This will all work but you may want to leave yourself with a few paths for growth that you may want to take now or later, so you’ll want to plan your base components accordingly.

1. 3 drives is the minimum for reliable error correction, like a 3-way mirror, for your NAS. This is a great feature. Some filesystems will let you just keep adding drives to a 3-way mirror, too, which makes expansion easier. You can actually get much more storage efficiency from 6 drives and erasure coding (like raidz2) but that will of course mean needing to buy 6 drives (but getting the storage of 4 not 2).
2. For good performance you’ll want your main service data files local and your big files (like movies and photos) on the NAS. And have a backup strategy that copies your local service data files to the nas.
3. The machine learning stuff with immich doesn’t need a GPU beyond what your CPU already has but it does need RAM. I think you’ll want at least 16 GB in general to run these workloads and have room to make changes.
4. You’ll benefit from having a wired network connection between NAS and mini PC. Even just running 1gbe Ethernet from each to a router. This decreases latency and will prevent throttling your WiFi.
5. For off-site backups I recommend making backups that are encrypted at rest. If this is too expensive (because it basically doubles your photos storage requirement, for example), at least encrypt just before sending to the destination (like with restic or Borg). I also recommend doing some zero trust work on that off-site machine to prevent access - a user accessible only via ssh or root, system storage encrypted. Then there won’t be any snooping. Even if your friend is cool you never know who might visit. A backup method that deduplicates can be nice for saving storage and many will also encrypt by default.
6. If your stronger computer can run virtual machines you can also run workloads on that.
7. Monitoring is good for everyone but it’s especially handy when you’re building your own storage and backups solutions so make that a priority. Like setting up Prometheus and grafana and having a bunch of stuff report to it, especially backup attempts and drive health.

Hey this is what I just got through doing!

I ended up exposing a website (and buying a domain and stuff) but if you don’t want to do all that then setting up a tailnet so that your home server and other devices can all share data securely is pretty easy. I don’t even have a monitor plugged into my server anymore, I have ssh aliases set up for it on my desktop and laptop to manage it remotely.

Before buying hardware I would ask if your proposed two PC setup is really necessary. Home servers do not need new hardware, a single person just isn’t going to be putting that much strain on it. Even considering the energy difference between a mini PC and an old PC, you’re probably looking at having to run the old PC for multiple years at full blast before it ends up costing more than the mini PC - if nothing else I would say get the old PC set up first and then determine whether the mini PC would actually improve your setup or not before buying anything.

As for an off-site backup, I would look into the free tier of Amazon AWS or similar. Putting a computer at a friend’s house is certainly an option, but I personally would rather be mirroring my server to a dedicated service of some kind.

Get a tower case that can fit your HDDs and a mainboard with enough SATA ports.

Yeah just make sure you use tailscale or something like it to connect to the server dont expose it publicly.

nginx proxy manager and a domain name if you want SSL and hostnames for shiz

oh and test your backups, an untested backup isn’t a backup at all

Are you planning to expose services to the internet, or are you keeping everything only locally-accessible? If the former, you’ll definitely want either: a reverse proxy handling SSL certs between your router and any exposed services; or a vpn tunnel like wireguard that is required to access anything inside your LAN from the outside internet.

I’d also recommend giving Proxmox a try. I was a little intimidated when I first started setting up my own cluster, but it’s honestly not that hard and I wish I had done it before I set up some of my machines as standalone ubuntu and debian. Even with 1-2 machines I’d recommend it for the convenience of being able to manage VMs on every machine within a single web UI, as well as making backups much easier especially with Proxmox backup server. Note that the default installation has some subscription nag and defaults to an Enterprise repository for system updates, but there’s this post-install script that takes care of all of that.

For off-site backups at friends’ houses, you could set up S3 storage on a device they plug into their network, although this would require its own tunnel setup or dedicated reverse proxy and cert management + said friend letting you into their router’s settings page. You could also offer to host your own and “trade” space, using the argument that even if they’re not interested in self-hosting it’s still a good idea for everyone to have some off-site backup space that isn’t at the whims of Google.

Enjoy not getting paid for full time, on call server administration!

That all looks fine, as other said. No reason to use a GPU for ML tasks that can run overnight for example. Might be nice of you get into home assistant in the future though.

You are largely on the right path. Get your HDDs second hand and you will save a lot, and you probably don’t need a separate hub for the server as they could just go straight into the motherboard. Check its model to make sure it supports at least 4 sata ports for expandability (ideally 6+ but harder to find). Use the HDDs in a raid configuration which protects data if one fails.

A UPS is probably overkill unless you live somewhere with regular power outages, and even then you might not really need one… Could be something you get down the line rather than immediately if cost is a concern.

For CPU I recently built my home server with an Intel i5 12500T that I got used with a warranty. The iGPU on it is actually great and handles transcoding for jellyfin exceptionally well. I run it all through docker on debian and drivers are all fine for it too (there is a bit of setup for GPU support with the docker image but not much). Personally I would not bother with portainer and use docker+docker compose directly. It’s fairly simple to set up an ssh connection from your pc to the server over your local network for admin work. If you go down a path which has you using gluetun then I highly recommend you do not use portainer to manage that setup.

I do some machine learning on my music library with just 32GB ram and the cpu. It’s running 24/7 and not urgent so I never bothered with a GPU. ML runs just fine on a CPU, but a bit slow. You may find you don’t need a gpu for image analysis workloads.

Generally you want to keep power consumption low. I run around 20 docker containers giving me a full backup system, home media system, gaming servers for friends, and a few other things which totals around 1.5Kw per day. Where I live this works out at at around an hour of minimum wage per month to run. I suspect if I went with a laptop oriented CPU I may have made some more savings here.

