First, a hardware question. I’m looking for a computer to use as a… router? Louis calls it a router but it’s a computer that is upstream of my whole network and has two ethernet ports. And suggestions on this? Ideal amount or RAM? Ideal processor/speed? I have fiber internet, 10 gbps up and 10 gbps down, so I’m willing to spend a little more on higher bandwidth components. I’m assuming I won’t need a GPU.

Anyways, has anyone had a chance to look at his guide? It’s accompanied by two youtube videos that are about 7 hours each.

I don’t expect to do everything in his guide. I’d like to be able to VPN into my home network and SSH into some of my projects, use Immich, check out Plex or similar, and set up a NAS. Maybe other stuff after that but those are my main interests.

Any advice/links for a beginner are more than welcome.

Edit: thanks for all the info, lots of good stuff here. OpenWRT seems to be the most frequently recommended thing here so I’m looking into that now. Unfortunately my current router/AP (Asus AX6600) is not supported. I was hoping to not have to replace it, it was kinda pricey, I got it when I upgraded to fiber since it can do 6.6gbps. I’m currently looking into devices I can put upstream of my current hardware but I might have to bite the bullet and replace it.

Edit 2: This is looking pretty good right now.

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Just glancing through that guide:

    OPNsense instead of Pfsense, because pfsense is going to rugpull, it’s just a matter of time. I wouldn’t trust the twats that run it farther than I could throw them because they’re pretty silly people. Rossman suggests exactly this in the intro to the router section, he would change if he hadn’t been using it for a decade already. Unfortunately, a lot of this guide is focussed on how to do it via pfsense and if you’re brand new, you’re going to have to figure out how to do it in OPNsense yourself.

    Wireguard/Tailscale instead of openvpn. Faster and way easier to set up. Don’t even try to set up a full LAN routed VPN, just use Tailscale for the services you want. And use it for everything and everyone instead of punching holes in the firewall.

    He’s definitely right about mailcow; if you’re reading that guide for information, you are not a person that should be self-hosting email.

  • bigDottee@geekroom.techEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    I’m not sure if you ever made your way to following through with this… But the three node system isn’t a bad starting point. However, here’s how I would approach it (similar to how I actually got my start in homelabs and how I do things now)

    1 system for your router (looks like you picked a Qotom unit, those are decent), 8-16 gb ram

    1 system for proxmox virtualization… run all your services in LXC’s or Virtual machines, as much ram as you can get a get for your system

    And 1 system dedicated to storage (truenas or unraid), 32gb ECC ram (personal preference but not necessarily needed even with zfs for home use)

    I’d start at https://reddit.com/r/homelab … but since we’re on Lemmy, I’d rather suggest posting on [email protected] (new, but looking to gain traction)

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    I wouldn’t trust his guides personally. He has some hot takes and more importantly he isn’t someone who really knows the Homelab/self hosting landscape.

    If you are looking for guides I would find channels that have done series on whatever you are interested in there is plenty of quality material.

    To start off here is what I would do.

    First, get a wireless router that is capable of running OpenWRT and then get a switch to accompany it.

    Next go to eBay and buy 3 used workstations. They don’t need to be fancy and you can always upgrade them later. You need 3 for later.

    Next find some storage. You can find decent Sata SSDs for pretty cheap. If you are looking to store something bigger like a movie collection also pickup some larger drives. With the extra drives make sure you buy a sata or SAS pcie card. This is because you need a dedicated controller to passthough to a VM.

    Once you have all that you can start installing Proxmox. You probably want a raid 1 configuration so that you can replace a disk without downtime. The reason I say three devices is because you need 3 machines to get consensus in the cluster. When consensus is lost affected devices go into what is called fencing which is where it freezes all VMs and operations to prevent split brain from happening.

    Technically this is probably a bit overkill but I like having a solid base for experimentation and flexibility. Doing it right from the get go will mean that you have more power down the road.

    For actually hosting stuff I would use docker compose inside a VM.

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        9 days ago

        Proxmox is a great starting point for self hosting. You don’t need advanced features to start, and you can easily create VMs and containers.

      • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        Proxmox is nice for beginners. This is a nice tutorial: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT98CRl2KxKHnlbYhtABg6cF50bYa8Ulo

        Proxmox has nice UI for managing Linux Containers (LXC). They act like a computer inside a computer with the advantage that you can clone them. So you can basically save and load them whenever you succeed or fail at something. Proxmox also allows you to install Turnkey Linux containers which have the software you want to run preconfigured in them so that’s also good for beginners.

        Only downside is that this is not declarative so it won’t be as scalable as docker or nix. It might be more worth it to learn docker from the beginning but that would also be less friendly for a beginner.

  • metaStatic@kbin.earth
    01·
    3 months ago

    I would probably suggest just getting a Synology NAS or similar because it’s plug and play.

      • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        I don’t recommend it unless you just want it for storage or whatever else it does out of the box. It’s basically impossible to tinker with it because it has so many layers of abstraction. At least that was my impression when I tried to edit their nginx config. It had like 2000 lines so I just gave up.

        If you want a server that runs services that you download from the internet, don’t buy it. Look at it as a box that does the thing that it promises to do, not as a computer. If you want it to do a different thing, buy a different box that does that. Kinda like a TV. It’s technically a computer that runs some kind of linux but to the user it’s a monitor that also shows videos from the internet.

        Also it’s perfectly fine to buy a “NAS black box” but maybe not something I’d buy if I wanted to get into selfhosting. I’d buy it if I wanted to have a NAS running at home with the least amount of “self” in “selfhosting” that’s feasable.