You will take my thanks, be happy about! Dammit!

N5105 nas board, 32-64gb of ram, 1x 500gb nvme SSD, some sort of case, and a bunch of HDDs, I like the 8tb ironwolfs, they are cheap enough, but large enough.

Maybe the n6005 if you can find it. But it’s a great server, handles most selfhost stuff. I run Ubuntu server on it, it’s just the cleanest and easiest to use, no GUI needed.

What’s nice is it’s super low power, and cheap. So you can eventually migrate to a more powerful Proxmox server, on minipcs, like NAB6, than just turn the n5105 into a TrueNAS server, and even duplicate it for backups, and triplicate (if you are really feeling it), for redundancy. Getting a 2nd and 3rd Proxmox minipcs enables HA on VMs. So yea. That’s my goal. ATM I gotta migrate to the Proxmox.

It would be to have two NAB6 mini PCs, I have seen them on Amazon and they are good machines. To those two machines install Proxmox and make them high availability.

Yea, but they won’t be High Availability unless you have 3. Proxmox assigns HA Dynamically, meaning the machines vote. So you need a odd number. BUT, a cluster of 2 should be fine. Migrate the VMs over, to power down and perform maintence.

And then to that add a box with Truenas for storage. This is what I see a bit more complicated. Can you advise me something to build that does not go too much price?

I really like the n5105 nas boards, and the jxxxxx nas boards. I went with n51505. Basically what “Wolfgang” did on YouTube. It’s more than powerful enough, perhaps overkill. But the benefit is it’s a lot of sata ports, on a mini it’s board, which is rare. You might find a better setup, I’m still planning this section out.

Only with the miniPc the budget would go to 900€, I currently have a synology ds220+ (that I plan to sell), with 2 4TB hard drives.

You could just do what I did initially. I just copied Wolfgang’s build. N5105 nas board, a nas case (I used the fractal node, in his video), and put 32gb of ram (overkill). And a psu with a 500gb nvme. You can install TrueNAS on here. Run everything on here, media server, containers, etc. set your drives to ZFS. Then when you want to expand, you can get the NAB6 or something different…

You need to plan for what you intend to do. The setup I recommended is for like many VMs, for home labbing enterprise software to learn it. In addition to home server stuff, like media, are, vault, cloud, immich, etc. even a few windows and Linux VMs. It’s A LOT. You can simplify it. You can even run proxmox on the n5105. And just set up a ceph ZFS storage pool.

First, Id make sure you have data lines setup. Get some PVC in the walls, and set yourself up to run data lines to every room.

I’d personally grab a NUC or 2, or honestly the NAB6 mini pc. Make them a Proxmox server, virtualize your apps in containers, or inside VMs. Getting 2 to 3 will enable High Availability for maintence.

I’d then build atleast 1 TrueNAS box, for storage. You can get 2 and create high availability here too. Additionally, you’ll want set of drives for backups of your TrueNAS server (the 2nd TrueNAS box isn’t a backup, it’s a redundant drive, very diff). That said, you could use the 2nd TrueNAS as a backup, until you have money to spring for a backup.

You’ll want a good router, you can run this on Proxmox, or just get separate hardware. Personally I’d get bare metal separate router. Than get a few switches, you’ll want 1 for PoE for your cameras, and 1 with 2.5 high networking, and youll want them all to have 10 gig, so they can communicate with each other quickly. (You don’t want a file transfer from 1 TrueNAS to the 2nd TrueNAS, to hog all your bandwidth between your switches, throttling your network speeds.). You’ll then want some Access Points that connect to your switches, over PoE, for wifi, Ubiquiti is really good here.

If you are gonna do all of this. Just run Proxmox on your Nucs, and set up VMs, and just containerize, even clustering.

Obsidian.

1. Build your own router, segment your network. I suggest OpenWRT. Openwrt is less stream lined, which means you learn more. You’ll learn trunking, VLANs, sub netting, DNS. Do it all through CLI.

2. Reverse proxy, internal and external. Use Traefik or caddy.

3. Encryption keys. Seems simple. But learn and master ssh keys. The Internet works by communicating from point A to point B. And keys help encrypt the traffic. You should be able to type “ssh hostname” to get into any server you want access to, without the need for a password. Bonus points for finding a secure way to set cronjobs to automatically cycle keys, for security practice.

4. Docker machine. Master docker. Learn docker compose. Everything CLI.

5. Proxmox. Put everything on a VM or container. Create a nas, for storage for your VMs. Bonus if it’s strong enough to run many VMs, you can use to host a instance of any software that you are trying to learn. I for I stance am loading windows server 2022 and multiple windows 10 and 11 instances that I can control.

Do everything through CLI. Take notes on what you did (you won’t remember, it’s ok, no one remembers). Practice documentation.

So… Your issue isn’t going to be getting them what they need. Your issue is gonna be need High Availability and scalability. To give them info, you can create a VPN, or some sort of tunneling service. You can migrate to a cloud service such as azure, AWS, or Google cloud.

Scalability means that if your business expands, it’ll be easy for you to expand computing resources, without the need for redesign (this gets expensive). Also you don’t want to be stuck paying for services you don’t use. No sense buying a $1k server, if a $200 server does the job. But that $200 server might not be enough next week.

High Availability means, if the server your instance is on goes down, it will automatically populate on a different server, so your employees/interns never lose connectivity.

Once you decide that platform, you need someone who will administrate users and privileges, backups, basic IT support to those in the field.

This is typically what a MSP handles for businesses. Designing, the system, and the way the system is maintained is why ppl get paid the big bucks.

This is why, most businesses hire a IT professional to do this. They should know, saas, paas & iaas. Know which one is right for you, help you decide which cloud platform you go with, and which security measures you go with.

Now you’ll likely find a solution that works on this subreddit, you’ll likely find cheap solutions, overly expensive solutions, and secure and insecure solutions, and everything in between. I’d be looking to either hire a system administrator, or a MSP to set this up right from the getgo. If you feel you are up to that task, by all means. But, as someone who ran a business, and is now looking to get into this exact field. This is a full time job you are giving yourself.