I am finally making the push to self host everything I possibly can and leave as many cloud services as I can.
I have years of linux server admin experience so this is not a technical post, more of an attempt to get some crowd wisdom on a complex migration.
I have a plan and have identified services i would like to implement. Take it as given that the hardware I have can handle all this. But it is a lot so it won’t happen at once.
I would appreciate thoughts about the order in which to implement services. Install is only phase one, migration of existing data and shaking everything down to test stability is also time consuming. So any insights, especially on services that might present extra challenges when I start to add my own data, or dependencies I haven’t thought of.
The list order is not significant yet, but I would like to have an incremental plan. Those marked with * are already running and hosting my data locally with no issues.
Thanks in advance.
Base system
- Proxmox VE 8.3
- ZFS for a time-machine like backup to a local hdd
- Docker VM with containers
- Home Assistant *
- Esphome *
- Paperless-ngx *
- Photo Prism
- Firefly III
- Jellyfin
- Gitea
- Authelia
- Vaultwarden
- Radicale
- Prometheus
- Grafana
Regarding mini PCs; Beware of RAM overheating!
I bought some Minisforum HM90 for Proxmox selfhosting, installed 64gb RAM (2x32gb DDR4 3200MHz sticks), ran memtest first to ensure the RAM was good, and all 3 mini PCs failed to various degrees.
The “best” would run for a couple of days and tens of passes before throwing multiple errors (tens of errors) then run for another few days without errors.
Turns out the RAM overheated. 85-95 C surface temperature. (There’s almost no space or openings for air circulation on that side of the PC). Taking the lid off the PC, let 2/3 computers run memtest for a week with no errors, but one still gave the occasional error bursts. RAM surface temperature with the lid off was still 80-85 C.
Adding a small fan creating a small draft dropped the temperature to 55-60 C. I then left the computer running memtest for a few weeks while I was away, then another few weeks while busy with other stuff. It has now been 6 weeks of continuous memtest, so I’m fairly confident in the integrity of the RAM, as long as they’re cold.
Turns out also some, but not all, RAM sticks have onboard temperature sensors.
lm-sensorscan read the RAM temperature, if the sticks have the sensor. So I’m making a Arduino solution to monitor the temperature with a IR sensor and also control an extra fan.Thanks for the tip on measuring temp of the ram, too. I will incorporate that into my monitoring scheme.
The mini pc I have has a good case design with a fan that blows across the ram, cpu and ssd. So I think it has good cooling, but I will definitely confirm with some monitoring.