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?

  • hamsda@feddit.orgEnglish
    9·
    3 hours ago

    To me it seems like:

    • you want to do a lot of stuff yourself on arch
    • but there’s quite some complicated stuff to learn and try

    I’d try Proxmox VE and, if you’re also searching for a Backup Server, Proxmox Backup Server.

    I recommend these because:

    • Proxmox VE is a Hypervisor, you can just spin up Arch Linux VMs for every task you need
    • Proxmox VE, as well as Proxmox BS are open source
    • you can buy a license for “stable updates” (you get the same updates, but delayed, to fix problems before they get to you)
    • includes snapshots, re-rolls, full-backups, a firewall (which you can turn on or off for every VM), …

    I personally run a Proxmox VE + Proxmox BS setup in 3 companies + my own homelab.

    It’s not magic, Proxmox VE is literally Debian 13 + qemu + kvm with a nice webui. So you know the tech is proven, it’s just now you also get an easy to use interface instead of virsh console commands or virt-manager.

    I personally like a stable infrastructure to test and run my important and experimental tuff upon. That’s why I’m going with this instead of managing even the hypervisor myself with Arch.