Hi!
As you may know (if you know me personally, of course!), I am into self-hosting stuff. Nothing crazy, really - serving my media over the internet (both video and images), personal cloud storage, also this blog... Anyway, I decided to write a short story on how I got there.

I started with a simple proof-of-concept server with the following configuration in January, 2021:

CPU: Intel i3-12300
Motherboard: Gigabyte B660M Gaming DDR4
RAM: 2*8Gb DDR4
PSU: be Quiet! Pure Power 11
Storage: KC2500 128Gb & spare HDDs

+ Mikrotik hAP Lite

As for the OS, I chose Fedora Server 35, I guess - does not matter, actually. Most importantly - it worked! I installed Plex, also tried a few services for sharing the files - Seafile, also (I know!) Nextcloud. Also Subsonic for serving my old Touhou Lossy Music Collection v.19!
It was so much fun, but due to financial issues I had to sell it on a second-hand marketplace in February 2023. I don't miss it though. 😺

My next iteration was this:

CPU: Intel i5-4460
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H81 (I guess?)
RAM: 8Gb DDR3
PSU: Chieftec BFX-450BS (SFX, 450 watt)
Storage: old HDDs

Gave this to a friend, who was learning things to become a DevOps-Engineer later.

Next iteration was (not counting Orange Pi Zero 2 for personal project), well, Orange Pi 5 Plus 8Gb - bought it in May 2023.

Installed Armbian, spun up some Docker containers:

• Nextcloud - also I got this domain name shortly after buying SBC, so yeah.
• Gitea - selfhosted Git for keeping code from Github and other places at my machine.
• Archivebox - simple way to archive website pages. Nothing fancy, it just works (sometimes not 😅).
• Owncast (which was modified to use Rockchip RKMPP to transcode videos) - think of it as a Twitch alternative without persistence.
• Jellyfin - a service to transcode and stream videos, audio files and other stuff.
• Ghost - this blog. It's fine.

I use Nginx Proxy Manager to manage services. Adding new ones, disabling old ones, certificate management and user credentials is a breeze. I love it (I don't like working with nginx configs 😭)! Also I route all traffic through a Cloudflare - just, you know, for safety.

But I need more power!!

Right now I am in process of migrating some services - especially the ones that require big storage: media, games, manga & personal gallery - to a Proxmox node with the following config:

CPU: Ryzen PRO 4650G
Motherboard: Asrock A520M-ITX/AC
RAM: 2*16Gb DDR4 ECC (ECC works fine)
PSU: FSP PNR PRO 500W
Storage: 1Tb Samsung 980 non-Pro + 16Tb WD HC550 hard drive

+ my old Orange Pi 5 Plus 8Gb

It's fine, though I am still getting used to LXC containers, but it's really easy with Proxmox Helper scripts.

The Vega iGPU is enough for my needs (3 simultaneous streams from 1080p h.264 to 720p), it's 2x faster than my Orange Pi 5 Plus setup with RK3588 (non-S).

Selfhosting is fun and an educating hobby - try it yourself. Technology is not magic, but oh boy, does it feels like it!!