New to self hosting and need help deciding which hardware to use
reddit / selfhosted

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t4ure4n · 2023-12-05 21:02

Hi. I hope that everyone is doing great. I am starting my journey of
self hosting and I wanted guidance from people who area already doing
it.

I am planning few things.

* piHole/AdGuard based ad blocker + DNS like Unbound etc.
* Home Assistant control few smart devices including Feit RGB light
bulbs and few Tapo P110M Smart Wi-Fi Plugs with Energy Monitoring that
support Matter. I am planning to start using smart thermostats soon.
Currently I am using manufacturers apps which I want to replace and
use HA if possible.

Now, I would like some advise on where I should install Adguard/piHole
and where to install HA OS as I have few machines available and I
would like to choose the PC which is good enough but not an overkill
for HAOS. Similarly, I wouldn't want to keep my NAS always engaged for
ad blocking/DNS if there was other option. Also I am not sure that if
I will need any additional hardware like USB dongles etc to community
with these smart devices which are already configured and working via
Wifi Router.

I machines I have include the following:

1. Intel NUC (i7-7567U//2TB Seagate HDD, 256GB SSD and 16GB RAM)
2. Synology NAS DS918+
3. Apple TV 4K
4. Lenovo thinkcentre m93p (i5-4570T, 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD)
5. Lenovo thinkcentre M920q (i5-8400T, 8GB RAM, 256 GB SSD)
6. and old Lenovo PC with some very old Celeron processor

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Simplixt · 2023-12-05 21:11

Wouldn't use the Synology NAS, as drives wouldn't go into Spindown
with Docker etc.

So chose between M93P, M920P, Intel NUC. They all will get the job
done, as AdGuard + HAOS have minimal hardware requirements. Just take
the one you don't need in the moment, or the one that is the most
energy efficient (just measure the idle consumption).

I might not take the M920q, as the i5-8400T is the only CPU of your
MiniPCs that is official supporting Windows 11, so you might want to
use it for this.

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t4ure4n · 2023-12-05 21:15

Thanks. I will explore with mini PC and NUC.

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boli99 · 2023-12-05 21:38

pick whichever one is capable of running a hypervisor - and then put
the initial services in some VMs.

You can expand later if you need to. VMs will make that much easier
anyway.

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aetherspoon · 2023-12-05 23:49

This. OP, what your needs are right now could fit on a Raspberry Pi
3B; pretty much any of those PCs would suffice (maybe not the Celeron
if it is that old). If you think you're going to want to expand into
something using transcoding like Plex, go with either the NUC or the
M920q; their iGPUs are excellent for transcoding. Otherwise, I'd
probably choose the NUC for power efficiency reasons.

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javijuji · 2023-12-06 11:42

You can also upgrade the m920q. I believe you can get an extra NIC in
there if you decide to run proxmox on it at some point.

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t4ure4n · 2023-12-09 21:17

u/Simplixt after reading up a bit more I am leaning towards using
proxmox as well.

However, I am bit unclear on something. I saw some HomeAssisstant
videos where they Adguard deployed as add-on of Home Assistant.

In your opinion, is that preferably over deploying in proxmox as
separate VMs

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Simplixt · 2023-12-10 00:24

I would keep it separate, it's really easy to setup AdGuard, I'm
running it via a lightweight LXC-container.

You also want your DNS server always available, so there is a lower
risk for interruptions if it runs as own VM/LXC and higher isolation
gives also higher security.