First of all, you will never achieve usb3 full theoretical speed. Its just not going to happen. Even if you could though you wouldn’t be able to get full speeds because your bandwidth is split between devices. You will be sharing the bus between plugged in devices along with on board hardware devices.
A USB 3.2 gen 1 connection (5 Gb/s) is still plenty for multiple HDDs AND when you have no need for compute on the NAS the network Link is the relevant bottleneck which is half of the USB connection.
Then USB 3.2 gen 2 (10 Gb/s) interfaces on HDD enclosures get more common every day which gives even more headroom with little more expenses.
As a general rule: One system, one service. That system can be metal, vm, or container. Keeping things isolated makes maintenance much easier. Though sometimes it makes sense to break the rules. Just do so for the right reasons and not out of laziness.
Your file server should be it’s own hardware. Don’t make that system do anything else. Keeping it simple means it will be reliable.
Proxmox is great for managing VMs. Your could start with one server, and add more as needed to a cluster.
It’s easy enough to setup wireguard for roaming systems that you should. Make a VM for your VPN endpoint and off you go.
I’m a big fan of automation. Look into ansible and terraform. At least consider ansible for updating all your systems easily - that way you’re more likely to do it often.
One rule one system is very bad practice. You should run a bunch of services with docker compose. If you have enough resources to warrant 3 VMs you could setup a swarm.
The problem about the “automatically adjust resolution and bitrate” can be done in two ways:
Using a GPU to transcode the 4k video in real time (generally unavailable on VPS)
Encoding the video in multiple resolutions and bitrates, using much more disk space
Both solutions are expensive on a VPS.
In this case when I need to share stuff in 4k 60 (basically never) I just host on YouTube unlisted and having Google foot the bill. Maybe think like this: the content really deserves to be 4k 60 fps? Home videos that I share with my family are downgraded to 720p as anyway they will watch it horizontal on a vertical screen
I honestly didn’t know that Youtube “unlisted” was even a thing; I’ve never posted a video to Youtube before, but this might be a promising idea. I’m assuming they still inject ads into unlisted videos, which is a major barrier for me… I hate ads.
I’ll admit that I’m a snob when it comes to video and audio quality; 4k/60 might be overkill, but I think at least 4k/30 has some merit in this case. Most modern phones and tablets (and TVs) are at least greater than 1080p, so assuming they’re watching the video horizontally, 1080p video would still result in a loss of quality. Would they care? Almost certainly not, but the idea of watching a UHD video source in a lower resolution bothers me far more than it should.
It definitely seems like VPS hosting is out of my budget. I think that hosting multiple version of the same video (and paying for more HDD space) would probably be cheaper than a VPS with a GPU resources, but the recurring fees are probably more than I’m willing to spend.
I’ve been using AWS R53 for this for ages and it works well. Not specifically recommending AWS but using dynamic updates rather than a DDNS service (or running your own name server which I’ve also done).
Space isn’t really an issue for me and I already have converted versions of these movies. For a select few all time favorites and discs where the full experience is part of the package (like the Criterion) I want to maintain the full bluray experience with all the special features and menus.
I like full menus and unaltered files without layering in additional compression. Also enjoy the extras which is why I get the BDs. Space is cheap in this day so I don’t care if it takes up more space. Quality and features to me matter more.
Plex supports extras just rip them to separate files. It’s true you lose the menu though.
It’s just that the compression on the disks is not very good and you can easily compress them a lot more without really any noticeable loss of quality.
I’ve been extremely fond of “Our Groceries” for many years. It strikes a sweet spot between features and simplicity of use, and the devs are very responsive and have added several features after my suggestions. Really the only downside right now is that it can’t use the front facing camera on my wall mounted android tablet for scanning barcodes.
This! Im planning on getting this set up on a spare pi one of these days™. You get a free premium acc on the tracking sites, so you can track where tf all those planes and helicopters above your house are going
I did this for a hot second (already have RTL-SDR set here) but the current location of the RPi is just bad for reception and moving it closer to some window would mean connecting through wifi (can’t lay ethernet cables, renting) and that’s bad for other services where low response times are preffered/needed (pihole) :(
Instead of connecting it to WiFi, have a look into power line adapters. They route your internet through the copper wiring in your house.
I have a router in my subterranean ground floor linked to a power line adapter, a wired router in my front room a floor up so my PC, TV, Playstation, etc are connected via LAN, and another power line 2 floors above that plugged into another WiFi router running in bridge mode, which supplies WiFi to the top two floors, and another playstation wired in to that router
Basically it means that my ground floor router is hooked to the internet and everything else in the house that needs wiring in is wired in because of the power line, and the WiFi is coming from 2 routers, one on the top floor and one on the ground.
My ISP thought a WiFi router on the ground floor of a 4 storey house was a great idea, but they’re stupid. WiFi should be in the highest point of your house.
With a few Power line adapters you can sort your internet out for £25
@AverageGoob I have this issue with one of my hosts as well. It appears to be a problem with the micro SD card. Same card, different pi = same problem. I'm currently working around it with a watchdog but will need to replace the card soon.
Are you running your OS from USB or from a micro SD card?
I upgraded to the Pi4 but I use this case. It has a daughter board that lets me use an m.2 SATA SSD over USB. But any USB to SATA adapter should work fine
@a_fancy_kiwi I agree, same here. This is the last pi that's running off an SD card with services that do "significant" disk I/O. I have a few zeros that only really write to the card for OS updates. Their job is to collect data and send it via the network. I haven't had issues with that kind of workload using micro SD cards.
Edit: For Pis with write workloads I'm using basic USB3 SSDs. Didn't have good results with USB sticks though.
@AverageGoob The watchdog saves me from rebooting the host manually, but at the risk of data loss (though not more than a locked up SD card). I configured a custom script that writes to a file, when the card has problems, the watchdog kicks in. To keep the script from stressing the card even more, the script only writes to the file every few minutes.
As you said it's only a workaround. I'll move the stuff on the problematic host to a VM with SSD shortly.
PiVPN is elegant. Easy install, and I am impressed with the ascii QR code it generates.
But I could not make it work. I am guessing that my Android setup is faulty, orrrr maybe something with the Pi? This is incredibly difficult to troubleshoot.
I use both. Pi-hole running in a docker container on one of my home servers which my gateway is configured to assign as the default DNS for all clients, and uBlock Origin on all my browsers to catch everything else.
Pihole is pretty good at catching ads on platforms that are not suited to browser based blockers (IoT devices, streaming boxes etc) but it isn’t perfect and is best used in conjunction with another solution.
It says 2tb limit for SSDs which is odd? Maybe I am misunderstanding that.
I’m interested in hearing what folks who are interested had planned for this. It seems like it would be an overkill pfsense box. Could be a proxmox host for high IO vms but at rh same time kinda limited in terms of storage.
That is strange that they would have size limit for the SSD. Maybe it only supports single sided M.2 drives, but if that’s the case, they should have just said it.
the pci slot would be able to be used for external storage, like connecting to a nas or das. serve the home found you can add one of these though I don’t think they tested that it can hit the max theoretical throughput of 96gbps.
I would guess that’s not a hard limit. Maybe they decided to undersell it because many 4TB+ nvme drives are physically larger and/or require heat sinks, so they might not fit. I don’t see any details on their web site though.
Given two drives with the same size, same heat output, and same interface, it shouldn’t make a difference.
It’s pretty common to see fake limits like that on spec sheets. I can definitely put more RAM in my motherboard than is officially supported since higher-capacity DIMMs are out in the same form factor now compared to when the mobo was released.
selfhosted
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.