Hi all I’m new here, when Wendell said “you don’t want to Cosplay as a System admin” on “Getting Started with Homelabing in 2026”, it got me to rethink my Homelab Journey/Approach.
I am in the stages of planning out a homelab, the bug bit me when we renewed our annual dropbox and after talking to my significant other why we have it, the reason was “incase this laptop dies I know I have a backup”. Well somehow that lit a fire under my ass cause we are paying $140/year for the last 5 years with something I could have accomplished with Hardware I already had laying around for the past 4 years. One thing leads to another, I’ve now “over-acquired” hardware and have created a Much bigger project than a simple NAS which would have fixed our dropbox issue. I will list the Proposed Hardware deployment and expect services At the bottom of my Post.
My “skills”/Background:
I am an Accountant by trade, but my father was a Database engineer so we had a NAS/HomeServer in 2002, I grew up understanding how an OS works more than the majority of my peers. Would I call myself a “network engineer” not at all. But I love building things and making them work. I’ve been consuming massive amounts of youtube videos from HardwareHaven, LawernceSystems, ServersAtHome, WunderTech, and of course Level1Techs. I will say I am not a Fan of the Terminal and have fallen into the trap of Asking AI how to do things because it is still faster to get a service running and troubleshooted. I have got Server1 running minimally, and Server 3 running as a test to try and understand NFS & SMB shares. Server2 will be built this weekend and then the true “deployment” process will start. So this is why I come to the Forum. I am not that far down this journey that I feel like I would loose progress if I started from scratch with a whole new Server ecosystem (fygoOS, HexOS, ProxMox-Cluster??). Again I would like to avoid the terminal if there are GUI experiences available. I am very much a Visual personal so a GUI allows me to wrap my head around what is actually happening, the Terminal feels like I’m writing on a Post-it, dropping it in a black box, then having to decipher what comes out the other side. And I understand the Terminal Allows for so much more control, but again i’m trying not to “cosplay as a system Admin.”
Main Questions:
- Instead of Running my Services Server in ProxMox & the two Dedicated NAS servers as TrueNAS. Should I instead deploy them as a ProxMox Cluster(All three Baremetal installs) with TrueNAS(in a VM) running on the storage devices to maintain an Uniform Backup eco system through PBS?(Feels Very “system Admin cosplay”)
- Secondly, am I over thinking this whole process?(Probably yes)
- Would installing something like FygoOS on all three?
- Are there GUI tools to install within these servers which would allow me to Avoid the Terminal?
Deploy arrangement (current proposal)
Server1: Services Hub
Hardware: Dell OptiPlex 3000 Micro, Intel Core i5-12500T, 6 cores, 12 logical CPUs, 32gb Ram, 256gb Sata(os) & 500gb NVME (Apps/VMs/operations)
ProxMox BareMetal Install
-LXC: Pi-Hole + Unbound
-LXC: WireGuard
-VM(Unbutu Server): (some of these I’m still researching)
-Cockpit(Directly on Ubuntu-VM)
-Docker Running Portainer(Running Below Services)
Uptime Kuma
Immich (App Files on local NVME, Bulk/Originals Storage on Server2 via NFS)
JellyFin (App Files on local NVME, Bulk/Originals Storage on Server2 via NFS)
Nginx Proxy Manager
FreshRSS
LubeLogger
Homarrd
Audiobookshelf (App Files on local NVME, Bulk/Originals Storage on Server2 via NFS)
Paperless-NGX
Server2: Primary Bulk Storage NAS
Hardware: Ryzen Pro 3400GE, 32gb DDR4 Ram (NON-ecc), 2.5gb intel-226 PCI, HBA-i8 Card
HDD Arrays:
OS: 2x256gb m.2 Sata (Mirror)
Pool 1: 3x6tb Raidz1 (WD Red Pro, Recert Drives, Clean Long SMART Tests)
Pool 2: 4x3tb Raidz2 (HSGT SAS drives Manu-2014) JellyFin Media Files (NON-critical bulk storage)
Pool 3: 2x3tb Raidz1 (Seagate Barracuda, sitting on my self for 5years, sub 2000hr use, passed long Smart Tests)(NON-critical bulk storage)
Purpose: Main Data storage, High touch and maintenance, this will be the Serve which gets the primary upgrades in storage when money allows.
OS: TrueNas
Provide NFS file shares for Services running on Server1
Pool 1: Immich, Paperless-NGX, Store Backups of Server 1’s Configs and app data.
Pool 2 & 3: Jellyfin and AudioBookshelf libraries.
Server 3: Onsite Backup Storage for Server2
Hardware: i73770k, 16gb-DDR3
HDDs: OS: 2x120gb SSDs, Pool 1: 3x4tb Raidz1 WD RED (still wrapped from 3+years ago)
TrueNas
Purpose: This will be an active backup for Server 1 & 2
Datasets to be backed up:
Immich
Paperless-NGX
AudioBookShelf
Configs for Server 1 & 2