First, a hardware question. I’m looking for a computer to use as a… router? Louis calls it a router but it’s a computer that is upstream of my whole network and has two ethernet ports. And suggestions on this? Ideal amount or RAM? Ideal processor/speed? I have fiber internet, 10 gbps up and 10 gbps down, so I’m willing to spend a little more on higher bandwidth components. I’m assuming I won’t need a GPU.
Anyways, has anyone had a chance to look at his guide? It’s accompanied by two youtube videos that are about 7 hours each.
I don’t expect to do everything in his guide. I’d like to be able to VPN into my home network and SSH into some of my projects, use Immich, check out Plex or similar, and set up a NAS. Maybe other stuff after that but those are my main interests.
Any advice/links for a beginner are more than welcome.
Edit: thanks for all the info, lots of good stuff here. OpenWRT seems to be the most frequently recommended thing here so I’m looking into that now. Unfortunately my current router/AP (Asus AX6600) is not supported. I was hoping to not have to replace it, it was kinda pricey, I got it when I upgraded to fiber since it can do 6.6gbps. I’m currently looking into devices I can put upstream of my current hardware but I might have to bite the bullet and replace it.
Edit 2: This is looking pretty good right now.
I would probably suggest just getting a Synology NAS or similar because it’s plug and play.
The whole idea of self-hosted is to build something yourself and learn your way around some new technology or software. Plus building something yourself allows you to change and upgrade it down the path, while Synology doesn’t provide any of the sort.
To me, that’s the purpose of a “homelab” not the purpose of self hosting. There’s a lot of overlap, but they’re not quite the same. Homelab has a goal of learning, but just self hosting doesn’t need to.
I don’t disagree but not everyone is studying for their CCNA.
A pre-built NAS is easy to set up and just works. and if it has docker support it can be just as hands on as building from the ground up.
They’re definitely on my radar whenever I get around to setting up a NAS
I don’t recommend it unless you just want it for storage or whatever else it does out of the box. It’s basically impossible to tinker with it because it has so many layers of abstraction. At least that was my impression when I tried to edit their nginx config. It had like 2000 lines so I just gave up.
If you want a server that runs services that you download from the internet, don’t buy it. Look at it as a box that does the thing that it promises to do, not as a computer. If you want it to do a different thing, buy a different box that does that. Kinda like a TV. It’s technically a computer that runs some kind of linux but to the user it’s a monitor that also shows videos from the internet.
Also it’s perfectly fine to buy a “NAS black box” but maybe not something I’d buy if I wanted to get into selfhosting. I’d buy it if I wanted to have a NAS running at home with the least amount of “self” in “selfhosting” that’s feasable.