Hi, I’m looking for some advice to point be in the right direction for my data storage and backup.
Currently I just have Jellyfin and Immich set up on my laptop that runs Windows. At the moment my storage capacity requirements are pretty low (just close to 1TB). But I am concerned about data integrity, especially all my Photos and work files.
At the moment I have an old HDD and a new SSD that I backup to every month(two separate copies).
In a few months I will be going overseas. I plan to have a copy of all by data with me but I would also like to have it in my home ‘server!?’
Do I set up a machine new machine to hold the data? Or can I just continue using my laptop. Increasing storage requirements, resilience and ease of management when not physically available are a concern.
Again, I’m very new in my selfhosting journey and as Linux or sysadmin is not something I have exposure to (apart from memes on Lemmy) I would love to all of your suggestions for idiot proof setups. I’m willing to learn and tbh learning about docker and editing config files have been pretty fun so far and would switch to Linux if work permitted.
In line with other commenter’s posts about security, if you’re new then don’t expose anything to the internet. Tailscale is great way to access your data remotely instead and doesn’t require opening yourself up to the internet in mass.
As for hardware, budget will rule over all. If you’re looking for a quick and dirty backup solution, then a raspberry pi with a drive attached and running syncthing will be perfect for you (and easy to setup). Again all on your tailnet/tailscale.
If you have more budget, then your options explode. You can use a whole range of hardware, OSes and software. Regardless, start with one service you want to run and go from there. Sounds like that’s media and pictures for you (as it was for most of us here).
I really like tailscale. I had a little bit of a task getting it to run along side my daily driver VPN, but all is well now. For something so easy to implement, it gives the user a lot of protection.
So you are leaving your laptop behind as the server?
What’s your budget? I’d build a separate server but that’s me. I would think you could get old hardware practically free that would run your services fine by checking Craigslist and your local recycling center.
HP elitedesk or some other desktop can be had for cheap on eBay second hand. They will make decent servers. Install Ubuntu server or some other Linux flavour. Use docker compose to deploy services. Use tailscale to connect to these as others have suggested. Their docs on how to setup tail scale only ssh are really good. If you feel note adventurous you can get a domain and expose services via subdomains using cloudflare tunnels.
But for your use in suggest tailscale for now. Add some storage into the machine and you are good to go. You can use restic backup to safely backup to a remote location like backblaze b2, another storage on your network, or any other number of options.
That’s pretty much it, sounds so simple right? /s It will require some reading but there are usually ready made docker compose files for most projects as well as examples for restic. There are always multiple ways to do this but that’s close to what i do and it’s worked so far ™
And just ask on this community if you get stuck.
To add on, your budget here really matters. Ideally, you can have an external NAS or drive enclosure that is managed by the laptop. If you want easy backups, a cloud storage provider can help. I do nightly backups to idrive.
Seems like data integrity is your highest priority, and you’re doing pretty well, the next step is keeping a copy offsite. It’s the 3-2-1 backup strategy, 3 copies, 2 media (used to mean CDs etc but now think offline drives) 1 offsite (in case of fire, meteor strike etc), so look to that, stash a copy at a friends or something.
In your case I’d look at getting some online storage to fill the offsite role while you’re overseas (paid probably, but a year of 1 or 2 Tb is quite reasonable) leaving you with no pressure on the selfhosting side, just tailscale in, muck around and have fun, and if something breaks, no harm done, data safe.
I’ve done it for what seems like forever and I’d still be worried about leaving a system out of physical control for any extended period of time, at the very least having someone to reboot it if connectivity or power fails will be invaluable, but talking them through a broken update is another thing entirely, and you shouldn’t make that a critical necessity, too much stress.
If you end up setting up a new server, downloading something like fedora server, installing docker, then portainer via CLI is very easy. Then you can use the portainer interface to manage your installs. If you end up doing this I would be happy to chat.
If you end up running a Linux server, rsync files instead of moving them to confirm they’re there without issue before deleting.
As for keeping your data safe, I would increase your backup frequency to at least once a week. Also keep your two backup drives in different locations in case something happens.
You can access your laptop remotely if you set up Tailscale and register your laptop with them. It’s a VPN, so it’s like having your laptop and other registered devices connected to a local Wi-Fi all the time.
Whatever solution(s) you come up with, you are going to have to address security at some point, to keep all the good stuff in, and all the baddies out…and there are millions of baddie bots just dying to get to your server to set up an xmrig-monero mining operation on your server. They don’t share in the profits either…lol.
So, while you are figuring out infrastructure, don’t overlook security.
