this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2025
13 points (84.2% liked)

Selfhosted

52938 readers
646 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hi, I wanted to start selfhosting and I'd like to have your opinion on something that I'm struggling to decide.

I don't plan to tinker too much with my system, I've been a Linux tinkerer myself some time ago but now I'd like to setup something that's really bulletproof and then leave it running (ofc I know I'll have to do a bit of bugfixing now and then), not replacing hardware ideally for >= 10 years.

This is why I'm planning to use TrueNAS, and that's why I'm planning to buy a UGREEN DXP2800: has two 3,5" HDD bays (4TB should be enough for me for the next 8-10 years, so I'll have two 4TB disks in RAID1 or mirror or whatever is recommended). Only problem I have with this machine is that it only has 1 RAM slot, and I guess 8 GB isn't enough if I use zfs. So I'll have to upgrade to either 16 or 32 GB. Now I did my research and from my understanding 16GB seems to be enough, but it would be such a waste having to replace the whole RAM if it turns out it isn't enough.

For reference, I don't plan on having more than 7-8 services running: Immich, Nextcloud+office, firefly, audiobookshelf, paperless and a maybe few more if they're useful. I value responsiveness but it's ok if some things take longer to process (thinking immich ML, or stuff like transcoding)

I'm very interested to know your opinion:

  • is the dxp2800 a good choice?
  • should I go with 16 or 32 GB RAM?

And a little extra

  • how much ssd space do you recommend for high speed data? is 500gb enough?

Thank you so much!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] calamityjanitor@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

I think it would be fine. Friend of mine has Immich on a N100, like you mentioned, the initial ML tasks on a big library takes over 24 hours but once it's done it doesn't need much. I don't have experience running next cloud but the others you mentioned don't need much RAM/CPU.

ZFS doesn't need much RAM, especially for a two disk 4TB mirror. It soaks up free RAM to use as a cache which makes people think it needs a lot. If the cache is tiny you just end up hitting the actual speed of the HDDs more often, which sounds within your expectations. I dare say you could get by with 8 GB, but 16GB would be plenty.

I'd only point out if you're looking for it to last 10 years, a neat package like the ugreen might bite you. A more standard diy PC will have more replaceable parts. Would be bigger and more power hungry though.

[–] bordam@feddit.it 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you! Really appreciate your input. I could sacrifice Nexcloud if it's too resource hungry actually. And good to know about ZFS having low RAM impact in my case. If you say 8gb could be enough, in case I go with the dxp2800, I could try keeping the stock 8gb and upgrading only if necessary and when I find a good offer.

I really feel your point about the diy pc, what worries me is the price (I can get the dxp2800 for about 300 including 8gb of ram, hardly beatable by a custom build with new hardware) and then there's also noise, space, power consumption, heat that must be taken into account. It's a bit overwhelming and I think I would mess up. But yes, it's true that if something breaks in the ugreen I'll have to replace everything.

[–] Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

I'd look at getting a used SFF (Small Form Factor) desktop for a LOT less than that Ugreen. I paid less than $50 for mine - at that price I can run a second one when I'm ready.

I'm currently running an old Dell SFF as my server, I've had Proxmox on it with 5 drives internally (2.5") with the OS on the NVME.

Initially it had 4GB of ram and ran Proxmox with ZFS just fine (and those drives were various ages and sizes).

It idles at 18w, not much more than the 12w my Pi Zero W idled at, but way more powerful and capable.