I’ve been running a Plex server for music off my gaming laptop for a few months and (I think) I’m ready to take it further - that is, I’d like to have the server running on its own hardware.

At this point, I’d just be running a music server, but I know I’ll want to add more services.

The first would be something like Google Drive - I’m working with a couple of other people on business plans and I’d love to self-host our files and the software (like LibreOffice) to edit them.

I’m comfortable with the software side and I’m finding lots of options, especially in this community.

The hardware side… I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by all the options and I don’t know enough to judge the search results.

Any recommendations for hardware or links to guides would be appreciated.

  • AtemuEnglish
    1·
    5 hours ago

    Personally I went with an ITX build where I run everything in a Debian KVM/qemu host, including my fedora workstation as a vm with vfio passthrough of a usb controller and the dgpu. It was a lot of fun setting it up, but nothing I’d recommend for someone needing advice for their first homelab.

    I feel like that has more to do with the complexity of solving your use-case in software rather than anything to do with the hardware. It’d be just as hard on a pre-built NAS as on a DIY build; though perhaps even worse on the pre-built due to shitty OS software.