I haven’t. They only provide docker deployment which I’m not fond of. If they would offer an alternative installation method I may would. Heard a lot of good things about it.
At present I use Nextcloud client on my phone to backup photos and the Memories app to nicely browse them.
I don’t know exactly what you want host but I have an old Fujitsu Q920 i5 with 16 GB of RAM and a 2 TB SSD drive which cost me around 200 Euro.
I’m serving around 20 services on it including Nextcloud, Navidrome, Paperless NG, Emby, Matrix, Friendica, Wireguard, Zabbix, DNS blocker and a few VMs. Processor utilization is around 5% most of the time and it uses about 8 GB of RAM.
I admit that Nextcloud could be more responsive and faster but for the family it is enough.
I haven’t exactly checked how much electricity I’m using but I would have noticed a bigger change on my bill.
For backups I have a remote node at another location that retrieves ZFS snapshots periodically.
Anyway. I have this setup for 2 years now and I’m happy. It does what I expect it to do.
As a side note. i use FreeBSD with jails and bhyve for this. A Proxmox running VMs with nested Docker apps may need something more performant so be aware.
Second that. I don’t have another node that I can use for WoL at my backup location so I opted for the node to turn on every morning, run the backup and turn off using cron at a given time. Works perfectly!
My feeling is that there is. I think it all started with the speed I can login over ssh. Debian always seems to have a short delay but FreeBSD feels instant. When it comes to rating FreeBSD as a better OS for servers I may be biased as Debian has served me so well over the years. I was never a Docker fan but instantly liked Jails for isolating services. Then we have native ZFS support which simplifies my backup needs. A simple zfs send | zfs receive and you have an exact copy of your service instance on a remote node. Everything feels integrated and not stacked. Again, just a personal opinion.
Yes yes yes. It’s great to see other FreeBSD fans here with the same opinion.
I was using Debian as a server OS for more than twenty years with short escapades to other distros but then I discovered FreeBSD and there was no way back. ;)
I’m a long time user of Debian myself too. No cutting edge fuzz, just a working, stable OS all of the time. What else do you need for a server? It always did the job.
But then I stumbled on FreeBSD, and man, that’s a server OS. Simple design and blazing fast. No Docker but I never liked it anyway. My Docker is called Jails and in my opinion is they’re superior. Service isolation on the next level.
On my laptop? Debian due to hardware and software support. And I’ll stick to that for now. I feel home on that distro.
I can’t say anything about OpenBSD as I never tried it but it sure is a perfect fit for a server as well depending on your needs and preferences. BSD just rocks!
Second that. Been with them for a year now. Good price and performance.
I was debating between getting myself a NAS or some PC to setup my homelab. I decided for a PC as it gives me more freedom to install and personalize it the way I want.
At the moment I’m running FreeBSD with jails on a Q920 with an i5 processor, 16 GB of RAM, one internal SSD with 512 GB and 2 external USB SDDs with each 1 TB which costed me around 300 Euros.
Seems more than enough for the services I want to provide to myself which are the following.
Navidrome > serves all my music locally and remotely.
Zabbix > to monitor my servers
DNSMasq > ad blocking and local dns
gitea > repo for code and other docs
Transmission > torrenting
Radicale > webcal and webdav
Photoprism > local photo gallery
Vaultwarden > Password manager
SearXNG > search
HAproxy > to serve my public content easily to the web
Mastodon
Emby > local media server
And I run a Linux VM on bhyve to serve 2 tools that I was not able to make work easily on FreeBSD.
Besides that, the node replicates some data from my VPS as a backup solution.
And I can’t complain at all. That PC is doing its job just fine. No need for any rack that uses huge amount of electricity.
True. Getting a TB of storage is not affordable nowadays. And we know why. F*©k AI.
But here in Poland you can still find some used Q920 with the same specifications.
If you are located in Europe they would most likely send it even to your country.
This one would be like the one I have.
https://allegro.pl/oferta/solidny-i-kompaktowy-komputer-micro-fujitsu-q920-i5-16gb-2000-ssd-w11-praca-17993236542