Get a more powerful but quieter device. My 10th gen NUC is loud and sluggish when a mobile client connects.
I have ended up with 6x 2TB disks, so if I was starting again I’d go 2x10TB and use an IT mode HBA and software RAID 1. I’d also replace my 2x Netgear Switches and 1x basic smart TP-Link switch and go full TP-Link Omada for switching with POE ports on 2 of them - I have an Omada WAP and it’s very good. Otherwise I’m pretty happy.
I built a compact nas. While it’s enough for the drives I need, even for upgrades, I only have 1 pcie x4 slot. Which is becoming a bit limiting. I didn’t think i’d have a need for for either a tape drive or a graphics card, and I have some things I want to do that require both. Well, I can only do one unless I get a different motherboard and case. Which means i’m basically doing a new build and I don’t want to do either of the projects I had in mind enough to bother with that.
Setup for high availability. I have a hard time taking things down now since other people rely on my setup being on.
That’s a pretty good question: Since I am new-ish to the self-hosting realm, I don’t think I would have replaced my consumer router with the Dell OptiPlex 7050 that I decided on. Of course this does make things very secure considering my router is powered by OpenBSD. Originally, I was just participating in DN42 which is one giant VPN semi-mesh network. Out of that hatched the idea to yank stuff out of the cloud. Instead, I would have put the money towards building a dedicated server instead of using my desktop as a server. At the time I didn’t realize how cheap older Xeon processors are. I could have cobbled together a powerhouse multi-core, multi-threaded Proxmox or xcp-ng server for maybe around 500-600 bucks. Oh well, lesson learned.
I’d make my own nas.
Go with used & refurb business PCs right out of the gate instead of fucking around with SBCs like the Pi.
Go with “1-liter” aka Ultra Small Form Factor right away instead of starting with SFF. (I don’t have a permanent residence at the moment so this makes sense for me)
Ah, but now you have a stack of PiS to screw around with, separate from all the stuff you actually use.
I’d have stuck with ZFS.
I’m generally pretty happy with it, though I’d have used podman rather than docker if I were starting now.
Not accidentally buy a server that takes 2.5 inch hard drives. Currently I’m using some of the ones it came with and 2 WD Red drives that I just have sitting on top of the server with SATA extension cables going down to the server.
I already have to do it every now and then, because I insisted on buying bare metal servers (at scale way) rather than VMs. These things die very abruptly, and I learnt the hard way how important are backups and config management systems.
If I had to redo EVERYTHING, I would use terraform to provision servers, and go with a “backup, automate and deploy” approach. Documentation would be a plus, but with the config management I feel like I don’t need it anymore.
Also I’d encrypt all disks.
I would use terraform to provision servers, and go with a “backup, automate and deploy” approach. Documentation would be a plus
Yea. This is what I do. Other than my Synology, I use Terraform to provision everything locally. And all my pi holes are controlled by ansible.
Also everything is documented in trillium.
Whole server regularly gets backed up multiple times, one is encrypted and the other via syncthing to my local desktop.
Terraform is the only missing brick in my case, but that’s also because I still rent real hardware :) I’m not fond of my backup system tho, it works, but it’s not included in the automated configuration of each service, which is not ideal IMO.
Also I’d encrypt all disks.
What’s the point on a rented VPS? The provider can just dump the decryption key from RAM.
bare metal servers (at scale way) rather than VMs. These things die very abruptly
Had this happen to me with two Dedibox (scaleway) servers over a few months (I had backups, no big deal but annoying). wtf do they do with their machines to burn through them at this rate??
I don’t know if they can “just” dump the key from RAM on a bare metal server. Nevertheless, it covers my ass when they retire the server after I used it.
And yeah I’ve had quite a few servers die on me (usually the hard drive). At this point I’m wondering if it isn’t scheduled obsolescence to force you into buying their new hardware every now and then. Regardless, I’m slowly moving off scaleway as their support is now mediocre in these cases, and their cheapest servers don’t support console access anymore, which means you’re bound to using their distro.
I’d encrypt all disks. Nevertheless, it covers my ass when they retire the server after I used it.
Good point. How do you unlock the disk at boot time? dropbear-initramfs and enter the passphrase manually every time it boots? Unencrypted
/boot/and store the decryption key in plaintext there?I run openbsd on all my servers so I would be entering the passphrase manually at boot time. Saving the key on unencrypted
/bootis basically locking your door and leaving the key on it :)
I would’ve gone with a less powerful nas and got a separate unit for compute. I got a synology nas with a decent amount of compute so I could run all my stuff on the nas, and the proprietary locked down OS drives me a bit nuts. Causes all sorts of issues. If I had a separate compute box I could just be running some flavor of Linux, probably Ubuntu and have things behave much more nicely
Actually plan things and research. Too many of my decisions come back to bite me because I don’t plan out stuff like networking, resources, hard drive layouts…
also documentation for sure
Make sure my proxmox desktop build can do GPU passthrough.
