this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2025
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How to start off small with the intent to expand (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by President@sh.itjust.works to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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A couple of weeks ago I spat the dummy with windows and shifted to Linux. I think I am now ready to drink the coolaid.

What I have available currently is an ISP router and a decade-old gaming PC with a failing hdd that used to host games. I also have some budget to spare so that I can set things up nicely or in a way that I can add on it in the future.

Here are my goals are in order:

  1. Proper onsite and maybe offsite backups - my migration to Linux illustrated gaps and I expect in the future I will run VMs that should be backed up
  2. Home security cameras (Which I don't own yet)
  3. Replacing something like onedrive. I expect this will be NextCloud
  4. Yarr. Sonarr/radarr/jellyfin
  5. Hosting game servers
  6. Block adverts and maintaining privacy
  7. Improve the latency of my steam link to my TV via chromecast
  8. Hosting webscraping and analysis of data off some local websites
  9. Maybe set up some some smart home automation things
  10. I'd like to get solar power and monitor how the whole setup is doing.
  11. Self host my bit warden
  12. I dunno, backup Wikipedia or something. Give me ideas

So where would you recommend I start off with hardware? Simply replace the old pc hdd or look to having a NAS? A better router to handle VLAN? Go all in with Ubiquiti products which I have heard mixed things about? About the only thing I know is that a UPS would be a waste for an aspiring enthusiast like myself.

Any advice or pointing me at wikis or other resources would be greatly appreciated.

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[–] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

I think my suggestion would be to use the PC as a dedicated firewall, but you will need at least two ethernet ports for that (one to connect to the ISP router, and the second for internal network). This lets you learn network security and control the traffic that can actually get to your other computers. You could also set up KVM to start running virtual machines here. The idea with a VM is to keep services separate and isolated, so like one VM to manage security cameras, another VM to host a game server, another one to host sonarr/radarr/jellyfin... etc.

When you are able to expand, your second physical machine should be your NAS. Get your storage space started, share it over NFS or samba, and move your backup/security camera/sonarr VMs over to this machine for direct access to the larger storage space. Pay attention to system usage and move your VMs to balance the cpu/memory resources. Eventually you may want to get a third machine dedicated more for hosting the game servers, maybe a web server to view the security camera feeds, or whatever.

You mentioned backing up Wikipedia... Have a look at the Kiwix project, you can already get access to regular backups for a lot of information sites.