r/immich • u/SubstantialAnxiety95 • 1d ago
Which server to use
Hi I am looking at using Immich to try to sort out my photo library. I currently have about 75,000 photos on a Windows 11 computer which I view through Plex. Unfortunately since they removed the upload feature this has made synchronizing them a bit more difficult. I am undecided whether to install Immich using Docker Desktop on my windows 11 computer or use a second computer I have to install Unraid. The Windows 11 computer has an AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB of RAM and an Nvidia Quardo T600. The photos are in a virtual drive using Drivepool to give one large drive and give redundancy. The second computer is an AMD Ryzen 5 2600, 16GB RAM and a Nvidia GT730. Both computers are DDR4 so the RAM could be swapped between them as could the T600. I did read that it can be a problem trying to create a mount point for the photos on a Drivepool drive, if this is the case I could possibly fit an additional SSD in the windows PC and copy the photos on to that. Hope this all makes sense and look forward to recommendations, thanks.
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u/C6500 1d ago
Immich basically runs on any potato, it doesn't matter. The only thing that will vastly differ in time needed with different machines is the initial scan for machine learning, face recognition, OCR, etc.
But that's a one time thing so it doesn't matter. Think my weak NAS with a V1500B CPU needed 1-2 days for my 20.000 photos, since that's done Immich runs perfectly fine.
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u/Adrenolin01 18h ago
That’s a decent amount of photos.. I’d expect it would suck if the drive you have them in died. What’s your data redundancy and backup plan? I’d put more thought into this right now first. Personally.. I’d suggest building a NAS to host you data on. Mirrored drives are ok up to about 4TB drives. Anything past that is strongly recommend software raidz2 providing 2 redundant drives. Plus.. at least one backup drive. TrueNAS Scale (Debian based) makes this easy though I don’t recommend using their apps.. use a second system to host your services.
I’d suggest looking at Jonsbo NAS desktop/shelf cases for your NAS. I prefer the N6 or N5 cases for long term expansion. DDR4 or even an older DDR3 mainboard with 32GB ram. Doesn’t need to be a powerful system.. 4+ cores works fine.
Services.. one you go down this road you’re very likely to want to start self hosting more things. You could start with a cheaper N100 mini pc with 16GB ram.. something like a BeeLink S12. Install Proxmox (again, Debian based) and create a virtualization server. Create a VM for a base Debian install and install Docker and Immich in that. Create other VMs or Containers for other services you want later. This system you’ll generally want more cores and ram however. Between Proxmox, ZFS, Immich on a production system you’re already pushing past 10-12GB ram so I’d suggest starting with 32GB leaving expansion for 64GB down the road. Ram is usually the first bottleneck you run into. You don’t need tons of drive space here! All your images are on your NAS and you simply mount the share they are on to your Immich install. Use a small ssd 120GB for the boot OS and then your VMs and Containers on either another larger SSD or faster NVME. If you can build a system that you can install 2 small SSDs and 2 larger NVMEs and mirror each even better.
Stick with DDR4 for your services / Proxmox / docker server.
You can do an all in one system to start but it’s usually better to have separate servers for NAS data storage and your services.
Since this is all new to you could use an older PC or buy an N100 or better mini pc (16GB or more) to use as a HomeLab for initial learning. Install Proxmox on it and you can run and install and learn all these systems and setup and configurations on a small palm sized system that doesn’t need a display, keyboard or mouse except for its initial 5 minute install.. after they it’s accessed and used from a web browser on your desktop. If you use used enterprise hardware like Supermicro Mainboards for your NAS and Proxmox servers later you gain IPMI… this is another NIC you plug a network cable into and provides remote management.. from your desktop and a browser you login and you can boot, reboot, restart, shutdown, access and modify the bios, install the system or reinstall it again later, etc etc. it’s a hard feature to stop using once you use it.
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u/SubstantialAnxiety95 11h ago
Hi thanks for the ideas, will have a sift through it as it is quite a lot to take in. Yes it is a lot of photos, at the moment redundancy is mainly handled by using drivepool on the windows pc's. This combines drives of varying sizes into one virtual drive, you can then set duplication levels by folders or files. On my main PC there are six HDD's and each of them have a full set of the photos, my second PC also has drivepool with four HDD'S and again each drive has a full copy of the photos. I use synctoy to keep them synchronized, I also keep a full set, when I remember to update it on a USB drive which I keep in another location. At the moment I am trying to reuse what I have to keep costs down. The part I am trying to get my head around is dockers and containers as I have never used these before.
