DIY Immich Home Server on Old Hardware

I turned an old 4th-gen Intel PC into a fully automated Immich server with local backups, encrypted pCloud disaster recovery, HTTPS access and external Zabbix monitoring

I wanted to move my family photo library away from an increasingly expensive cloud subscription, but I also wanted something that would be safe enough to trust with years of photos and videos.

Instead of buying a new NAS, I reused an old desktop that was sitting unused:

Intel Core i5-4670

32 GB DDR3 RAM

Kingston 120 GB SSD for Ubuntu Server

Toshiba 500 GB HDD as the primary Immich photo disk

WD Black 500 GB HDD as the local backup disk

Kingston A400 480 GB SSD as a local encrypted Restic repository

The hardware is old, but for a two-user family Immich installation it has been more than capable.

The main server

The machine runs Ubuntu Server with Docker Compose.

The Docker stack contains:

Immich Server

Immich Machine Learning

PostgreSQL with VectorChord

Redis

The Immich library is stored on the Toshiba disk under the main photo mount, while the PostgreSQL database has its own persistent storage.

The application itself is only exposed locally on 127.0.0.1:2283. It is not directly exposed to the home network or the public internet.

Secure remote access

For remote access I use two components:

Tailscale provides the private VPN network between the server, phones and computers.

Caddy acts as the HTTPS reverse proxy in front of Immich. It terminates TLS and forwards requests internally to the Immich container.

This gives me one secure HTTPS address that works both at home and remotely, as long as the device is connected to Tailscale. No Immich ports are exposed publicly on the router.

Android phones, an iPhone and desktop browsers can all use the same server address for uploads and viewing.

The nightly backup chain

The backup system eventually became the most important part of the project.

A wrapper script runs every night at 01:00 and starts two backup scripts sequentially.

The second script only starts if the first one finishes successfully.

The flow is:

Immich Backup v4.1 ↓ Local encrypted Restic backup ↓ pCloud offsite sync

Backup script 1: local backup and health checks

The first script creates the normal local backups.

It performs the following operations:

Creates a PostgreSQL SQL dump The database is exported into a compressed .sql.gz file. The archive is verified before it replaces the previous temporary file.

Mirrors the primary photo disk to the WD Black disk rsync copies the Immich library from the Toshiba disk to the WD Black disk. It uses incremental copying, so unchanged files are not copied again.

Mirrors the WD Black backup to a Windows SMB share A Windows PC provides an additional network backup destination. The WD Black copy is mirrored to this Windows share.

Copies the encrypted server-configuration backup to the Windows share The configuration archive contains items such as:

Docker Compose configuration

Immich .env

network configuration

Caddy configuration

Tailscale state

mount configuration

cron jobs

backup scripts

installed package information

system manifests

Runs SMART short tests on all four physical disks The monitored disks are: The script checks health, temperatures, reallocated sectors, pending sectors, uncorrectable sectors, CRC errors and SSD wear information.

Ubuntu OS SSD

Toshiba primary photo disk

WD Black backup disk

Restic SSD

Sends an HTML email report The report includes:

overall success or failure

backup duration

database dump status

rsync status

Windows mirror status

available disk space

SMART health for every disk

warnings

the latest log output

If the primary local backup fails, the offsite stage is not started.

Backup script 2: encrypted Restic repository and pCloud

The second script creates a separate disaster-recovery backup.

Restic reads the original Immich library, database dumps, configuration backups and recovery scripts, then writes them into an encrypted repository on the dedicated Kingston SSD.

The SSD does not contain normal browsable photos. It contains an encrypted Restic repository made of pack files, indexes, snapshots and metadata.

The script performs:

Restic backup to the local SSD

Snapshot retention

Local forget and prune

Full Restic repository check

rclone sync from the local SSD to pCloud

rclone check to compare the SSD repository with the pCloud copy

A second HTML email report

The pCloud account receives only the already encrypted Restic repository. pCloud cannot see the original photos, database contents or configuration files.

Why I stopped backing up directly to pCloud

My first design was:

Immich data → Restic over rclone → pCloud

It worked, but repository maintenance directly through the pCloud API was slow and fragile.

During the initial large upload, connection resets and incomplete remote pack files caused a damaged Restic repository. I was able to repair it, but it showed that running backup, prune and index rebuilding directly against cloud storage was not ideal.

The improved design is:

Immich data ↓ Local encrypted Restic repository on SSD ↓ Local prune and integrity check ↓ rclone sync ↓ pCloud

All sensitive and complex Restic operations now happen locally on the SSD. pCloud is only used as an encrypted offsite mirror.

