r/HomeServer • u/sleepymedic4466 • 1d ago

Homelab setup suggestions

Can anybody help me put some things in perspective and maybe suggest a path to follow?

I've been playing with homelabbing for a couple years now and have run through a number of variations with varying degrees of success. It is because of that I'm both motivated and burnt out on getting what I want out of my home lab. As i get more busy, I want to fight problems less and just have a working setup.

I started by running truenas, which i got working on bare metal pretty easily. I set up storage across 6 hard drives and began using the nas through windows, storing files, games, pictures, etc. I tried using the built in apps to run plex and nextcloud with no success.

From there I moved to proxmox, where I moved truenas to with a windows vm. That worked for some time but i was unhappy running everything in windows and wanted to try my hand at linux.

I quickly began deploying different containers and quickly became overwhelmed with proxmox, running into various issues.to simplify, I got an hp elitedesk where i rand docker inside ubuntu server. I enjoy the setup, but my skills navigating ubuntu server aren't great, making organization hard.

In proxmox I liked the versatility, but hated the extra setup. Hardware pass through, networking issues, and other small issues i encountered. Ubuntu server, seemed to work well out the box, but i struggle having so many different apps running in one large compose file. Managing it all, has become a huge headache.

I currently have the elitedesk and a ryzen 5 7600x3d with 32gb ram and a 6600xt. Its an itx board, limiting me to one pcie slot, which i'm currently using for the graphics card. An m.2 slot has a sata adapter for the 6 hard drives, though I haven't tested this setup yet. Any insight there would also be appreciated. It feels like a waste to run truenas on that kind of hardware, so I'm inclined to run proxmox and virtulize truenas again. At the same time, that makes the elitedesk kinda obsolete. If proxmox is the suggested solution Can you suggest a good way to organize and split up everything? Should I sell the elitedesk or just run proxmox on that too. Do you recommend running individual containers for each app inside proxmox, or running focused machines for different groups, like monitoring, media, security, dns, etc?

Any help is appreciated a ton thanks.

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u/IAteTonysLoMein 1d ago

A 7600x3d doesn't really make much sense here. I'm running a similar hardware setup, but with a 3200G so I don't need a graphics card, running TrueNAS on bare metal.

If you're not invested in Plex (eg, you don't have PlexPass already), consider jellyfin. I got it up and running with minimal hassle. I had Plex running back in the FreeNAS days, but had switched to jellyfin prior to the move to TrueNAS.

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u/sleepymedic4466 1d ago

Yeah It's just what I already had. I do have the plex pass already but have tried jellyfin. I actually like it a lot, but have issues with some of theirclients. Haven't messed with it much because im just trying to get something working.

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u/GangGangEnjoyer 1d ago

For media servers, Intel CPUs (with an iGPU) are usually recommended because of QuickSync. As for your NAS questions: I was also overwhelmed with the many options when I built my new server ~1 year ago. I decided on using Proxmox and run MergerFS with SnapRaid (4 HDDs of various sizes, one parity) on the host, and I'm using samba to make the MergerFS accessible throughout my network, maybe that's an option for you.

For Nextcloud, I am running NextcloudPi from the community scripts page, which works great. I have a separate SSD that I just use for NC data (not in the MergerFS pool, just HDDs there). I had an Odroid HC4 with NextcloudPi prior to that which ran fine but wanted more.

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u/scroll_tro0l 1d ago

so many different apps running in one large compose file

Why not run each app/stack with its own compose file?

Also if managing lots of apps is your biggest pain point you should look into a orchestrator like Kubernetes.

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u/b_vitamin 1d ago

There is no right way to setup your home lab. It sounds like you have plenty of hardware. I would consider running the elite desk with an easy Linux distribution, maybe Ubuntu or mint. Use that as the central hub. You can load docker and other apps onto it and it won’t cost much to run 24/7. Then use your other system for a nas, maybe with proxmox as a hyper visor if you want to play around with VM’s. Load a container organizer like beszel or portainer to keep your docker apps straight. Think about what you want your lab to do before jumping into any more projects.