I dusted off my RPI4 and started tinkering with self-hosting things and it’s sparked a fire. Suddenly I have 7 docker containers running and I need more RAM, more space and I want something reliable with room to grow. I like small form factors but it doesn’t need to be RPI small. Any recs for your favorite hardware under $500?
Keeping storage and compute separately is the best practice but if you’re OK with combining both in one device then running docker-compose on a Synology (via SSH, + versions only) works just fine. An alternative that reduces the lock-in at the expense of more tinkering is buying an amd64 QNAP and installing Openmediavault / TrueNAS / plain Debian.
Perhaps I can delegate the RPI4 to handle storage and then do compute on a new NUC.
Why is it superior to keep them separate, if you don’t mind me asking?
Not OP, but I’m running into some issues with my machine being both my “server” and my “NAS”.
The biggest downside is that if I want to update my storage, I will also have to update the server, and viceversa.
Sometimes the server goes down for whatever reason (e.g., distro update), and I lose access to the storage as well.