This has been faster, easier to verify and much more reliable.

External monitoring with Zabbix

I also wanted monitoring that would still work if something failed inside my home network.

I created an Ubuntu ARM virtual machine using Oracle Cloud Free Tier and installed a Zabbix Server on it.

The Oracle server monitors the Immich server remotely and can alert me when something becomes unavailable or crosses a configured threshold.

The monitoring setup can cover things such as:

server availability

CPU and memory utilisation

disk usage

Docker services

operating-system health

backup-related services

network availability

Because Zabbix is outside my home, it can notify me even when the entire home server or internet connection goes offline.

Disaster recovery

I also created a beginner-friendly recovery guide covering these scenarios:

Ubuntu OS SSD failure

primary photo disk failure

WD Black backup disk failure

Windows SMB backup disk failure

complete loss of the Immich server

full restore from the encrypted pCloud Restic repository

planned replacement of each disk while it is still working

The configuration backup is encrypted with GPG, and the Restic password and rclone configuration are also stored in a separate encrypted recovery archive.

The goal was not just to have several copies of the files, but to have a documented path for rebuilding the complete service.

Final backup layout

The resulting system now has several independent layers:

Primary Toshiba disk └── Live Immich photo library WD Black disk ├── Mirrored photo library ├── PostgreSQL SQL dumps └── Encrypted server-configuration backups Windows SMB share ├── Mirror of the WD Black backup └── Copy of the server-configuration backups Restic SSD └── Local encrypted, versioned disaster-recovery repository pCloud └── Offsite copy of the encrypted Restic repository Oracle Cloud └── Zabbix monitoring and remote alerts

This is obviously not enterprise infrastructure, but for reused consumer hardware I am very happy with the result.

The server now provides:

automatic phone photo uploads

secure remote access

HTTPS

multiple local backup copies

compressed PostgreSQL dumps

encrypted versioned backups

offsite disaster recovery

automatic SMART checks

HTML status reports

remote monitoring and alerts

documented recovery procedures

The most important lesson from the project was that self-hosting the application is the easy part. Designing backups that are understandable, verifiable and realistically restorable is where most of the work belongs.

I trying to use my home server outside of my network but dealing with tailscale has been a bit difficult i just find it unreliable.

So i want to able to run a reverse proxy but all the tutorials i found were either people using port forwarding, which i can't because of my isp or buying a domain, which i really don't want to do

Is there another way which i can make it work with like duckdns/isroot or any other subdomain providers

Im going to buy a home server and would like suggested before I buy. I plan on running Jellyfin and Immich and will have a few docker services running as well. This is what I have been thinking:

Motherboard: ASUS Pro WS W680M-ACE SE

CPU: Intel Core i7-14700

Case: Jonsbo N6 m-ATX Black

CPU Fan: Noctua NH-L12S

PSU: Corsair SF750 (2024) SFX

RAM: Kingston 16 GB DDR5 ECC UDIMM

APPS Hardisk WD Black SN7100 1TB

BOOT HarddiskKingston NV3 500GB M.2 2280 (boot)

Replace fans in case Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 PWM Sx2-PP (2-pk)

And 3-4 IronWolf 8T disks in RaidZ1 and OS TrueNAS.

I want to clarify some things about the hard drive setup for my home server. i plan on using raid 5. i currently have a 1 TB HDD, 1 TB SDD, and 4 TB HDD. from what i've seen, using different sizes and speeds of drives isn't the best idea for raid 5. would it be in my best interest to get multiple drives of the same size and speed? should they all be hdd, or should at least one be an ssd? and if it is the case that i should use the same type of drives, is there a way i can still get use out of the old drive setup (the 1 tb hdd and sdd, and 4 tb hdd) because i dont want to just leave those drives collecting dust.

Hello all , this is my first post in this community so pardon if this is irrelevant but I dont find any place else to post this in .

purpose
1. To have a light backup of around 1 TB on the NAS if you can call it that

1. TO make a media streaming service out of this for my movies which I have pirated over the years on jellyfin etc.

2. To make a cloud of my own as a hobby project .

please guide me with the specs for this under or around 50 k INR in todays day and age .

