Hey guys, I’m new to self-hosting; I’m trying to set up cloud storage to store pics and other content. However, I’m unsure whether to use my old computer, Buy NAS or ResberryPie to set up a home server.
Also, what is the best privacy-friendly OS to use with the home server?
Lastly, do’s and don’ts.
Any help would be appreciated (:
Sorry for the lack of clarification. I’m mainly into backing up personal and device data and the ability to add media through Plex. I’m also exploring the idea of self-hosting Bitwarden for password management, allowing access to data from anywhere through the internet. Although both Raspberry Pi and NAS are options, privacy concerns lead me to favour Raspberry Pi over NAS.
I think Pi will struggle with Plex. Maybe the latest version does it better, I’m not sure. Hit up a Pi forum or a Plex forum. I’ve seen it talked about.
There’s also mini PCs, that have real graphics, but have idle power draw of maybe 10 watts. More than idle on some Pi’s, but I believe RPi 4 idle is like 5 watts? 8 watts? I forget. Those mini PCs start around $100. They can run with a monitor or headless. You’ll see them talked about in Plex and Jellyfin forums/communities.
For everything else, you’re looking to do what I’m doing.
I just finished PiHole and Tailscale (mesh network, so all my mobile devices can now connect to home from anywhere with a transparent encrypted connection).
Bitwarden and Syncthing are next. And I’m looking to switch to dockers for this stuff.
Enabling SSH on RPi (basically you create an SSH file on the boot partition) https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-ssh/
Latest versions of RPi use nmcli command line for managing network interfaces, just an FYI.
Instructions for Tailscale on RPi https://tailscale.com/download/linux/rpi-bullseye FYI, requires a reboot after setup.
Syncthing on RPi https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-syncthing/
Here’s instructions for a PiHole Docker (I haven’t tried this, my PiHole I installed directly.) https://pimylifeup.com/pi-hole-docker/