this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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Selfhosted

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noob questions seeking non-noob answers (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by FEIN@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I've been interested in self hosting a small variety of services yet I'm so confused on where to start. What would you guys recommend for a server machine?

My main uses (and some of the services I think are appropriate for the use case) are:

  • 1tb photo, video storage, push/pull (immich)
  • 512gb total shared between downloaded music storage (navidrome) and pdf/ebook storage (calibre)—all pull only
  • 1tb movies/tv storage on a media server (jellyfin)
  • 512gb storage for random junk or whatever, plus a file transfer push/pull (syncthing..? or nextcloud?)
  • potential basic bio website hosting (near future)
  • potential email hosting (distant future)

anyways with that all said i have a few questions:

  • what server should i buy if i want to expand storage in the future? should i just build a pc with like 3x1tb storage, or 6x1tb storage w/ redundancy? totally confused about the concept of redundancy lol
  • any thoughts on the services im suggesting? especially for file transfer

edit: im willing to learn anything cli-related, i already daily drive linux on my laptop and code in nvim if that provides any sort of reassurance lol

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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

What would you guys recommend for a server machine?

I would recommend buying fairly modern equipment, say within the past 5 years or so. Desktops, workstations, with a few additions/adjustments, can make excellent, energy efficient servers. As far as RAM, if your equipment takes DDR3, you will escape the ridiculous current price gouging. For RAM, I shop at MemoryStock. HDD drives still make good storage units, tho I go with SSD for the OS, and HDD for everything else. I would stay far away from enterprise type equipment, even though the prices may be tempting. The money you may save buying cheap, enterprise equipment will be spent on your power bill.

Redundancy covers a lot of ground. You can have a redundant server to fall back to should the wheels fall off of the main server. In the case of say a NAS, RAID gives you redundancy where if one drive fails, you can hot swap it for a fresh one and keep on rocking....pretty much. Redundancy can also apply to backups. I have a main, daily backup, and the same backed up to two different locations.

In addition to equipment selection, you will need to do some reading up on securely setting up a server, if you've never done so. Also start thinking about firewalls, WAFs, etc. I would recommend going through the Linux Upskill Challenge. Get your server set up and secured. Familiarize yourself with your server. Add a single service, and play around with that until things start to gel. Then you can think about slowly adding additional services.