Hit my hardware and storage limits on my media server. Ready to upgrade. Help! reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Crazy-Hall8823 · 2023-10-04 04:05 So I'm wondering if I could get a little advice. Over the last year or so I have been getting into self hosting applications. I purchased my first Raspberry Pi and starting leaning about linux, docker, docker compose, containerising apps what not. I now have 4 rpi4's and am wanting to move away from the small power of the pi's to something a little bit more substantial. I want to move over everything to VM's but the only pressing limitation I have at the moment is around my media server. Currently I'm running the standed sonarr,radarr,prowlarr,sabnzbd,bazarr,overseerr,gluetun combo in docker containers on one of my pi's connected to a 4tb external drive. I have really reached my storage limit with this hard drive and the original plan was to buy a synology NAS (8bay) to use 6 bays as my media server and 2 bays for all my other storage needs. But I've been looking at server builds on YouTube lately and I'm really curious about potentially building a server that's sole purpose is to run as a media server. Running the regular applications either containerised or in a VM with a place for heaps of hard drives (probably around 12 bays) I have no experience currently using VM's and I plan on purchasing a cheap mini pc off marketplace to load proxmox onto to start and start exploring how proxmox works and how VM's work but I have really hit my limit with my current media server set up and I want to build something where I don't have to constantly stress about storage and not download things because i have to be so selective with what I can download due to space restrictions. I was thinking potentially running unraid for the media server OS. I have not used unraid yet but I figure if I have the hardware it's not the hard to change the os. Anyway I guess I'd love to hear about peoples experiences with truenas,unraid,proxmox and how and what your media server looks like today. I don't mind spending the money I'm just not sure what direction I should go in and if what I am describing is even a better alternative than say just using a synology nas as my main media server. Everything else I can deal with still using rpi's or a cheap mini pc but I really feel like I'm well overdue for a substantial upgrade from hardware and storage of my media server from the small "learning" set up (rpi + hard drivr) to the hard-core homelab set up ahahaha. I just low key want one of those pretty racks with all the hard drive bays in them hahahaha. Any assistance would be greayly appreciated as I have had a little bit of trouble trying to find stuff on the internet due to not really being able to phrase my searches very well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thekrautboy · 2023-10-04 04:22 This sub is about selfhosting **software services**, not about any hardware upgrade or purchase advice. Consider subs like /r/HomeServer /r/Homelab /r/HomeNetworking etc. instead. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Crazy-Hall8823 · 2023-10-04 04:25 I asked about software ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thekrautboy · 2023-10-04 04:27 Maybe read your own post again? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Crazy-Hall8823 · 2023-10-04 04:32 Anyway I guess I'd love to hear about peoples experiences with truenas,unraid,proxmox and how and what your media server looks like today. ??? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MonstersInYourHead · 2023-10-04 09:33 I'm not advising on hardware but my self hosted set and experience started about where you did and grew into where I am now. I run a supermicro 6028, 3U 12bay sas3 server, with dual xeon and plenty of ram. It runs proxmox on the 2 internal sata ports, I then use the 12 bay as nas storage with truenas. I currently use 9 hdd caddies. 5 are 4tb drives as dev pool for my media in truenas with one drive fail over, the other is some ssd drives in a vdev to link to different VMs for their own shared storage. Within proxmox I host truenas, which I use it's apps for 'arr suites and nginx, frigate as docker, home assistant vm, a couple of Ubuntu server vms(jellyfin for media hosting, and one for AI dev), and a windows machine. I feel like I've used proxmox to grab backups of my docker and host them to proxmox so I didn't have to redo all of my work which might be helpful for you. The learning curve can be a bit steep but back ups and Vm/docker/lxc can all be a bit forgiving considering the rapid deployment. Overall I'm pretty happy with it. Shoot me some questions and I'll do my best to answer them. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Crazy-Hall8823 · 2023-10-05 00:15 Now that sounds like a serious set up! It's funny I didn't even think about running true nas or unraid in a VM on proxmox. I was thinking bare metal install. But proxmox I think is definitely the way to go after hearing this. I think I would like to migrate to proxmox and potentially experiment with truenas and unraid as a vm within proxmox. I checked out supermicro I have sussed them out in the past but didn't bother looking into the chassis because I didn't need anything like that then. Super interesting to check their chassis out now. That would be exactly what I'm thinking. Thank you for sharing your set up and experiences! I think my next move should be perhaps just expanding my storage with a bigger capacity 3.5 hdd to buy myself some time and grab a mini pc amd learn how proxmox works. Migrate my server across and get a good understanding of how proxmox works then look at spinning up truenas and unraid on proxmox and figure out what direction I should go. Then look at spending the money on the big hardware and storage expansion Thanks for sharing! You'll probably end up with a DM in a couple of months hahah ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MonstersInYourHead · 2023-10-05 18:32 I first set this up with some old enterprise parts i had laying around and because of their age, had a few compatibility issues, but was pretty happy with the whole setup. It helped me migrate away from raspberry pis, i had 2 or 3 setup for different important tasks on the network and decided to virtualize them and am really happy that i did. NAS, Home assistant, and one was used as a playground of sorts. I was lucky enough to have the spare hardware, but if i had any advice, it would be to do the research and buy your stuff once, rather than have obsolete stuff that finds a shelf. I sent you a PM with some more info. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Zee_G68 · 2023-10-08 09:51 Bought myself a made-to-order mini tower, Asus Prime motherboard, AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB ram, and 4x4TB WD RED HDD's. Cost about 1,000€. Not the cheapest you can find. I run that mini tower headless, sits in a corner of my garage. Works like a charm., but I now have it run Proxmox, with VM's for OpenMediaVault, Roon (my music server), a Windows instance running Plex (could have put it in a container on Proxmox or OMV, but Windows installation was a bit more hassle-free) and my OneDrive sync, and lastly a VM for my HomeAssistant. I tried Truenas before OMV, and found it a bit more complex to handle then OMV. Especially comparing the TN Scale to OMV.