I have a decent 2 bay synology, but want to put all my docker images/ VMs running on a more powerful machine connected to the same LAN. Does it ever make sense to do the for media serving or will involving an extra device add too much complexity vs just serving from the NAS itself. I was hoping to have calibre/home assistant/tube type services, etc. all running off a mini PC with a Ryzen 7 and 64gb ram vs the NAS.
My Linux knowledge is intermediate; my networking knowledge is begintermediate, and I can generally follow documentation okay even if it’s a bit above my skill level.
Generally it’s simpler if you have your NAS separate from your application server. Synology runs NAS really well, but a separate application server for docker/etc is a lot easier to use and easier to upgrade than running on Synology. Your application server can even have a GPU for media transcoding or AI processing. Trying to do everything on one box makes things more complicated and fragile.
I would recommend something like Debian or NixOS for the application server, and you should be able to manage it over SSH. You can then mount your NAS as an NFS share, and then run all your applications in Docker or NixOS, using the NAS to store all your state.
This answers my question. I wasn’t sure if the server would have to download the whole file from the NAS prior to serving it.
I run my Nextcloud on Debian, ran Debian based distros for a few years, and I’ve done nfs on my synology with my laptop. I might be able to do it!
Wish me luck, and thanks for responding.
Your biggest potential bottle neck is if your NAS and App server only have a single 1g network port. This may not be a problem depending on your usage, but it is a important consideration to keep in mind.
I have an old midi-tower standing around with everything inside but drives.
Is it stupid to just set up the drives as zfs inside the case and let my docker services run on the same machine (as long as there is enough RAM etc. of course)?
Or should I get another PC as application server?
If you’re not using something like synology, it isn’t really an issue to run applications and nas on the same machine. I would generally recommend separating them so you have more options in the future if you want to run muliple servers for HA or expansion, but it should be fine either way. It is worth noting that quad core N100 computers are like $150 on aliexpress if you want a cheap application server(s).