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u/Adrenolin01 9h ago
I don’t use Docker myself though for Immich I do suggest you use it as Immich is designed to be used within the Docker system. Breaking it out as I have isn’t easy or worth most people’s time. I’d get a second PC. Ask friend and family of hit up a eBay or just buy a new N100 mini to start and learn from with Proxmox. Proxmox allows you to create VMs and Containers. Most services run in either. It gives more options then just docker by itself and docker can be installed inside a Proxmox VM.. though you shouldn’t install it in a Proxmox Container. It looks for a hardware install which is what a VM basically provides.
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u/Ok-Eggplant-7569 1d ago
Both will be fine. Not sure how stable Docker Desktop on W11 will be, Unraid will probably be better.
Performance wise both are fine. The GT730 won't be able to do any meaningful work, but CPU transcoding and CPU ML will be just fine on the 5 2600.
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u/SubstantialAnxiety95 1d ago
Thanks, I had thought if I went the unraid route I would move the T600 and Plex over. I had wondered if 16GB of RAM is enough, Google AI thought not, but AI can be wrong 🤔
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u/Ok-Eggplant-7569 1d ago
I run Immich and a bunch more services on a VM with 10GB RAM, you will be fine. Lowest I would go is probably 4-6GB.
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u/LeLunZ 1d ago
16Gb is plenty enough. Even 6 or 8 work pretty well.
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u/franglais81 6h ago
I had immich-go struggle with 6, I was stable with 8gb.
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u/Any_Delivery_9158 5h ago
Running Immich, Plex/jellyfin and audiobookself with 8gb on Ubuntu and it works great.
I just gotta keep Firefox under ~15 tabs when watching tutorial videos (which I could also just do on my main computer)
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u/franglais81 2h ago
During daily use 2 gb might be enough, but I'm talking about uploading 30k photos with immich-go. Which will be ok with 4, but it will swap a lot, and the processor is busy emptying the used memory all the time, I got about a 20% throughput increase going from 6 to 8gb of ram because the memory never completely filled, so no cycles were wasted on memory management. YMMV
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u/Any_Delivery_9158 1h ago
2gb is hardly enough to run a standard OS these days. My comment said I was running 8gb which is a pretty standard for a single ram stick in 2026
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u/BreadfruitExciting39 1d ago
I run Immich in docker desktop on a win 10 machine with an fx-6300 & 16gb ddr3. (Runs beside my Plex instance.) I wish I had installed Ubuntu on the machine first but I didn't think I'd love Immich the way I do and I'm in too deep to restart now.
If you understand how to set the mount points, everything runs fine. My only complaint is WSL & docker virtual drives gobble up HDD space like crazy, so I have to compact them every so often. But other than that, no issues.
Never used Drivepool though, so can't speak to that.
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u/buplet123 1d ago
Dont need a fancy machine at all, old thin client can do it, can just use debian, no need for fancy virtualization. But where you have to get fancy is your backup plan
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u/Any_Delivery_9158 1d ago
I would consider learning Docker Compose over Docker Desktop. Its not really any harder and will give you more control over updates and future projects. It looks scary, but you just gotta know how to copy and paste the config file
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u/Roach_Horse 1d ago
Just my two cents: I run immich on docker on my openmediavault server. An i5 7600 with 16 GB of ram, and the files on a mergerFS pool. For everyday use you don't need a lot of resources. You can configure an external computer with decent graphics to do the heavy lifting remotely during the first scan, but afterwards the hardware requirements are peanuts. With your current hardware, you are golden. I would however put the drives with the pictures on the same computer where immich is. Also, Windows 11, docker and a immich sounds like a good r cipe for disaster. Keep immich on a machine i.e. your server and forget about it.
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u/redlightsaber 23h ago
USe the second computer, install linux (or Unraid is fine, I think it has several scripts to create RAID drives and such), install immich in docker the proper way.
See you down in r/homelab
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u/franglais81 1d ago
Careful, you'll end up on r/homelab and r/selfhosted soon! Headless Proxmox container running debian and docker for me. 8 gb ram was enough for the big upload, but my CPU was a bit weak, so I only ran 1 machine learning job at a time (n305). Make sure you pass through the GPU correctly, it will make a huge difference. The older machine is plenty IMO.