I have an old Alienware r8 and several 2-4 TB HDDs gathering dust in a closet. The Alienware actually runs remarkably quiet and it occurred to me I could turn it into a DIY NAS.
I’m not entirely sure where to start though. Some immediate questions:
- What’s a good NAS OS to install?
- Any fun things I can do besides plex transcoding with a 1080 GPU?
- Would it make sense to run a Pixelfed/Mastodon server off this guy?
- Can I run a RAID on it without buying a separate HDD bay?
Background:
I already have a Synology NAS running Plex. It transcodes 1080p fine which is really all I need it for.
Other than a Plex port forward, I have zero experience putting services out on the public web (but would like to learn!).
I did something similar with an old Alienware, I slapped a 4TB drive in it and put unRAID on it and it became my general server for pretty much everything. I’ve moved to a Dell R510 for now though.
With a 1080 you could do some pretty decent models with Ollama, or other AI projects. I have a 1650 in the server I use for my LLM stuff.
Seems like itd make a fine server for fedi verse stuff
Unsure about the RAID question, theoretically if you have enough SATA slots and drive bays in the case it should at least be doable with software? But that’s another reason I recommend unRAID, especially if you’re not buying drives in a preconfigured storage size configuration
I see the appeal with unRAID! My drives are pretty straight forward though I pretty much only plan to use the 2 4TB drives. Will probably skip the RAID for now (it’s not going to store anything SUPER important) and just use it as a hobby test server.
Ollama of course! Looks like the 1080s should be able to handle most 7B models. Exciting! Thanks for the help and suggestions!
https://www.freedombox.org/apps/
Whatever you end up doing immediately after you finish setting it up, throw some files on it you don’t care about and practice breaking and reassembling your RAID a few times before you put anything important on it. You want to understand the basic process before things fail.
Ooh this is a nice list of apps! I like doing things the hard way so I’ll probably skip the Freedombox part but these app ideas have got me thinking…
Hosting on the public web isn’t too crazy - start with port forwarding on standard ports (443 for sale/web) and add in a dynamic DNS address.
More than likely your residential ISP doesn’t change your IP that often, but Dynamic DNS solves that problem before it hits. I use Cloudflare, but mostly because I’m lazy and haven’t moved off of them after their most recent sketch behavior.
- What’s a good NAS OS to install?
TrueNAS Scale is the go to. Unraid is another popular option.
- Any fun things I can do besides plex transcoding with a 1080 GPU?
Local LLM. Look up Ollama.
- Would it make sense to run a Pixelfed/Mastodon server off this guy?
You could. That could potentially use a lot of space or be very annoying you having to manage and moderate the instances.
- Can I run a RAID on it without buying a separate HDD bay?
What do you mean? Are you talking about a hardware RAID card, or can you physically stuff more than one disk drive into the chassis? For the first, it’ll depend on whether it has any open PCI Express slots. For the second, what do you see when you open it up? Are there 3.5" or 5.25" bays open?
Other than a Plex port forward, I have zero experience putting services out on the public web (but would like to learn!).
Wanting to learn is an admirable goal. I’ve not done it myself, but the Linux Upskill Challenge might be a good place to start. Either that, or figure out something you might want to host yourself, then come back and ask for input when you run into trouble or have a question.
Pretty sure it has 2 HDD bays, so I was thinking I would do something similar to the Synology Hybrid RAID on a 4TB drive. On retrospect though this might be way too crippling of a move for a play server, so I might forgo the RAID idea.
The Linux Upskill Challenge looks perfect! I feel comfortable with about 40% of the table of contents. Should be a fun weekend of experimenting.
Thanks for the help!
If you’ve got two 3.5" bays, you could do a RAID 1 (or a mirror in ZFS terms) with them both. This works very nicely with a small SSD for booting. My TrueNAS server has a 120 GB SSD in the M.2 slot that TrueNAS is installed on, then I have an array of spinning disks that forms the main storage array.
If you are planning any sort of play environment that you might want to keep (like a Pixelfed instance) I’d strongly recommend RAID just for availability in the event of a drive failure. But more than that, backups. They are of number one importance. Before you turn up anything of any importance, figure out a backup strategy.
One way to avoid the pitfalls of hosting for others is hosting an instance just for yourself. Maybe immediate family too.
As for RAID, just go with TrueNAS software raid (courtesy of ZFS). All that is needed are physical bays and SATA cables/ports. You can buy cheap external bays if there aren’t enough on the PC.
Yeah an online instance would be a good place to start. Maybe a GoToSocial instance.
I have used an old MacBook Air as a home server with Fedora for about 2 years. Fedora with Podman can be great, especially when you can use Cockpit (a GUI for managing containers), which is pre-installed and perfectly integrated.
Another option is to use TrueNAS. I can also recommend OpenMediaVault.
For exposing your services on the internet I suggest caution. If your ISP does not let you forward your ports, you can read this. https://blog.aiquiral.me/bypass-cgnat