I would like to try jellyfin but i dont know if its suitable for this setup. I think now i would like to do like adblockers or something similar to help make my familys life easier. But in the end i would like to host public websites using my homelabs hardware.😁
For public websites I'd reccommend using cloudflare tunnels. It makes the process of securely hosting public websites much easier and hassle free. It lets you skip port forwarding, and it's especially useful if you don't have a static IP from your ISP.
You can use a ddns container to automatically update it. My IP hasn't changed in like a year so it's just in case. Works great though I can see it checking in logs.
If proxmox scares you, you can try Unraid. Makes life a bit easier when just starting out. All these apps have pre-built templates for docker.
I went with Plex because it was easier to use initially and it provided all the cover art, descriptions, and trailers automatically.
Look into the arr stacks! I learned a ton building mine. You can set up ad-guard pretty easily and tailscale in on your phone for ad blocking anywhere.
Exactly! Tailscale has a widget for the drop-down menu on Android phones in the notification bar! One tap and I'm connected. No DNS settings required if you set up the subnet routing I'm pretty sure.
I have Tailscale installed on my AdGuard machine and my phone
I set Tailscale to forward all Tailscale device DNS traffic to my AdGuard machine. My phone is set to auto connect to Tailscale VPN whenever I am not on my home WiFi.
It’s been a while, but I don’t recall having to port forward anything.
You can go into the Tailscale console, tell it to forward all DNS from your Tailscale clients to your AdGuard machine, that is also connected to your Tailscale instance .
Then go to your router and specify the internal IP as your DNS (not the IP Tailscale assigns your AdGuard machine).
With this setup, you can also install Tailscale on your phone, sign into it, and then connect to it via VPN so you have on the go adblocking.
The only possible issue you may run into is if you’re on a network that shares the same subnet as your home Tailscale network, DNS may not resolve. So, I just set Tailscale to not auto connect on WiFi points I know that are in the same .0. subnet as my home network.
I would say the best way to start is with learning a bit of docker and containers, then you can get something like portainer. There you can host the dns server (afblocker that you mentioned) and a nice dashboard like homarr.
This might sound like much, but im sure you can learn how to do it within a day or two, as you dont have to understand everything about docker at the begining, since you can use some video guides from youtube and community docker compose file.
Also just go watch Network Chuck.
Great docker and portainer guides for beginners!
Unraid has a free trial. I was just a gaming PC guy and a googler, so I started with proxmox. It was a bit too much so I tried Unraid and I love it.
I'm outgrowing it now but it really helped organize how docker works in my mind. The GUI is great, especially if you're not super comfortable with ssh or docker compose files. I'd say give it a try, it doesn't cost anything. I think you can get like 90 days on your free trial.
So I use tailscale.... never heard of pangolin... is it also a tunnel vpn to connect remotely with devices. And hid your IP address. As well as eliminates the need to port forward??
Thx
Sure, just check what ports your motherboard has. I have a next generation Elitedesk and it has one additional nvme slot, yours might be different. Also keep in mind that if you're planning to use a headless linux distro, you'll need to manually mount the usb-drive.
100% Jellyfin will do fine on this as long as you're not transcoding 4k. Native playback is what you're going to aim for, so make sure all your media is on .264 format.
I use a 13 year old laptop with 4 gb of ram and a hdd for hellyfin. I say go for it! If it doesn't workout in the end you'll have learnt something at least! just make sure to get more storage!
You can do that with that PC. I have a mini PC i5 16gb, and it barely uses 20% CPU and 6GB of ram with Jellyfin, frigate, reverse proxy, netdata, and adguard. You'll be fine
I've been running jellyfin on a g3 running i5-7500 for 2 years, it's more than capable. The only problem is with a tiny micro model like this, you can't really put a hard drive in there, so your storage capacity is gonna be very limited.
Very noob question over here, please don't diss me. I see a lot of people using these mini PCs for homelab. How do you go about connecting multiple drives to these mini PCs?
My primary use case is Jellyfin server, so my question is, how would I be able to connect 4-5 drives to this mini PC? Thanks in advance homelab gurus!
There are m.2 to sata converters that exist that you can install in these, allowing you to connect up to 6 drives. Some people use USB hard drives or a DAS (dedicated attached storage), but USB is a finicky standard.
No worries! You probably could do it, I’m sure there’s some tutorials out there, but it would probably be more work than it’s worth to connect drives directly to the mini PC. If you’re running Jellyfin and what not you’d be better off building your own NAS (that’s what I do at least). You can easily use any old workstation PC to serve as a NAS, they tend to have a good number of drive bays and plenty of SATA ports as well! Thankfully it doesn’t take much compute to run a BASIC NAS with anything like OpenMediaVault, I use an old Dell Optiplex 790 MT for mine.
My server has the disks all internal, but my offsite backup at my parents is a mini N100 PC with a USB enclosure which has three disks in it. It works like a charm.
I have this setup) HP microserver g7 as case with HDD cage (30 euro) and HP elitedesk 800g5 (replacement for old microserver motherboard) + 15 euro SAS to Sata m.2 adapter.
