Currently working on an Arch server for my self hosting needs. I love arch, in my eyes its the perfect platform for self hosting. There is no bloat, making it lightweight and resource efficient. Its also very stable if you go down the lts route and have the time and skills to head off problems before they become catastrophic.

The downsides. For someone who is a semi-noob there is a very steep learning curve. Arch is very well documented but when you hit a problem or a brick wall its very frustrating. My low tolerence for bullshit means I take hours/days long breaks from it. There’s also time demands in the real world so needless to say I’ve been going at it for a few weeks now.

Unraid is very appealing - nice clean interface, out-of-the-box solutions for whatever you want to do, easy NAS management… What’s not to like? If it was fully open-source I would’ve bought into it from the start. At least once a day I think “I’m done. Sign me up unraid”. Its taking an age to set up the Arch server. If I went for unraid I could be self hosting in a matter of hours. Unraid is the antitheses of Arch. Arch is for masochists.

Do you ever look at products like unraid and think “fuck this shit, gimme some of that”? What is your version of this? Have you ever actually done it and regretted it/lived happily ever after?

  • chaotic_disorganizer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    32·
    11 hours ago

    Weeeell, since they switched to a semi-subscription model, I’d recommend looking into TrueNAS (inb4 they start locking down their stuff)

    • jobbies@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
      61·
      11 hours ago

      TrueNAS was actually the first thing I tried. The NAS side of it is great but my need to tinker and get my hands dirty got the better of me. And I don’t actually mind paying for good software, its the fact that so much of unraid is closed-source puts me off.

      • nagaram@startrek.websiteEnglish
        10·
        10 hours ago

        Are you using truenas as the entire homelab?

        I also love messing with stuff until it breaks and I learn something, but I’ve decided I just want my files to be accessible.

        So I actually have truenas virtualized with a passed through HBA so I can run proxmox to host all my breakable VMs while leaving truenas alone.

        • jobbies@lemmy.zipOPEnglish
          2·
          7 hours ago

          So I actually have truenas virtualized with a passed through HBA so I can run proxmox to host all my breakable VMs while leaving truenas alone.

          I want to try this eventually. Never used HBAs before. Is it hard to set up? Reliable once its up and running?

          • nagaram@startrek.websiteEnglish
            6·
            6 hours ago

            It was really simple to do in Proxmox.

            You will find no name brand HBAs in IT mode on eBay for half the price of Intel, Supermicro, Dell, Etc branded ones. Do not buy the no names. I spent a week flashing and reflashing some cheap one, cycling through cables, etc. Nothing.

            My supermicro branded one worked absolutely no issue. And I think it was like $40

            It probably took a total of 30 minutes to pass it through and build the VM and everything. It took a couple days to rebuild my data from my previous truenas server but I had 10 TB of data on 4 drives.

            The only issues I’ve had have been my own reading comprehension in setting up truenas accounts.