I have never homelabbed, and this is going to be my first experience. I want to set up a home server. My current goals are to set up a gallery using Immich, an ad blocker/DNS using Pi-hole, and a cloud service.
I want you to suggest what second-hand PC or laptop I should get. I researched a bit and found out that a PC is better because of 24/7 reliability, better cooling, no risk of laptop battery swelling, easy RAM and storage expandability, and low idle power consumption.
What I think the specs should be for me is 12 GB RAM and 256 GB storage. And my budget is 10k INR.
I want to hear your thoughts. Thank you! :)
I like lenovo thinkcentres I have a 700 series and a 900 series. At the time, one was less than $100 and one was $150. I put another ~$80 for old ram and old SAS drives. They’re working great and I have what I consider to be huge storage. Things are different now, but used office computers are always going to be plentiful, the only limitation is how old you want to go. Good news is that Debian will practically run on anything and doing docker via SSH CLI isn’t hard, especially if you get Dockhand or Portainer(for now) running first. If you’re serving data, 256gb won’t get though.
256 isn’t enough but it’ll get the job done for now
You’re right, it’s more than enough to run debian, docker, and a host of containers, so OP can start experimenting, but anything dealing with video or audio will gobble that up in minutes.
‘Gobble up’ 😰 Yeah ill give it a shot.
It’s even enough to add a lite desktop manager to debian for that gui goodness.
Yup
I’ve gotten a lot of use out of my old Lenovo Thinkpad. Only bc of Linux mint tho
Linux is the saviour
Which part do you want to spend the least time maintaining: photo backups, remote access, or updates? I’m designing Doomsday Box, a home-server concept, and trying to understand what should work without constant attention. Your planned setup is relevant. Would you mind giving blunt feedback on the idea? https://heyeddi.com/projects/doomsday-box
I bought myself an HP elitedesk G3 800, they come in three skews: mini, small form factor and tower.
I bought the tower. There is so much room. Look at the Elitedesk G4 800 because there you get 8 and 9th gen intel.
But I love mine, planning to put in three large HDD in her, already have two 2.5 SSD, I have been scouting ram and got relatively cheap second hand ram deals, with 32gb in the system. I am planning on getting the 7700t (the t variant is the low power draw version).
But the thing is quiet and can be upgraded but also just plonked on a desk and left to run no worries
If you have options and the space go for 64bit CPU and midi sized office tower for expandability. If you want hardware acceleration for playback you need the check the docs (like immich vp9 > intel 9th gen CPU). What do you mean by cloud service?
By cloud, i rn mean smth like syncthing. Like basically a storage machine
So yeah, space will be an issue if you would go small… Some SSF may be enough but you will mostly need some special cables though. I got an SSF thinkcentre and managed to put 3x 2,5" HDDs inside (needed some machining).
Basically I would recommend something like an i5-9400 with 16gb ram in an tower case. Also have the PSU in mind, because some office PCs come with really low wattage, that could limit your expandability.
If you really want to stay with your mentioned software, 8GB could be enough though.
Retired business or surveillance hardware is worth checking locally too. My two servers are repurposed NVRs running plain Ubuntu Server, and a Dell OptiPlex handles dev work. For that list, I’d start with the hardware you can get affordably and check its RAM capacity and drive connections before buying. Docker on plain Linux keeps things straightforward. With Immich, budget for a separate backup of the photos before it holds your only copy.
