Personally I would avoid rasperries like the plague here - they have many downsides when booting up rarely. I’d rather use a Mini PC or ZimaBoard, maybe a build on a MC12 leo (if you can still get it cheap),chuck it all in a cheap case and be good. Unless you have something with IPMI on it I would also invest in a semi professional KVM like PiKVM,JetKVM,NankKVM - and if you can’t stop/start power with that due to the device not following the standards maybe an IP switchable plug.

We are talking about a hobbyist here - if you want to have precautions against all these points OP would need to have a redundant PSU, redundant power sources with automatic failover, backup power,etc. Of course paired with redundant data connections, redundant KVM solutions, physical access management, etc.

In other words: A freaking data center.

Sure, PSUs break. Happens. But very very rarely. And everything else that is on the side of his backup device can be handled through a KVM. And tbh, if that one fails, one can usually direct a “non IT user” to simply pull the plug and put it back on.

In theory that is solvable by a PiKVM,JetKVM,nankKVM, etc.

Yep.

Absolutely the best advice.

I always recommend the same:

1. Get a secure proper cloud storage (Backblaze, Hetzner Object Storage/Storage box, Ionos,etc.) for daily/incremental backups and single file recovery. (As Tandberg is no longer an alternative this seems to be the only choice atm). Make sure you have encryption on and a proper rotation/deletion schedule.

2. Get an external harddrive for a full backup every few weeks/months, preferably store it offsite, even better if you get two and rotate them offsite.

3. Get a M-DISC Burner for the important files. Burn them onto BlueRay M Discs and store these at various offsite locations as well. Do so every few months. These have the advantage of being WORM (write once, read many).

Tapes are fucking expensive for current models and the old LTO drives one can get off Ebay,etc. tend to write faulty data and are almost always end of life. And as LTO is not backwards compatible beyond the generation below it’s very much a possibility that people will have issues reading their tapes in 5 or 10 years.

Just another thing: Get proper,WORM(write once read many) backups. Get a M-Disc capable blueray burner (around 100 bucks) and burn the real important stuff in Archive capable Bluerays (normal ones degrade within years,these don’t). You don’t want to find out your datasets suffered from bit rot(yes,that is a thing) 5 years later and have no option to restore because you fucked up backups 2 years ago. For the real important data(everything that can’t be redownloaded aka the personal stuff) it’s worth it.

Ideally do put some of those discs somewhere else,away from your house.

But for gods sake use proper backups. The tendency for immich to break things is the reason I nowadays recommend photoprism to people who start with selfhosting - it’s worse in a lot of ways but way more stable most of the times.

You don’t need many “guides”, especially not on blogs. They are risky - often written by people who don’t really know what they are doing fully and,more importantly, don’t update their guides. Then things can become really really ugly fast.

If you managed to run jellyfin on a miniPC on Debian you are already doing a good job and very likely already quite a bit.

My personal recommendation: Get another miniPC (no ARM,so no Raspi) and put Debian on it. Then use the Proxmox Community scripts to expand your reach, BUT use them as an “understanding how shit works” base - they have their limitations and their quality has sadly dropped since tteck is no longer with us. (RIP :(

That should give you a pretty good insight into virtualisation, KVM, basic networking - and a plattform to play that you easily can revert to an earlier state if you fuck up.

Remember backups, remember documentation (a wiki,maybe netbox) and monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana or Zabbix are some of the multiple options).

If you want to, you can also look into bash scripts to automate a few things. I know people here hate LLMs but actually ChatGPT and perplexity are good for that. Let them write a bash script for some easy tasks (e.g. update the VM, download a configuration file, create two admin users, make them sudo, install zabbix agent, install this and that) and then let them explain step by step to you. They aren’t too bad at it and actually help you learn basic scripting fairly well. (And then learn it properly with a e-course or something.)

As long as you don’t operate any public facing services and proper backups the actual risk involved is fairly small

Yeah. Would be my recommendation, too. For the size of the lab a Zimba seems a good choice if something new is what OP wants, otherwise a MiniPC.

I know what you mean, but just saying that Proxmox absolutely has an Api that can do a few (not all) of these things - and some are potentially use cases for the data centre manager. But yeah, I know what you mean.

Same for me, I just knew it because I stumbled across it recently.

Well,tbf, AMD is at least a little bit better than Intel. They are even worse.

I fucking want proper, block based naming back

Tbh, as someone who just built their own system I am a little bit angry that they didn’t announce it a few months earlier - I would have waited a bit longer then to see their pricing.

The specs are solid for a “Proxmox NAS with ZFS and containers”. For a regular NAS it’s oversized,but we all know that. The trend towards integrated devices is there and I went down that way as well.(And if you can actually install a different OS of course)

Anyway: If they can deliver what they promise it might be one of the most interesting systems - it doesn’t have many of the issues the Ugreens have (lack of ECC,etc.) and if they manage to deliver… it’s pushing into a space a lot of prosumers and small companies are that is currently only covered by self builds or spending much more money than necessary.

They list the AI 9 Hx Pro 370 which does support ECC.

Bitwarden is absolutely solid,yes.

Local server wise: If OP uses it in a local only setup behind a proper VPN implementation from my point of view the risk is acceptable. It’s not that hard to secure a home server in a way that Vaultwarden is not at risk - and when you’re so compromised that it is, then the attacker can easily use other vectors to gain the same data (RAt,keyloggers, etc.)

mam?

Nope, no issues so far, but it’s new enough to already have received the new units directly.

