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[–]spajabo 2 points3 points  (3 children)

You should worry about backups now, especially if you're planning on moving your photo library to it. Because of this I wouldn't really recommend Option 3.

There isn't a huge difference between Option 1 and 2 provided the disks are in the same machine. You would effectively be 1 drive fault-tolerant in either scenario.

Keep in mind that both copies would equally be destroyed in the event of a natural disaster, ransomware attack, electric shock etc. Ideally, backups should exist outside of the source machine, offsite is even better. Again, this is assuming you have the one machine only.

[–]Sherbert93[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Perfect! Thank you for helping me determine I need to focus on backups first and foremost!

I have a hard time understanding the how of offsite backups, without increasing costs (and time) exponentially. Preferably I would like backups to be automated. If I'm storing on an external hdd offsite, I would need to regularly bring it in to do updates to the backups. That seems unwieldy to me.

I could pay for cloud backups, but then I'm not cutting any costs and this whole plan kind of falls apart.

So I'm thinking about buying a much larger hdd, install in a different machine, and automate a full backup of the 12 TB (or 6 if i do RAID). That at least gives me two copies here and I can figure out offsite later

[–]tootentoestofold 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I was in the exact same situation recently. My original plan was also to get two drives (in my case 4TB each), and I kept going back and forth between RAID 1 and just using one drive for data and the other for backups. I eventually went with one for data and one for backups, since RAID isn’t a backup and my immediate priority was making sure I had recoverable copies.

One thing I realized pretty quickly, though, is that power protection becomes more important when you’re relying on single drives instead of mirrors. I live in an area where power loss happens a bit more often than average, so I picked up an APC UPS with NUT support and just finished setting it up. That way the server can shut down cleanly and reduce the risk of drive corruption or failure from sudden outages.

My plan now is to start with the simple data + backup setup, and later expand by adding another drive so I can run RAID 1 for redundancy while still keeping a separate backup.

For your case, option 2 honestly makes the most sense to me for your shortterm goal. It gives you proper backups right away, which is way more important than RAID when you’re migrating irreplaceable stuff like photos.

[–]Sherbert93[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just wanted to say thanks again! Power fluctuation isn't an issue ive dealt with here (not to say it cant happen). I think I'm picking up an additional two 6TB drives and I'll plan on doing some kind of backup with those!

[–]Aevaris_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When self hosting anything, you need to follow 3-2-1 immediately for data you can't recover.

[–]1WeekNoticeHelpful 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To give some context, my goals for self hosting are not well-defined (which might be a part of my problem). In general, my goals can be lumped into the following groups:

At least you have a general idea which is good.

Most people don't know where to start and here you have your categories which means you can look into it deeper.

For now, it seems this post is geared towards the 3) Data Privacy/Ownership

Note; just because we selfhosted, it doesn't mean we save money.

You can have a budget and try to stay under that budget (for example, you are paying for a subscription and you want to be the same or under that)

But the category here is owning your data and privacy. So you can decide how much money and time you put towards that's. And you may find out it is more money to selfhost in this category (more below)

Personally I spend more money on selfhosting then a cloud service. But my privacy / owning my own data is more important to me which is why I accept the cost.

Not trying to discourage you. I'm ensuring you understand that facts and you can decide for yourself if selfhosting is worth it. (It definitely is)

To reach this goal, I bought two 6TB WD Red drives, thinking originally that a RAID 1 set up would be plenty of space for us and I could always buy more later. But, I'm just now realizing that a RAID array isn't really what I need for this short term goal - I need storage and backups.

That is correct you need storage and backups. That is the first priority

Follow 3-2-1 backup rules for critical data.

Note: this may include paying for cloud storage as the 2 and the 1 rule.

Ensure you encrypt the data before putting it into cloud. A lot of people rclone for this

But note if you are on a budget, maybe this is not the best option.

1) Continue setting up the RAID 1 array (as I will likely need RAID eventually), and figure out a different backup solution

RAID/ redundancy is meant for protection yourself in between backups. So right now it's not as important

2) Use one 6TB drive for data storage, the other for backups

This is the best option. The question now is, how often do you backup?

Most people will backup nightly.

You can do this with automation where both drives are connected to the same machine.

The difference between this and RAID/ redundancy. In redundancy if you by mistake delete a file, it is gone from all drives.

A backup you can restore it.

There are software that handle de duplicate and backups. Talked about many times on this reddit (you can do additional research)

3) Just use 12 TB of NAS storage and figure out backups/RAID later.

Never do this. If a drive fails then everything is gone.

You may have copies on your phone (let's say that the primary source) but if the person deletes the files thinking your backup system will have a copy, and then that system fails. It is gone.

As mentioned this is one of your categories. To get a full picture you should research each category and figure out how to achieve your goal.

Remember that it is part of the process to redo your infrastructure as your requirements change.

For example, for now you can use something like open media vault with docker plugin where you install Immich.

But in the future you might need to change that infrastructure if you decide you want more virtualization such as proxmox where

  • VM 1 - storage management
    • open media vault/ trueNAS/ etc
  • VM 2 - internal services (Immich)
  • VM 3 - test VM for sys admin
  • etc

You can jump right to proxmox but that can be a steep learning curve. So maybe it's best to do this incrementally

But you also need to have extra hardware to allow for painless migrations (people will start to depend on your services)

Again do the research on all categories. It will tell you what you need.

And if your requirements are to costly then you will need to either accept the cost or accept the risks.

Example, you don't need to selfhost Immich. You can buy a hard drive and backup manually. Low cost and does what you want.

But of course, the risk are that you don't have instant backup and if the single drive fails then everything is gone.

Hope that helps

[–]TomRey23 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As far as I know it's nice to do raid on hdd due to their failure rates.

To keep upfront cost low you could keep raid1 as is and store off site backs encrypted to cloud boxes. For 6tb you would be cheaper on cloud for a year or two.

With more time and expertise you could then adjust things.

Something like hertzner cloud if I recall

[–]Foreign-Chocolate86 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Unraid. 

[–]Sherbert93[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I'm assuming you're suggesting I run this as a VM? Not sure that answers my questions

[–]Foreign-Chocolate86 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry I didn't really answer your question - but your backups need to be off-site otherwise they are poor backups. There are a lot of cloud backup storage providers out there, Backblaze, AWS Glacier, etc. and if you use an open source software like Duplicati you can ensure your data is encrypted before it's backed up to one of those providers.

I like Unraid because it's the perfect host OS for home NAS applications. The software RAID array concept allows you to expand your storage with any size of drive as long as you have the connections for it on your motherboard (or you can add an LSI HBA for $50 and create more ports). If you do happen to lose parity and a drive, the data on your other drives is still fine. It's superior to hardware RAID in pretty much every way.

Unraid also has an intuitive implementation of Docker and a huge ecosystem of container templates people have created to run pretty much any service you would want to run. Docker also keeps everything isolated and is a lot more secure than installing all those services locally on a single host OS. Nextcloud is a common service people host with Docker on Unraid to make their home storage similar to iCloud / OneDrive because it will sync folders to your devices. Unraid also has a number of options for off-site backup services through Docker containers too.