VeraxJun 26, 2025

Plan for my first homeserver

https://lemmy.world/post/32058787

Plan for my first homeserver - Lemmy.World

Hello, as you may can guess i am here because i need some help because i want to self host some stuff and i am pretty new to this stuff. I did a loto f research and i came up with a lot of stuff. I will present you my thoughts and maybe some people here can tell me if i am good or not. First the Hardware. I did a lot of research and came up with a HP Elitedesk 800 G5 Mini as my home server. It can hold 2x NVME SSD and 1xSata SSD. It has an Intel 5 9500T and is upgradeable to 64gb of Ram. I can get one from ebay used for maybe 150-170€. Then i need to upgrade the ram because it comes with 8gb only. I thought maybee upgrade it to 32gb for now. And buy 2 nvme ssds both 2tb dont know which brand is cheap and good there. The sata ssd could be my operating system i have 1 with 120 gb at home hope this is enough. The NVME SSDs are 1 for storage of mainly photos videos and maybe a small audio collection. The other is to make a backup of all this. (Mirrored)   Second Operating System I know there area lot of things out there and i know people can recommend a lot of stuff but …. I wanna keep it as simple as possible for my first homeserver … also i dont ´have too Much time with an 2 year old child. So my thoughts were using Ubuntu server with docker and portainer. Just that.   Third My apps and Stuff. So mainly i wanted to run the following Applications on that. -            Immich -            Homeassisstant -            Joplin -            Audiobookshelf -            Calibre Ereader -            CalDav App for a Calender Sync with MY Phone and MY wife -            Pi hole -            Vaultwarden -            And Homarr as a Dashboard for all of this. Fourth Using all this from my phone Thats the only part where i didnt have time to do some research how i use all off that safly from my phone. I guess i need some kind of VPN for a secure use? I hope that part is easy. Son ow i shared all off my initial researches and thoughts. I hope i wrote not to much mistakes. And i hope you guys can help me out a little. Greetings

Show threadboydsterJun 26, 2025

I think you’ve put more thought into how to get started than many others would! You have a pretty good plan from what it seems. My thoughts from each section below.

Hardware: I’m partial to Crucial and Kingston for storage that is affordable and dependable

OS: I’d probably spin up a Debian install if I were in your shoes and run my services using docker-compose files. It’s a quick and easy to get up and running, and despite the ease, there is still the option to do a lot of customization when you want to, and that will make it easy to learn more at your own pace and leisure.

Services: For the CalDav portion, I’m really liking Radicale.

Security: PiVPN is what I’m running on my actual RPi along with PiHole, and it was a super simple setup. I connect via Wireguard from any of my other devices.

Show threadVeraxJun 27, 2025
Debian only with ssh installation or with gnome GUI / Desktop-Environment?
Show threadboydster

Ultimately up to you, but I’d go with no GUI and just use ssh (and sftp if you need to do file transfers).

When I was using Docker, it was headless because the GUI just ate up space and resources I didn’t need. All your interaction will be in the shell anyway, launching your compose.yml files.

But, if dealing with a headless machine sounds like more trouble than you want to try, install the DE if your choice and breathe easy because it’ll still work perfectly fine.

Jun 27, 2025 at 2:10pmWeb
Show threadVeraxJun 27, 2025
THX at all for so much nice comments. Got some good inspiration again. Maybe I search a little more for a little more potent mini PC. Buy an external drive as back up and use my koofr account a it more. Think I will go with Debian and a DE. Crucial or Kingston as storage looks nice. And yeah need to look what can I too with wireguard.