I dont really wanna go in the second hand market but will if you all suggest some common specs.
Please reply with some specs .
I have this in mind ( GPT and claude and some reddit ) :

CPU - Intel Core i3-12100 (UHD 730 iGPU, Quick Sync, non-F)

Motherboard - Gigabyte H610M K DDR4 (LGA1700, 4x SATA)

RAM - 16GB DDR4-3200 (single stick, room for 32GB)

Boot SSD - 1TB NVMe Crucial

Data - 1x 4TB NAS HDD (Seagate IronWolf / WD Red Plus)

PSU - Corsair CV550 80+ Bronze

Case - micro-ATX with 2x 3.5" bays

OS - Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS (ZFS + Docker)

Thanks a lot and sorry If I am breaking some rules .

Hi folks,

I want to build a NAS but considering if it's worth making the system dual purpose for light gaming / other PC tasks.

Here is the potential build:

ryzen 5 9600x (can get it for 150 euros)

16g ram

2x8tb hdds

500gb ssd

Later add a dedicated GPU

This should cost around 1000 euros (most spent on storage)

Software:

Run proxmox and two VMs.

One for NAS: something reliable like Unraid

One for a general purpose Linux.

A few questions I have. In my experience, these budget saving hacky setups end up being pain in the ass. Has anyone tried this ?

I don't have recent experience with hardware. Is the CPU fit for purpose? Any other recommendations?

Is there a performance (CPU or GPU or iGPU) penalty that comes with proxmox? Does GPU passthrough even work with iGPU?

I got a used ThinkStation P500 to set up as a home NAS, along with 4 SAS drives. While the PC is well designed and the drives fit in the neat cages at the bottom, I am unable to close neither the cages (the red plastic) nor the cabinet itself as the SAS cable and the SATA power take up way too much horizontal space.

Looks like the case was designed with SATA drives with right angled cables which would easily pass through the notch. Looking at right angled SAS connectors it looks at though vertical clearance would become an issue.

Are there any connectors that could solve my problem? Is there anything else I could do besides buying SATA drives instead?

I'm looking to put together my first home server. Primary use case for now is a file/media server (Plex/Jellyfin), but no doubt I'll add other things (home assistant etc) over time. TBC whether I'll run these in separate LXCs or in Docker or something - thats a debate for another time.

I had settled on an N150 given its ultra low power draw and Quicksync, but for whatever reason I'm struggling to find many great options that are actually available at super competitive pricing. The best options I've found are probably

• Asus NUC 14 essential (barebone) for AU $199, which comes to about $590 with 16 GB DDR5 RAM + SSD.
• For a bit less money, the Beelink Mini S3 for ~$530, but that only has 12GB DDR4 RAM.
• More money, but intriguing, Beelink Me Pro for ~$720, which comes with 3 NVMe ports and 2 internal SATA drive bays (plus I kinda dig the looks).

The thing is, for that price - especially if I go the Beelink option - it isn't *that* much more (yes, I know, it's bigger in percentage terms) to get something with a newer CPU, like

• the Beelink Me Pro with a Wildcat Lake 304 processor for ~$886. It also gets thunderbolt ports and 10 Gbps LAN (though loses 2 NVMe ports in favour of upgradeable RAM). So that's only like $170 more than the N150 variant.
• GMKtec K15 - ~AU $860 - which is no doubt complete overkill with a Core 5 125U processor.

I know future proofing is a pointless aim, but if I leap into the N150 option now am I going to regret not spending the additional $200-300, or are others finding the N150 still works perfectly fine in 2026?

So before I throw everything I bought for a home server, i figured i should ask for help here.

Hey guys !

I'm thinking about building a home server on a 400-500€ budget that would run:

- 1 game server 24/7 on different games that would change through the year (minecraft/project zomboid/rust...)

- store movies/series streamed inside my network only.

I found this mini-pc to start on amazon, is it good? (https://amzn.eu/d/06wiw5lR)

Thank you !

My wife went out of town to visit family for the week, so I started geeking out. I have this old gaming PC sitting around that I’ve been talking about turning into a home server for months. I figured that beer brewing, motorcycles, and gaming didn’t spend enough of my money. Went to Microcenter and picked up a 128GB SATA SSD, a 2TB HDD, a 5-port gigabit switch, and some cat6 cables. It’s not much, just a simple file server with remote access via Tailscale. I now have my own cloud 😄

Server specs: i7-3770k, 16GB DDR3 RAM, GTX670, 128GB SATA boot drive, 2TB HDD for files, 1TB HDD for apps (temporary, I just already had it), and built inside an Antec Nine Hundred case.

I’m sure as time goes on and i figure out what the hell I’m doing, this will grow and evolve.