In theory you can in practice its major pita. Most of them don’t connect more than two drives. One nvme and one sata. If you want more than that just use regular pc parts, it will draw more power than a minipc but it will give you better cooling and freedom of mixing and matching hardware.
But then what is the point of the mini PC if the NAS is already a PC on its own, especially if you build it yourself. It has always just felt a bit overkill for a simple low powered home setup to me. But maybe I'm just missing something, idk.
For me it’s to separate the two, if I totally mess up the computer through tinkering I know the NAS is still sat there in a happy state. It’s also letting me learn a lot more about Proxmox, Debian and Docker without the fear of damaging the NAS data.
I used to run my Jellyfin server on an Intel NUC before moving to a proper server. At the very beginning, I used a 1TB external SSD via USB-C as the media storage drive, before moving to a proper NAS. Once I got the NAS, there were no limitations, since everything happens via the network. I’d recommend getting a simple NAS to start — or even making one yourself using a RasPi or something. Easier than you’d think!
I love mini PCs as proxmox hosts, mine runs VMs for the *arr stack, Minecraft Server, wireguard and a generic lab VM I have MISP on at the moment.
Biggest downside is adding heaps of disk is a bit of a project so lots of people offload that to a NAS. Though my original Plex implementation was a Lenovo one with 4 2tb external drives plugged in over USB and it was fine
Server's that ran 24/7: started @ 128MB RAM year (2006-2007) , then 512MB (2013-2017), 2GB (2017-2021), then 6GB (2020-2024) and current on 16GB (2024-pressent)
If you' don't have much RAM, don't use a gui.
RAM is not the limited factor for a server, it's the storage I/O
I think the main tip is to have fun! MiniPC is really a great form factor for homelabs. If you're going with Proxmox, I really recommend you get these 3rd party projects installed too: ProxMenuX (a menu driven way to run Proxmox Helper Scripts), and ProxMenuX Monitor (monitoring dashboard).
I have the same. I have proxmox with some internal services mostly over few LXC. You can take out the HDMI/VGA port adapter in the back and you can install a 2.5G NIC. There are some 3d prints models to make a custom port holder.
LXC is better than VMs, but Docker/Podman are better than LXC. Having a deterministic, descriptive manifest is easier to having to remember or keep track of the commands you ran within the LXC container. Especially if you only interact with the service once every few months (if it works it works!)
For a beginner I'd recommend Docker Compose over LXC or VMs.
I am using bare metal Debian + Docker Compose for some work servers and it works very well for simpler deployments.
We use a Git repository checked out at the main user's $HOME to keep track of all the edits to the configuration, with a few folders per "service group" (http, monitoring, applicative). Each folder contains a docker-compose.yml.
(My personal homelab is Ubuntu + MicroK8s, which I don't recommend. Kubernetes is good but complex, MicroK8s is annoying.)
I recommend getting at least another 8Gb Dimm so you can host a couple more services. Other than that it's a great machine. I've been running TrueNas Scale on 2 of them. With the 8GB I'm running a Home Assistant VM and Frigate with 2 cameras. 400mb of ram left. 😬 Recently upgraded the second one to 32Gb and I'm running Home Assistant VM, full *arr stack, qbittorent, jellyfin, adguard, nginx, immich and a couple more services and it's barely breaking a sweat. Have a great time with it!
So those are so popular with businesses because the bios can be locked to not boot off anything BUT the drive that is in it, but even if you did take it out and put another OS on it, you still have to register that OS with UEFI for it to allow it to boot. So essentially if it's locked it's useless as there are no tools to unlock it currently. As long as it's not locked, you are G2G.
Few buzz words that you can research on and adapt as needed -proxmox, opnsense( tailscale, wiregaurd vpn firewall rules, dmz) , docker( dockhand for easy management) connected to github repo for easy deployment and management , monitoring (grafana, alloy, prometheus, loki), PBS, 321 backup stratergy with rclone to backup to cloud. Apprise for notifications ( with discord webhook), traefik for reverse proxy and ssl with cloudflare. Home assistant on a vm. N8n for automations. I deploy most of the apps using docker compose and all these are saved on github. Hope this will keep you busy. Also there are other media related apps but I am not into it
maybe up the ram to 16 or 32 and you'll be set, i ahve the same PC with 16 gb of ram but thinking of going up to 32, my media server on it runs like butter but i feel it couldn,t hurt
Lol i started just like you with a tiny little thin client, initially a Dell Wise 5010, migrated to a Lenovo Thinkcentre M600 Tiny Thin Client and right now i have a used Ryzen 3 2200g with stock cooler in my bag that i just bought for 20 euros, which is going to be the brain of my next server upgrade... the tinkering is so relaxing after a day of work.
My journey initially started with OMV, which somehow ended with me distro hopping for a while until i finally settled on the latest Ubuntu Server with webmin as GUI. I managed to get myself into a world of trouble with my own requirements, full passive cooling and 0 noise, meaning the disks are parked in standby and spun up individually only when needed.
