Hey all, lurker for a bit, but just joined because I’ve started my journey of self hosting the simple stuff (or at least I hope it’s simple). For the past couple years I’ve been using a RPi Zero W for PiHole, and more recently go into Jellyfin and Home Assistant, using an RPi4 and an RPi3+ respectively. I’ve also got a hand-me-down Synology ds214j NAS with 2x8TB in RAID0 RAID1, which is about half full atm. I’m not expecting to expand that storage anytime soon, so I’ve pivoted to an attempt at combining the 3 Pis above into one NUC/SFF/etc device with a roughly similar power draw. Also looking at re-jumping back into 3D printing using OctoPrint.
I’ve looked briefly at jumping to a Pi5, but that led me down the rabbit hole with Jeff Geerling’s article/video on Pi vs. NUC. I’ve continued to putter around looking at NUCs in the ~$200 range. Hoping to stick with MinisForum, GMKTek, or Beelink if possible, but only because… it’s all I know. I’d like to also tinker deeper with Linux flavors, as I’m a noob at best with it but want to at least have some growing knowledge, as I’ve primarily been a Windows gamer and use Apple at the office almost exclusively. I’d like to try staying with AMD as I’ve slowly moved over from the “dark side” (don’t hurt me) that is Intel and Nvidia.
Last nugget is that I’ve never tinkered with Docker, as it seems that may be the best route to host all these apps on one contiguous installation. I’ve new-ish to VMs too, so anything “Baby’s First VM” would be nice.
I know I made a giant pile of wants/needs, so if there’s no magical unicorn, I’m cool with other ideas. Thanks in advance, and I’m really keen on seeing what options I have.
I was hosting most of my Docker stuff on my Synology DS920+, use Docker in a Pi 4B for AdGuard Home and WireGuard, and found myself wanting to use Home Assistant.
Can’t use Docker for HA if you want HACS (addons) and Synology decided to kill USB drivers some time back, so looked around for options. Considered a Nabu Casa Yellow with a CM5 compute module (for Voice PE) and its price was more than a GMKtek N150 NUC, which has far higher specs and enough headroom for other things. So I got the NUC.
First thing I did was nuke Windows and replaced it with Proxmox, then installed Home Assistant OS (HAOS) as a VM in it. Plenty of headroom left, so now it’s also got a Linux VM, a few LXCs, etc. (The Proxmox Helper Scripts site makes it very easy).
Could easily install AGH or PiHole and a bunch of other things on it. Think it’s the best bang for buck thing I’ve bought in years.
Yeah the HA Docker ish is the one thing I got concerned about, as I already needed to install HACS to integrate my Govee lights into it. For now, I’m also looking at the HA Voice Preview for voice integration, as I’m sick of having my shitty Google Homes all around unable to handle simple requests (like failing to turn on/off lights).
As much as I want to nuke Windows on my main rig, I try to play a lot of VR (especially heavily modded SkyrimVR), and after getting those games tweaked just right, it’d be quite the hit to me if I had to redo all of that again.
Genuinely interested in ProxMox tho, as if I can run all systems in their individual containers (a la Docker w/o the HACS issue) on one main device with a low power overhead, I’m all ears.
The NUC def seems like the best option, although from an earlier replay of mine, I’m still looking into seeing how far I can take the Pi4. MicroSD cards are still far less pricey than a new system after all.