Hi, I wanted to start selfhosting and I’d like to have your opinion on something that I’m struggling to decide.

I don’t plan to tinker too much with my system, I’ve been a Linux tinkerer myself some time ago but now I’d like to setup something that’s really bulletproof and then leave it running (ofc I know I’ll have to do a bit of bugfixing now and then), not replacing hardware ideally for >= 10 years.

This is why I’m planning to use TrueNAS, and that’s why I’m planning to buy a UGREEN DXP2800: has two 3,5" HDD bays (4TB should be enough for me for the next 8-10 years, so I’ll have two 4TB disks in RAID1 or mirror or whatever is recommended). Only problem I have with this machine is that it only has 1 RAM slot, and I guess 8 GB isn’t enough if I use zfs. So I’ll have to upgrade to either 16 or 32 GB. Now I did my research and from my understanding 16GB seems to be enough, but it would be such a waste having to replace the whole RAM if it turns out it isn’t enough.

For reference, I don’t plan on having more than 7-8 services running: Immich, Nextcloud+office, firefly, audiobookshelf, paperless and a maybe few more if they’re useful. I value responsiveness but it’s ok if some things take longer to process (thinking immich ML, or stuff like transcoding)

I’m very interested to know your opinion:

  • is the dxp2800 a good choice?
  • should I go with 16 or 32 GB RAM?

And a little extra

  • how much ssd space do you recommend for high speed data? is 500gb enough?

Thank you so much!

  • bordam@feddit.itOPEnglish
    1·
    7 hours ago

    Yes, of course 321 all the way! I was thinking 3 copies: two in RAID, one in B2 or Hetzner. Also I could keep daily ZFS snapshots for 1 month in case I mess up something. I know, it’s a bit of a waste but for me it’s ok since what I waste is definitely cheaper than buying a 4 bay or making a custom build. An alternative would be using two different clouds for backups and using both HDDs for space.

    Nice idea, a used pc, but I’m concerned that something could fail in <4 years if the machine is too old, used office pc those are tipically from 2015-2018, so they’re already 7 years old in the best case.

    Thanks for the benchmark! I think 16 GB will be more enough for me then, I don’t plan on using jellyfin, only transcoding would be immich but again it’s ok if these task are slow.