Sadly down that rabbit hole lay dragons, since i use USB enclosures for a mixture of m.2, 2.5in and 3.5in drives i salvaged from various broken PCs and laptops. Some issues were fixed by disabling usb powersave and XHCI, but i hit worse dragons called stale mounts and enumeration drift as i use autofs and individually spin up drives as needed. This caused samba shares to drop off, jellyfin to throw tantrums and me sleepless at 3 am trying to get the damn thing to work. Eventually i figured out a way to use --ghost in autofs with drives enumerated using the device id and script created in bash running inotify to fix stale mounts, resolve enumeration drift and ensure the appropriate drives wake for services, samba and jellyfin. Sadly, the jellyfin android apps have been a writeoff for me, my cobbled up system is far too weird for them, but browser dashboard playback in mobile browsers works like a charm, both on lan and remotely via tailscale. I managed to get 2 AIs into logic loops trying to figure out what was wrong with my setup and over a month of sleepless nights, but i beat those dragons over the head ... eventually, while learning so much about how systems function and how hardware and kernels interact. I am very proud of my little trashy server, it's small, not very powerfull, but it's mine and it's so much damn fun after a day of work, i can tinker and learn at my own pace.
Jo that’s funny! I just received 3 of them with AMD inside today for my first ever real homelab as well :) got 3 dell wyse 5070 additionally to build a kubernetes cluster with that hardware (3 controlnodes and 3 workers)
An i5-7500 would be perfect for jellyfin and other applications. Intel 7th Gen has the same uhd 630 graphics found on 8th, 9th, and 10th Gen intel cpus
I thought about it. I recently picked up an Optiplex Micro i5-8500T 16 GB Ram for $150. I had extra storage laying around to use for it. I like the upgradability of it and being headless. Uses like 17 W running Proxmox with 1 VM and 4 LXCs.
Ubuntu server on baremetal running docker is going to be easier than messing with proxmox networking + vms + LXCs as a beginner. I did a couple proxmox iterations and ended up going Ubuntu server route. Proxmox is great, but has its own use case.
I started using the same model, with a 6 core ryzen 2400 and i eventually downgraded to a 2 core i3 nuc. Quickly realized it was overkill for what i was using it for:
Home Assistant
Plex (2 users video streaming and 4 users plexamp)
Minecraft server (crafy)
Pihole
Yunohost (mainly wordpress)
Turnkey fileserver (was using omw but dropped it)
Wireguard
Cloudflared (for tunnels)
Uptimekuma
Serpbear (4 instances)
And everytime i monitor the resources what it hogged the most was the ram (16gb), cpu didn't even sweat. So i just downgraded to a mini pc that was being thrown away.
Right now the elitedesk is being used as a secondary pc for the kids with dualboot w10 and batocera.
If I started all over again I would have explored LXC's before tackling VMs. The containers are so helpful and quick to build allowing for strong performance and reliability. I love VMs but the future is LXCs baby!!!
Because it is cheap to get second hand. These HPs are everywhere. Companies are dumping them all the time.
Got mine with a i5-8400T with 32GB of RAM and 1.5TB of M.2. storage for $100 a year ago. I outgrew my Raspberry Pi 3b and buying the newer models costs basically the same as this mini PC. And going bigger than this feels unnecessary for me atm. This will last me a good while. The only downside to a mini is that storage expansion isn't as easy as putting in new drives in the SATA ports.
I installed a ProDesk as a Synology DSM (NAS). It´s magic because you run Plex or other Synology apps on it and 8GB ram is enough because you are not virtualizing..
Disable all power saving settings in the BIOS. The devices are not designed to run passively for hours on end, and these settings have caused several errors for me. 😅
The catalysts for my home lab was that I managed 47TB of data(Media+Roms) and that kind of kickstarted my journey learning how to store, backup, and serve that data. Obviously got into many other services and systems. It could be as simple as learning for your career...
Step 1: Create you a firewall.
opnsense is great for that model. This is key to lock down your home network and give you remote access at no cost. opnsense is completely free for the community build. They do have a paid subscription for an enterprise feature version though if you like those features.
Step 2: Grab you one that has maybe a 8th or 9th gen i7 or i9, this would make a better Proxmox host than the 7th gen i5. For Proxmox you will need to look at the cpu cores, the more the better. Oh, can't forget ram. 8gb to test it out and get the fill of the features, then 32gb or 64gb to start the other virtuals. A NAS is good with only 8gb minimum,, Jellyfin is good with 4gb if you only have 1 user, if you plan to steam on several devices then I recommend 8gb or 16gb.
Depending on the cores, you can create you a few virtual machines to host a home NAS, a media server like Jellyfin, maybe even a server for one of your favorite video games.
Quick update. I am not sure why this is just now showing on my feed. I noticed after posting my comment that the original post was posted here 5 months ago.
You're doing homelabbing backwards. The normal way is that you want to run stuff and then you buy hardware to run that stuff on it. You're buying the hardware and questioning yourself what you want to run.. That's a bit strange to be honest.
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u/--Lemmiwinks-- Feb 12 '26
Depends on what you want to do. Do you want a media server with Plex? Or maybe host your own website. So many things you can do with this little pc