The small Renault’s are actually more than decent EVs and can be compared to the Hyundai Inster.(With the later being the closest to a “high quality EV for everyone” I have seen. Fantastic car, small, comparable cheap, secure. They need to get a bit cheaper still,but we are getting closer)

If you are filthy rich the Porsches are decent, same goes for some of the BMW. The Nissan Arya is also okayish, so are Mercedes.

But yeah, Korea has the absolute king of the hill atm. I drive an EV6 (pre facelift). And honestly? It’s the most “fun” and “comfortable” car I ever had - and I used to have lots of expensive company cars in the past (Audi A4,A5,A6, BMW 5, Volvo), often with "lights and sirens " installed and drove Seat,Skoda,Hyundai, Volvo privately.

None of them were as fun. None of fhem were as versatile and comfortable. And funny enough I safe enormous amounts of money.

And all the downsides people worry about? So far I didn’t have any.

Charging? Absolutely no issue - beside the fact that my sparky is shit and I still don’t have a home box (but a 200 bucks mobile box off Amazon helps). Even with long distances it’s no issue - even in remote locations I had a chance to charge,often easier to find than petrol. And on regular trips it takes as much time to go to the toilet and get me a coffee. Which I would also do with petrol… So in fact I save a few minutes. Even under these circumstances I pay half compared to what I payed for petrol.

Battery issues? The car is used. So far: Zero degradation. We had it assessed by a professional company recently.

The only two issues it has: Preconditioning is somewhat random (which has been solved with the facelift) and the fact that the drivers profile is not based on the key sucks.

Yeah, the wireless charging is a no-go for me as well. I understand that it costs licensing and wastes energy. But the environmental impact of all the useless/lost cables is also a point,especially when you get your energy fully renewable/self produced. And in a lot of areas (airline lounges,etc.) it has become widely adopted/the norm.

They could easily have offered a “swap” battery that has a little less capacity but includes wireless charging - give people a fucking choice.

Which hype? Matrix as a protocol is used for a decade now, especially by various big governments (French, Luxembourg and German governmental messenger, various German states, German and Polish armed forces, German healthcare messenger, various smaller projects in Latin America), is bridgeable (I currently have it bridged to Whatsapp and Signal amongst others) but I really don’t see a hype - on the contrary I only see people predicting me the immediate apocalypse of Matrix for 5 years now, currently due to matrix.org (one of a hundred instances) introducing a premium account model for the most cost intensive (heavily media sharing)users. (See below for that).

Overdramatic blog post,sorry. I can’t stand the whole “fremmium” crybabies that then literally recommend the next freemium or “non transparent funding model” service… And don’t understand the fundamental difference between the Protocol and one of its implementations.

Matrix as a protocol is solid and is used far beyond the Matrix messenger. (e.g. the French and German governmental messenger, the German healthcare messenger,various armies,etc.) With a lot of commits coming from there - but not enough funding,that is definitely an issue.

The current issue with Freemium is solely limited to the matrix.org instance. There are hundreds of federated instances out there that aren’t Freemium and won’t have the need to go that way as they are funded differently.(e.g. the Lemmy Instance I am currently writing from, feddit - we are financed through other means) As they are federated it doesn’t matter - and honestly, I personally tend to see this as a good thing - it will lead users away from matrix.org towards other instances, making the whole network more reliable and decentralized.

There are two other issues that are relevant, though: The way the foundation is run is not ideal, definitely - there are and were issues and I am not happy with some management decisions, but at least they are getting somewhat better recently (government board). The whole protocol does not evolve as fast as it should be and this is an issue,especially as a it also affects bug fixing. As an executive for a (much smaller) company myself I see management issues and infighting due to lack of leadership within the foundation and I am not happy with that. The second issue is Element as a company that does things companies do - focus on making money. This in theory would be a good thing if Element would send enough money AND effort upstream to seriously bring the whole project forward. For a long time this seemed to be the case,but licensing issues and the “stale” development off Element X(Matrix 2.0) has me questioning that as well - but recent changes show us hope in that regard. We also need to carefully reconsider if element is keeping too much"closed" source code for monetized features and what influence VC really has. In conclusion: We need better leadership for Matrix,more transparency and more funding.

The good news is: It doesn’t mattter too much - if the current foundation fucks up and goes belly up it is not the end of Matrix - the protocol is decentralized enough and the licencing of the core components permissive enough for another (better?) foundation to start over. There are dozends of clients available and we have alternative servers available by now.

The funding part nevertheless is my major pet peeve here. All around Europe governments try to get rid of US tech - and use Matrix protocol based products. But they hardly if ever fund that. If Germany, France, Poland and Luxembourg (the big users) would give 5€ per year for each client they implement all issues with funding would be gone, Matrix 2.0 would be available in a few months, VC could be pushed out of elements AND they could mandate more transparency.

The issue with funding is relevant for all NGOs and especially in tech. Running servers costs a fuckton of money.

Signal has a respectable amount of backers but is a centralized protocol and when Trump does something shady moneywise their infrastructure,money and possibly even people will be gone within 24 hours.

Threema has a more sustainable business model but Switzerland is,well, difficult, in terms of privacy and intelligence services overreach, especially towards traffic pointing to foreign servers or hosts.

Revolt is a centralized service with no federation,limited selfhosting capabilities,with unclear funding(we are waiting for a financial transparency report for ages now).

Polyproto is still not quite there feature wise and funding, etc. is unclear.

Delta Chat is indeed an option but has massive technical limitations.

That leaves XMPP as the sole big competition if you want non-centralised, non-US based, privacy friendly, messaging.

And Switzerlands records in terms of privacy sadly is far worse than most people think - even with the last attack being repelled.

Matrix (preferably on a non-matrix.org instance) currently is the preferable non US and privacy friendly way.