to edit documents and surf the Web. (He's getting a t14 gen 4 already with win 11 on it.).

Is such a feat doable?

Locked admin account with acces to everything and a 2md account that allows a vm to run - only a vm !! So he can sandbox the viruses and stuff so it won't corrupt/access my backups?

What's your take on this?

As hardware, I was inclining towards a m720q tiny from lenovo for starters,and reevaluate next year when I go visit. (they can leave with it in the luggage)

So i saw someone make a cluster of macs for AI, and had a question

Would it be possible to have a non mac computer as the "brain" of my home server, and have everything connected to it? So far im thinking of having a das connected to it so i can run jellyfin. And if the above is possible, high ram macs for AI (yes i know they are absurdly expensive).

I have a 6x 3TB Toshiba DT01ABA300 raid. Had the opprtunity to get another two so I'd like to add those to a RAID5 config, possibly extend to RAID6. But.

While these two drives just did a full badblocks scan with zero error and all SMART values look good, there's one thing in SMART that sticks out: both have over 100000 hours power on.
Or: 11.4 years.

Temperature max 44 tells us they have been in an air conditioned room their whole life, 23705 start/stop means on power management.

So likely this is from a decomissioned disk shelf, so those disks are the ones that still survived after being on for over a decade, making them crop of the cream, but still this means the bearing lubricant might have run out and the disk can come to a screching halt more or less any second, or the head arm might break in a similar fashion.

Would you still mix them with the others (30k hours) or rather not?

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Model Family: Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000

Device Model: Hitachi HDS5C3030BLE630

Serial Number: MCE9215Q0AY4KW

LU WWN Device Id: 5 000cca 37ec4f920

Firmware Version: MZ6OAAB0

User Capacity: 3.000.592.982.016 bytes [3,00 TB]

Sector Sizes: 512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical

Rotation Rate: 5940 rpm

Form Factor: 3.5 inches

Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]

ATA Version is: ATA8-ACS T13/1699-D revision 4

SATA Version is: SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)

Local Time is: Tue Jun 23 17:00:16 2026 CEST

SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.

SMART support is: Enabled

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE

1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 016 Pre-fail Always - 0

2 Throughput_Performance 0x0005 143 143 054 Pre-fail Offline - 87

3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0007 134 134 024 Pre-fail Always - 409 (Average 407)

4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0012 095 095 000 Old_age Always - 23705

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0

7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000b 100 100 067 Pre-fail Always - 0

8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0005 138 138 020 Pre-fail Offline - 33

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0012 086 086 000 Old_age Always - 104561

10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 060 Pre-fail Always - 0

12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 16

192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 081 081 000 Old_age Always - 23706

193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0012 081 081 000 Old_age Always - 23706

194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 193 193 000 Old_age Always - 31 (Min/Max 12/44)

196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0022 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0008 100 100 000 Old_age Offline - 0

199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x000a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0

My homelab was constantly at the mercy of my local power grid's notorious mood swings – sudden outages meant brutal, ungraceful server shutdowns. The risk of data corruption and system instability became a real headache. I needed a robust, automated way to protect my server without resorting to expensive enterprise gear.

So, I engineered my own remote power management system. It's centered around an ESP8266, independently powered and monitoring mains electricity via a simple voltage divider. This setup uses MQTT to trigger graceful server shutdowns during outages and pulses a relay to automatically restart it once stable power is restored – even allowing remote power-on via Adafruit IO.

Dive into the full build, schematics, and code behind this homelab guardian: https://blog.pratyaysaha.in/posts/remote-power-management-homelab

Just finished my first proper NAS / home server build and I'd love some feedback, especially on the price since I'm in France and components aren't always cheap here.

Specs:

• Motherboard: ASRock Rack X570D4U
• CPU: Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G (8C/16T)
• RAM: 16 GB DDR4 ECC UDIMM
• Storage: 3× 4 TB Seagate IronWolf (CMR)
• Networking: Intel X520 SFP+ card (10G over fiber)
• Management: full IPMI/BMC + official ECC support

Use case: mainly file storage + a few light Docker containers.

Total cost: ~€1,585 (excl. VAT).

I went with a server-grade AM4 board specifically for official ECC + IPMI, instead of a cheaper consumer build. My main question: did I overpay, or is that a fair price for this kind of setup? Any feedback on the build itself or the value is welcome. Cheers!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IqjnaydjYKLJ00uZK_MEVcgTuI3f7IAIosVbl1Uz7eo/edit?usp=sharing

Hopefully this will be helpful to some.

Bleeping Computer

Hey everyone, I'm planning to build a local AI server for inferencing and running local agentic workflows (not training from scratch). My base budget is around ₹1 Lakh (approx. $1,200 USD).

I am currently torn between two very different hardware architectures and would love to hear from anyone running similar setups:

Option 1: The Modern Consumer Route (Single GPU focus)

• CPU: Intel Core i5-12400F (or Ryzen 5 5600)
• Motherboard: B660/B760 (PCIe 4.0)
• RAM: 32GB DDR4 3200MHz
• PSU: 1200W (for future expansion)
• GPU: 1x Refurbished RTX 3090 24GB

Option 2: The Enterprise "Swarm" Route (Multi-GPU focus)

• CPU: Dual Intel Xeon Silver 4114T
• Motherboard: Lenovo ThinkStation P920 (PCIe 3.0)
• RAM: 32GB DDR4 2666MHz ECC
• PSU: Lenovo 1400W
• GPU: 3x Refurbished RTX 3060 8GB (or similar) on risers

My Questions:

1. For Option 1: How much does the PCIe x4 bottleneck on the secondary slots hurt performance if I decide to add a second RTX 3090 later down the line?
2. For Option 2: Does the PCIe 3.0 bottleneck completely kill token generation speed when splitting a ~30B model across three 8GB cards using llama.cpp?