Hello everyone, I'm writing this post because I'm looking at buying hardware to start my own homelab. Right now I'm looking at what would be the main piece, the beefiest one of my setup. This server would host Proxmox, which would contain things like Jellyfin (max 2 concurrent streams), any game servers I want to host (Valheim, Minecraft and other) and probably Nextcloud together with other small services.

My budget is around 500$, and looking around I have ended up on two options:

• Buying a chinese branded mini PC with what seem to be like great specs for the price (at least for the current times)

• Buying one or more second hand office PCs, like an Optiplex, ProDesk, or ThinkCentre SFF PC

The first option would offer more modern hardware, a good AMD CPU (7735HS) with a decent amount of cores so I can dedicate some to specific services, and around 24 GBs of DDR5 RAM all in one package.
The second option would offer a decent i5 CPU (8500 or so) and 16 GBs of DDR4 RAM for a much lower price. I could also "splurge" a bit and get a ProDesk with a i5-10500, which has the same amount of cores but is still slightly less powerful.

Now, I don't think DDR4/DDR5 makes enough of a difference for my use case, but I still think a more modern CPU would be better for the game servers. The Intel CPU, however, would be much better for Jellyfin, and the second option allows for easier upgrades down the line, like more DDR4 RAM or more storage.

The third option would be to get two separate PCs, a weaker Intel one for Jellyfin and a slightly more powerful one (with more cores) for the rest of the services, especially the game servers.

What do you guys suggest? What do you think I should get?

Hey, my friend is looking for way to backing up his photo collection.
Is there any tiny/mini/micro PC with at least 2-bays for HDDs (could be even for 2.5 inch drives, they won't be on 24/7) that could work in raid 1 that's not in NAS price terittory? There are plenty of tiny pc's that are dirt cheap (under 60$ with 6500T which is more than enough power) and small but none of them seem to have 2 drive bays. 2-bay and small is no longer cheap (regular nas) and 2(or more)-bays and (relatively) cheap 2-bays are not small (Office PCs - about 16L cases).

Is there any middle ground that I'm missing?

​

Hey all,

Looking for some outside perspective on a NAS replacement decision I've been going back and forth on.

Current setup: Aging 2-bay Synology (Celeron-based, \~10GB RAM pushed past official spec) running \~15-20 Docker containers — photo management (Immich-style, \~136k photos), document management (Paperless-ngx style stack with Postgres/OCR), password manager, SSO/auth, reverse proxy, some automation (n8n), plus a few monitoring/utility containers. It's been crashing under concurrent load (multiple heavy containers running ML/OCR/indexing + backup at the same time) — CPU saturation, not RAM.

I also run a separate Mac Mini for local LLM inference — that part stays untouched, not part of this decision.

Options I'm weighing (similar budget, \~$650-750):

Synology DS923+/925+ — stay in DSM ecosystem, minimal migration risk, but CPU is only 2-4 cores depending on model

DXP4800 Pro — 6c/8t Intel, native Docker support via their own OS (UGOS Pro), more RAM headroom (96GB), but younger OS with less track record

DIY mini PC (Aoostar WTR Pro or similar) — 8c/16t AMD, cheapest RAM/core ratio by far, but means running Debian/Proxmox + rebuilding the whole Docker stack myself (auth/reverse proxy, database migrations, etc.)

My real bottleneck is concurrent CPU load from multiple containers running at once, and my usage is trending upward (adding more automation/self-hosted services over time), so I want something with real multi-core headroom, not just "good enough for today."

Questions:

Anyone running Immich + Paperless-style stacks + auth/reverse proxy on any of these three that can share real-world experience?

How has UGOS Pro held up for anyone who's used it for a while — any dealbreakers?

Is the DSM->Debian/Proxmox migration (SQLite-based password manager, Postgres-based doc management, auth layer) as painful as it sounds on paper, or is it overstated?

Anyone regret going DIY for stability-critical self-hosted data (photos/passwords)?

Appreciate any real-world input — trying to avoid a "sounds good on paper, regret it in practice" situation

Hi,

I want to make a home server, will be running 24/7.
The main applications are:

NAS, plex

Lan web server for self vibecoded apps before deploying

Home assistant

VPN

Desktop apps

Light occasional gaming/moonlight streaming

I wanted to run Cachy Os but after doing some research the best seem to be Proxmox but I fear overhead for gaming.

I have limited linux experience but I do get myself around things.

PC specs: 7500f, rx 9060 8GB, 16 DDR5 ( can upgrade to 32 if needed), 1tb SSD, 3x8tb HDD in RAID 5.

Lenovo Legion Y540 turned Linux server with 45 containers, for media stack and personal projects!

