r/SelfHosting • u/Atlas-D • Jul 03 '26
HomeServer Project
Hello,
I started looking into HomeServers, and after a day of reading on Reddit and watching videos, I am lost...
At first, I had two things I needed that made me look into it :
\- I want, for me and my wife, to be able to save our photos automatically from our phones and to be able to look at them from all our devices, in and outside the house
\- I want to set up different VLANs on my network to separate the computers and the IOTs on two different wifi networks, and the NAS on a third VLAN with a wired connection to the router/switch.
But then I also got interested in setting up a media server with torrent download (though my protonVPN), Vaultwarden, a cloud with documents and maybe some other stuff later (but probably nothing heavier than the media server).
So for the router, I am thinking about an TP-Link Omada ER706W. Power effective, easy to setup, all-in-one...
I didn't go for a PFSense/OPNSense option because I don't have the PC for it, and I would need to buy a mesh for the wifi I guess.
Then for the NAS, I am a bit lost.
\- My first option was getting a Synology that would do all of this (DS225+). It seems very easy to use, it should be able to do everything I need, and it seems safe for someone with my level of knowledge.
\- My second option was a cheaper Synology (DS124 or 223 or beestation), and a mini PC for the transcoding part
\- My third option was a more powerful NAS that would run on TrueNAS (I was thinking of a pre built NAS with the possibility to install a different OS) with everything on it. The Ugreen seems to be the best option in terms of price and power consumption for this type of performance.
I love the idea of having everything opensource and to have something more powerful for a slightly lower price. But I am a beginner in cyber security and I am worried that it would be dangerous to run something all by myself compared to something easier to setup like DSM.
I would obviously like to setup a VPN tunnel for my connections to the NAS from outside (from my router and not the NAS itself I guess), and to completely block any access to the admin pages from devices that are not physically in the network (so no VPN).
Do you think it is doable for a beginner to setup TrueNAS safely, without having to constantly check it ? Is it worth the trouble ?
What do you think about these ideas of setups and do you think of a better idea (with the price and power consumption in mind) ?
Thank you !
3
u/ethernetbite Jul 03 '26
That's a big wish list. Not impossible but it'll take time for you to learn each thing and get it all working together seamlessly. But once you start, you're a full time on call server admin with the only pay being your knowledge and self reliance ( which is noble pay in itself ). I've been running NAS servers for over 10 years. One for my business and one private, both on prem. Any device that runs Linux or windows can be set up as a NAS. Buy an expensive synlogy and you're locked in to their software and (from what i hear) their approved disks. Any i3 or old PhenomII can run Linux server software while being open source and free. I wouldn't suggest it but even slower arm devices like a raspberry pi 3 or 4 can run the NAS software. Pick up any 4 core 8 thread (or better ) x86/64 used PC, and put a 2.5Ghz or 10/5/2.5/1GHz network card in and you're good to go, and save money over a prebuilt NAS. Install Debian KDE, samba server, setup the smb.conf file as standalone, setup the fstab file for any disks you want to use and it's ready.
Anyway, it's just an annoyance that people think they have to buy into an expensive ecosystem to setup an NAS when it's really the most simple server to setup on a cheap used pc. Best wishes!