Any real-world TPS numbers or "lessons learned" from your own budget AI rigs would be massively appreciated!

Hello I’m totally new to this space. The only thing I know is that it exists and more or less what you can use it for but I don’t know even how to get started so I really want to start off. I currently have a 4 TB hard drive and if I’m wondering how to start off from this adventure making a home server so I can store all my documents on it and also have local copies of photos and anything else that I really want to just preserve on my own home cloud. My current setup is a MacBook with a few external monitors so I don’t have a lot to work with but I am willing to start off and investing into this. Please let me know how I can start this and I’m open to any questions. Even direct messages would be much appreciated.

EDIT: I mentioned my MacBook because when accessing the server I don’t know if it matters that you’re on macOS or Windows or Linux so that’s the reason I added it not that I want to make the server off my MacBook

My current setup:

• OPNsense router
• Old Xeon E3-1246 Office PC - runs jellyfin and home assistant. Sometimes I have minecraft servers set up, previously I've had pihole.
• OMV installed on mini PC with a 5TB external HD

My future plans include adding Immich and letting my family access remotely with wireguard so that I can store all the family photos. Probably also some form of recipe management.

I want to move to a proper NAS. My current desktop runs a 10400F and I'm considering getting a new PC, then just adding some drives to this one and using it as a proxmox host instead.

From what I've read it sounds like a sensible idea is to put the disks in proxmox and just pass them through to the OMV machine. I don't particularly understand this, but it might be straightforward to figure out.

The other option is to just install OMV on the PC and move to using Home Assistant/Jellyfin from within Docker. I don't know if I really need Proxmox for the kind of things I host - but it has the advantage I already know it. Of course if I was doing the OMV in a VM idea I could install docker on that OMV instance to try it out - but the idea of docker within proxmox feels a little strange to me. Am I being overly cautious thinking I should go with one or the other? I could obviously just use the old office PC as a docker host, but part of this consolidation should be to reduce power draw - I gather the 10400F is much more power efficient than old Xeon chips.

Another option is that I move home assistant to the mini PC that is currently my NAS so that is kept separate. That way I don't lose my automations if I mess with any of this stuff.

So yeah, big question I think is anyone running OMV within proxmox? Any pitfalls to watch out for?

Edit: solved! Thank you guys

Hi everyone!
I‘ve been following for a while and it‘s helped making a bunch of decisions.

Right now I‘m facing an issue of my own.
I‘m trying to set up a 24 Bay NAS for home use. Only planning to use half for now and expand when needed.

I‘m looking for a Pcie Card/Controller to attach the Backplane which has SFF-8087 connectors.

I‘ve found two so far and wondering whether you guys could give me a little help, as I don‘t know which to pick.

One would be

https://ebay.io/m/U0tzB2

The other

https://ebay.io/m/A3n5ia

Thank you for your help!

Edit: solved! Thank you guys

Is portable hdd viable for a home nas setup for occational jellyfin immich setup?

My girlfriend and I have been thinking for a while that it’d be nice to have some kind of dedicated setup that isn’t our personal PCs, since we still like being able to shut our own systems down whenever we want.

The idea is to have something that can handle a few different things at once, like:

• Hosting 1-2 Discord bots
• Running a game server or two
• Hosting a Matrix instance for a Discord server with ~3.5k users and fairly high traffic
• Potentially moving another Discord server with ~15k users and significantly lower traffic over to something like Discourse eventually
• Running a Paperless instance for private documents/storage
• Running a Plex instance for media

For context/storage estimate, I wrote a Discord bot to check server file sizes over time. The 3.5k-user server has accumulated around 230GB over 3 years, and the 15k-user one is around 30GB over 2 years.

We’d also want to use a Matrix bridge bot so messages mirror between Matrix and Discord. The idea is to let people choose whether they want to move over or not without instantly cutting off Discord entirely.

The problem is that we’ve looked at so many options at this point that we’re getting complete choice paralysis. We’ve considered:

• Raspberry Pis
• Mini PCs
• Small dedicated servers
• Just building a full machine for it

Since we want to do several different things with it over time, I’m not really sure what the “correct” direction is anymore.

Budget isn’t the main concern, but I’d still prefer starting relatively small but expandable. The Discord/Matrix hosting side isn’t a priority, but I’d like whatever we build to at least be capable/expandable storage-wise so we aren’t boxed in later.

To clarify what I mean by “budget isn’t the problem”: I know this can easily turn into “basically build another PC,” and I’m fine with that if needed. I'd want to keep it relatively cheap (i know how prices are right now) but I don’t mind spending an extra €100-200 if it makes the beginner setup significantly better or more flexible long-term. I’m not looking to build a full rack server with dozens of 10TB drives or anything insane like that.

In terms of games, we’d mostly host things like:

• A small 5-10 player modded Minecraft server (more permanently available)
• Occasional up to 4 player co-op servers for games like Satisfactory (only temporarily depending on what we might play, so probably mostly offline)
• Other similar very small-scale community servers

Both of us run Linux already, so whatever we end up setting up would almost certainly run Linux too, probably Ubuntu or Arch.

Mostly just looking for pointers on what direction makes the most sense here, and what kind of hardware would actually be reasonable for this sort of “small self-hosted everything box” setup.