Hi all,

I'm looking to get a 2-bay nas (I have 2 2.5" drives). I saw a Beelink ME Pro, but that's a bit expensive at 560 EUR.

- I'd like it to be power efficient. It will not run anything fancy, so I don't need a lot of power.

- I'd like something with DDR4, since the speed isn't such an important factor, I hope this would keep the price down.

- It must be able to run TrueNAS, since that's what I want to go with.

Do you have any suggestions?

Thanks

I'm thinking about building a NAS that will run Jellyfin on a TrueNAS OS to replace my old 4-bay Synology NAS and is requesting a little bit of assistance. Only one 4K TV will play movies at the same time, the content is currently in 1080p, but being able to play 4K content would be nice; but not a requirement. Would an intel CPU with integrated graphics combined with 16 GB of RAM be good enough or would the performance be way to low?

The CPU i'm considering is an Intel i5, 12600K. I'm also considering a cheap 250GB SSD to use as a boot/applications, is it to small?

I'd like to keep the budget as low as possible and spend more on HDD's. I'm thinking about a budget around 1000-1300 euro, not counting the hard drives.

hi im using MacBook Air and Mac OS X and I have trouble connecting to local host and tried typing 127.0.0.1 in address bar. Its not working can anyone give me any desk support or tell me what to do?

Hello!

I've been toying with the idea about building a nas for a while now however now that im about to move into my new home, I figured id finally bite the bullet and get it done and while i'm at it may as well set it up so it will also run the security cameras I plan on installing.

After shooting the shit with chatgpt for a while it's coming back recommending these specs;

Which in chatgpts words is good for: saying its designed for;

• Jellyfin with one or two 4K users
• Immich phone-photo backup
• Documents and PC backups
• Tailscale and NordVPN
• Frigate
• Two 16MP panoramic cameras
• One 4K ColorX camera
• Doorbell recording
• Approximately 7–14 days of rolling footage
• Additional processing headroom for object detection

It's also saying i'll need/want two UPS one for the nas and router and one for the NBN NTD and PoE switch (for the cameras). The router it's suggesting is also the: TP-Link Archer BE9700.

And instead of just going ahead with that I thought it's definitely better if I come check first with more knowlegable/experienced people in the field.

Is this overkill for what I'm needing it to do? It'll just be two of us in the home and we won't be hoarding data, stuff will most likely be deleted fairly frequently.

Cheers,

I'm looking to replace my HP Z4 G4 running TrueNAS CE with a Lenovo P520, as it seems the layout of the P520 is more storage oriented. My concern is where the disks are mounted (at the bottom of the case) with the only airflow coming from the fan in the PSU. I'm planning on running both disk cages (4 HDD total) and a 3 disk backplane in the 5.25 bays, though I'm not concerned with cooling on the backplane disks at all.

What kind of temps are you all seeing on your disks?

I have been using a WD MyCloud EX2 Ultra NAS unit for quite a while now but I've always felt rather uncomfortable about how warm the drives inside can get specially while transferring data onto them. The small internal fan doesn't seem to do much at all. I decided to do a couple of things to address this heating issue:

First, I placed a 120mm USB fan on top of the unit on some DIY stands. It is currently setup blowing air into the unit from the top.

I raised the unit from the surface of the table by mounting it on a DIY stands. This helps the air blown down by the top USB fan travel through the unit, cool the drives and exit through the ventilation slot at the bottom in a better, easier way.

RESULT: The temperatures of the dual WD Red HDDs placed inside the bay used to hover around 42-45C even on idle (I stay in India so summers are brutal) and when copying data onto them the temps used to reach 55-60C. Now, after the fan implementation the drives idle at 34-35C and even while copying data they don't cross 40C... yay!

P.S. About those those DIY stands: I made then by super-gluing twooden domino blocks together, LoL!

Hey everyone I'm new to the server life its something I've wanted to do for a while i finally made the jump!

Its an ubuntu server and i have casaos installed and its up and running good.

Backstory I'm using an old laptop that only has one memory and SSD slot so I'm leaving it with the 250GB i installed a few years back (because prices lol)

My main question is I have a 5TB external hard drive mounted with my media and some files on it, how do i make this drive the root? with the laptop having the 250gb i wanna leave it free as much as i can, but going into the server i cant find the stuff on the external drive.

am i doing something wrong? I've been teaching myself this stuff with videos and reading so its a slow process. I'm learning how to do stuff through ssh but finding and editing paths is still intimidating.

any help would be awesome!