Hi, I’m quite new to this (only have watched videos and read forums) so I might use incorrect terms and explain things unclearly, please ask if you need more information to assist me.

Alright, so I got a dell optiplex 7060 micro with an i7 8700, 16gb dual channel ram (sodimm), a 256gb m.2 sata ssd and 130w dell ac adapter. Some other currently not in use hardware that may be of help is a 1tb 2.5 inch hdd that was in an old laptop from 2017 (still works perfectly fine, did do writing quite a bit in the past but never even store past 200gb) and a 1tb 3.5 inch hdd in some sort of bay for storing film in the 2010s (haven’t used for a long time but a few months ago I connected to it, could read and copy files from there).

My use case would be nextcloud for me, a friend in another country and 1 or 2 family member to backup data, we all have a copy on our machine and cloud backup. Next would be jellyfin and vaultwarden for my personal use, probably to stream some music that I listen to less frequently and movies that I torrent to watch a few times a month. I would also do research on running home assistant (now using a google nest mini and broadlink universal ir remote with the google home app and broadlink’s app, looking to degoogle and rely less on cloud stuff) and a matrix server for me and 2 more friends. However, the emphasis is still on the 3 initial purposes.

I’m planning to buy 1 nas drive from 2-4tb, a ups for proper shutdown/notification in power outage situations and will buy an external drive in the future or use the old drives for backup (maybe once a week) if possible.

Now, to the questions:

  1. Is the 1 drive setup actually suitable for my use case?
  2. Should I use proxmox? Or do you suggest smth else?
  3. What should I do to connect the drive? Use the sata connector of the dell optiplex micro (designed for 2.5 drives) and wire it to the outside, will it even provide enough power for a 3.5 hdd? Or buying a m.2 e key to 2 sata ports is a better option, and how can I power the single drive without purchasing a desktop psu?
  4. What is the best choice for connecting remotely without consuming too much battery on the devices? I’ve read about tailscale, wireguard, cloudfare, and things like using my own domain.
  5. I’m looking for old nas drives too because my budget is tight, what conditions should I aim for if I want it to work for another 4-6 years?

Any other ideas/suggestions for my project would be of so much help! Thank you so much!

  • walden@sub.wetshaving.socialEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago
    1. Sure. Having more drives is typically done for reliability reasons and they’re set up in some sort of redundant file system like ZFS, BTRFS, or RAID. Having only one drive means when it fails (and it will) you’ll have some downtime while you replace the drive and restore backups.
    2. Proxmox is great, and I recommend it. Proxmox gives you two important things: 1) A nice way to manage storage (this may not be applicable to you with just one drive, but if you decide to add more later you can explore the options 2) BACKUPS! You’re going to have lots of docker containers and stuff. Restoring docker containers on bare metal is tedious, because you’re dealing with all of the folders that you’ve set up as volumes, all of the compose files, etc. With proxmox, you run Debian in a virtual machine and have all of the Docker stuff in the VM. Your backup will be the entire VM, so restoring it is very simple.
    3. I don’t have a good answer for this.
    4. The best choice is whatever works best for you. Sort of a cop out answer, sorry. A lot of people like Tailscale (Headscale is another option), but the downside is you have to set it up on ever device you want to access stuff from. A reverse proxy like Nginx Proxy Manager or Caddy lets you use your own domain. They handle renewing certificates and everything in the background. It requires opening (forwarding) ports 80 and 443 on your router/firewall. Some see this as a security downside, but if everything is done using HTTPS then in theory it’s very safe.
    5. I don’t have a good answer for this.
  • tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.gardenEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    Re 4.) Some better ISP routers have a built in VPN option. I’m using the wireguard and DynDNS that comes with my router (FritzBox).