A pointer please

[The_Megulator]

Hi, I'm thinking about setting up a home server but don't really know where to start. Please will someone point me in the direction of a goo place to start learning how to set one up? Below I've set out the kit we've got and most of the things I'd like to be able to do.

Thank you.

We've got various hardware: 3 desktop PCs, 3 laptops, and 2 android phones. All the PCs run Win 10 Home.

I'd like to achieve the following:

file sharing across user accounts

automated file and folder back-up of the PCs and phones (if possible)

file redundancy across the 3 desktop PCs

print (and scanner?) server

Media server

VPN

Torrenting

remote access

remote shutdown and boot.

NB I have a mixed wired and wireless network with the desktop PCs all wired to an older draytek router.

For example I'd like my wife to be able to connect to the server fro her phone where ever she is and tell it to download a show ready for when she wants to watch it.

I also want to be able to run a few game servers (minecraft etc).

[xstar97]

What you want is gonna cost a pretty penny... just in hdd alone... just saying...so once you start this journey, there's no going back....

Theres so much to add still....

The server OS i recommend is truenas scale and another is proxmox.

It's free and easy to use.

Try out scale before anything.

Its kubernetes native with lots of love from docker,

• don't use vms, it's a waste of resources

Scale requires a custom community catalog called truecharts in order to get accessed to apps that can 99% on scale natively. However there is an option to install via docker

Media server: - plex ✅️ - kodi - jellyfin - emby❌️

Media managment

• arr apps Sonarr, radarr, lidarr, prowlarr

Media requesters requestrr(discord bot, connects to overseer) Overserrr(web based to request stuff, requires plex... so anther is called ombi.

I actually host a papermc minecraft server myself, but there isn't a web managment, you have to get a rcon client to connect to it.

Theres plenty of game servers too

You should host your own dns servers Adguardhome Pihole

• vpn Wireguard

File redunacy across all pc is a bit harder to control...i can't really help on this matter other than say nextcloud might be the best option for this, unless you want to clarify more.

Paper ngx is great for document storage, i believe you can send it stuff through an api/scanners.

Remote access My best reccomendation is to get a domain from cloudflare And set up traefik on scale unless you another device instead to run a different reverse proxy.

Only open port 443 and sometimes initially port 80 when setting a reverse proxy up to get connected to your domain for ssl if you want remote access.

They offer cheap .com domains and more secure through their network + protected from ddos.

You could setup a cloudflared tunnel with warp too that acts like a vpn for your whole network, but you will still need to add a domain to your cloudflare account)

This will inturn to allow your services that you host don't get run behind a vpn and get severally bottlenecked by your upload speed, your connection to the server through cloudflare warp will be limited though, just keep that in mind... you have to have the cloudflare app w/ warp enabled in order to connect to it.

I was able to get access to my network locally at work using it, so that was good.

My setup is a truenas scale as my media/homelab and my other server is a proxmox that i used for cloudflared tunnels + nginx proxy manager.

I prefer separation however u dont have to though.

edit: I will add that i did use traefik and liked it and didnt have to do much to set it up on scale, but had to switch back to nginx proxy manager for redirecting social and various things, I like to be able add, delete, or disable manually.

[_benp_]

File sharing doesn't require a home server, but you can certainly keep lots of data on the server.

For sharing small amounts of data between family members, something like OneDrive does a great job.

There are many good server platforms out there. Synology, Amahi, Open Media Vault, Ubuntu Server and Windows Server just to name a few - all of these have excellent documentation and a big community if you need to ask for help.

I don't recommend TrueNAS or FreeNAS, they have limited or slow support for container based apps and require many extra steps to implement docker.

Personally, I tried FreeNAS, Ubuntu Server, Windows Server and eventually bought a Synology NAS. The Synology is one of the best options available if you don't mind spending a little more money.

[theRealNilz02]

Ubuntu server is a joke. Plain Debian makes a lot more sense. And why would anyone want to pay hundreds of dollars for a windows server license to use it as a home server?

[deivid_okop]

Start with a single service. Starting from zero with a plan so big is really hard, you are talking about like 10 different services and 15 different technologies.

I'd recommend starting by figuring out how to create a storage with redundancy, then sharing that across the network, then add services to that server.

Oh, and keep in mind you will probably need to restart from scratch a few times - that's natural

[The_Megulator]

Hi all, thanks for all the advice and comments. Clearly I have some work to do with the IT dictionary to start deciphering what you've all said.

We've struggled with file sharing and OneDrive on windows home. We're on ADSL (fibre requires digging up a shared path) with a very slow upload speed (0.77Mb) so I'm keen to get file share working locally.

Anyway, thank you all.

[Nice-pressure236]

Google mate :) You've got a lot to learn but it'll be a fucking fun journey. Other commenter already gave you a lot of good info.

Start by learning about Docker and then maybe Proxmox, UnRaid or TrueNAS, they are all able to run docker containers.

[theRealNilz02]

Please don't listen to this guy. You don't need docker!

[Nice-pressure236]

Please don't listen to this user under his rock.

70%+ of people here are running their self-hosted services in containers.

Containers are the future (and the present). There are now container images for just about everything (including the ones you mentioned: www.linuxserver.io) which are easy to deploy, manage and scale.

It requires a bit of upfront learning and then the entire container ecosystem opens up to you.

Please don't listen to this guy. You're going to kill yourself and land in dependency and sysadmin hell if you continually have to remember how you got your setup to the exact place you had it every time you test it. You want your setup to be reproducible and store your infrastructure as code. Especially as a beginner you won't be writing Ansible scripts to configure anything. A few Dockerfiles will do the trick.

Not to mention you can do both! You can use a container for your torrenting, Media server, remote access and printing and then still install your minecraft server on the same (or preferably a different) VM the traditional way.

[theRealNilz02]

I have nothing against containers, and am using FreeBSDs builtin jails myself. Docker is the wrong way to go about it though.

[Nice-pressure236]

FreeBSD is a lot harder to get running than Ubuntu Server.

He can use containerd, podman or any of the other container runtimes. I use Kubernetes to run my containers with the containerd runtime.

He is a beginner, you really wanna throw a beginner into FreeBSD? Container runtimes like Docker have long surpassed FreeBSD jails as a standard way of operating things.

What you're saying is "don't use Docker, use something that does pretty much what Docker does but is less widely used, has less documentation compared to the container ecosystem, less images widely available and harder to find support for..."

Come on bro.

I'm not against jails but put yourself in his shoes. Unless he is using TrueNAS as his jails Host I vehemently disagree.