For off site backups I would personally just store historical data on an encrypted external SSD then leave it with a friend. Gets a bit trickier to do it in real time but if you go that route then use tailscale as other have suggested. Do not port forward anything to your server or your friend’s house as it’s a unnecessary risk which you can skip with tailscale.

Yeah i pretty much do the same thing, except i use my main gaming/work pc as also my always-on server. I just set up a wireguard VPN on the server as well and connect my family cell phones to the vpn to get access; i don’t use a public IP or anything. I have immich and jellyfin currently. On Windows also.

Some points:

• 8GB RAM is a little low, I’d really try to find something with 12 or 16GB if possible for multiple services and having some safe margin but if you’re comfortable running with thin margins then go for it.
• IMO try to get an intel chip with quicksync transcoding support so a chip with an iGPU (intel graphics). That way even your little mini-PC can do quick and dirty transcoding when needed without needing to bring in your main PC. You can do without it but consider whether the convenience of having on the fly transcoding support for Jellyfin and/or being able to run transcoding of stuff while you sleep without your computer on and fans humming would be worth it.
• A NAS is an additional expense of several hundred dollars. Consider whether you could get a used or refurbished desktop with multiple internal 3.5" bays (nothing really old, you want something from the past 5 years IMO so check release date of the processor model among other indicators) that would suit your needs instead. A DAS (or USB attached storage device that’s similar to a NAS but relies on a computer) could also work even with a mini-PC. You should ensure it has an external power supply because your computer won’t have enough power for it.
• RAID is not a backup. Repeat that with me. RAID is error correction. Do not use it as a backup. Do not use it in place of a backup. If you don’t have money for both RAID and backups then just stick to multiple backups (ideally create check-sum files for important things like family photos but ignore for movies and television you can just get new copies of).
• Syncthing could do such backups to your friend’s place
• Consider buying a little USB powered or AC powered 120/140mm cooling fan to set your mini-PC on to keep it extra cool. Not required if you’re not pushing it all the time but may help keep it happy and healthy longer and isn’t a bad way to spend $20.
• On the subject of fans if you’re using your hard drives frequently I would try and ensure your DAS has a built in fan. Heat doesn’t help hard drive longevity and you want to try to keep your drives under 45C most of the time.

So in short I’d say dump the NAS, spend the money from that to instead get to more than 8GB RAM, get a recent intel chip with an iGPU that supports quicksync and if possible go for the i5 over the i3 as processors can lower their power states when not in use to save power so the difference when idle between it and an i5 is negligible but the extra power when in use may be nice.

I do pretty much what you’re describing. Mine runs on an old Dell tower (poweredge?) server from eBay. I use Yunohost to install/manage all the server software/apps. It connects to the internet via wireguard proxy to a cheap VPS. I also have an offsite backup (also over wireguard) to a rpi with a big external hard drive.

without checking that I’m not way off the mark.

From your post, you seem ready for it. Go for it. The most important thing is to have it, and use it!

It’s always nice to have as much performance as possible, but the minimum specs you posted will work. You might run into issues with Jellyfin’s on-the-fly video transcoding if you go too slow, but you can work around that. Modern hardware can be suprisingly low-power, too. But don’t set yourself an arbitrarily low power limit; a PC drawing 40 watts only costs ~$50 a year to run continiously.

I am hoping a friend will allow me to (somehow? I don’t know how yet) keep a hub+HDD backup at their place which is updated weekly automatically whenever their computer turns on.

The approach I took is: a raspberri pi with a big hard drive plugged in to my parent’s router. All it does is auto-backup from my home server.

I know people are going to freak out about exposing a sever to the internet, and that definately is a risk. But honestly, what’s the point of the server if it’s not exposed to the internet?

Damn I had a similar idea the other day after watching this

I probs have the slightly less knowledge than you by the sounds of it, but it gave me hope that it’s feasible

This is kinda relevant to my interests for similar things.

I was thinking of looking for an ex corporate standard atx PC with a pcie(x2? at least) and 4 sata ports. Slapping 4 refurbed spinning rust disks in a striped 2x2 setup for replication. Then just crossing my fingers that it won’t be too loud with an old GPU in there for video transcoding.

I mean how intensive can backups/home assistant and streaming to tops 3 devices really be?

I’ll give you a cute kaimoji for your thoughts

I got one of these a few years ago: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Testing-Trigkey-Mini-PC-with-Intel-N100-16-GB-RAM-and-a-500-GB-SSD-for-less-than-200-USD.768945.0.html

If you can stretch it, I’d try to get 12 or 16 GB Ram, I run all these programs on it and it usually hovers around 6-7GB usage.

You can probably skip using the gaming PC for immich, i added about 300+GB to Immich and the machine learning stuff took less then a day to process them all. (Using HWA on the integrated GPU).

Also for your HDDs get a powered HUB, these mini pcs can handle 1 external drive and a second one will usually drain too much power. (It took me several months to figure out why it was randomly crashing)

I basically have that setup and some VPSs for network tunneling. Lenovo Tiny Thinkcenters are great, they’re silent, small, and powerful. Plenty of ports, WiFi and wired nic, nvme storage and can get up to 32GB or ram in some models. I love’m!

I run immich, jellyfin, the full arr stack, calibre web, audiobookshelf, opencode web, and some small personal projects with very little issue. Runing Ubuntu Server LTS.

I use pangolin for reverse proxy and tunneling, really easy to use and configure.