I’m also a person that has always struggled to learn by solely reading. Typically a combination of video tutorials and documentation, while actually doing the work on my end, is how I usually grasp concepts.
I have been exploring the world of home servers/self-hosting for a little over a year now, and feel like I have at a decent understanding of a lot of things that go into this. The one thing I am not remotely comfortable with yet is networking. It's like a foreign language to me.
What are some good resources or projects that I could work on to help me develop a better understanding of this? Or, what helped you advance your networking knowledge? I have an UnRaid machine and a Raspberry Pi 4 (8gb) at my disposal (for any project recommendations). Current router is ISP provided, so nothing fancy.
Thanks for the great info! What mini PC did you end up going with? I’ve heard Beelink and a few others thrown around here and there, and most seem to be impressed with what they can do. Do you mind elaborating some on how you handle your drives with this type of setup? Do you just have some sort of NAS connected directly to the pc?
Hi everyone. I’m on the verge of building a new NAS/Media server, and wanted to check here to see if any of you could provide some recommendations based on my goals (below) or your current builds. I currently have a Raspberry Pi 4 running some basic services (Portainer, Home Assistant, Plex, sonarr/radarr/prowlarr, sabnzbd, etc.), but would like to expand my options and capabilities as my interests in the hobby grow.
My goals:
- Ability to have 4+ 1080p streams on Plex. Right now my Pi works surprisingly well at home with one 1080 stream, but basically shits its pants doing much more. Would like to give my parents and a friend or two access.
- Document storage/backup. Interested in Nextcloud, but it seems people have mixed experiences here.
- Photo storage/backup.
- Hosting the services mentioned above, plus some extra headroom for others. I’ll probably move back to Home Assistant OS on my Pi, unless you think I should utilize it for something else.
- OS - unRaid. Not opposed to others, but this does seem to be a great option with a lot of how-guides and videos available.
- Storage/Drives - I honestly don’t know how much I want or need. As it stands, my partner and I probably have less than 1TB of files and photos between the two of us (being very generous with that figure). Would like to expand the media server capabilities as mentioned above.
- Budget - $1000 max including drives.
While the details above are what I would like to achieve with this, you can also consider me an empty canvas. Open to all ideas and suggestions. Let me know if there are other details I can provide that would be helpful. Lastly, thank you all for creating such a great community here.
I figured email would be a common theme. I’m just starting to dip my toes into all of this, so an email server is not on my to-do list (and may never be).
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I’m also a person that has always struggled to learn by solely reading. Typically a combination of video tutorials and documentation, while actually doing the work on my end, is how I usually grasp concepts.