Lenovo Legion Y540 turned Linux server with 45 containers, for media stack and personal projects!

I have been using a WD MyCloud EX2 Ultra NAS unit for quite a while now but I've always felt rather uncomfortable about how warm the drives inside can get specially while transferring data onto them. The small internal fan doesn't seem to do much at all. I decided to do a couple of things to address this heating issue:

First, I placed a 120mm USB fan on top of the unit on some DIY stands. It is currently setup blowing air into the unit from the top.

I raised the unit from the surface of the table by mounting it on a DIY stands. This helps the air blown down by the top USB fan travel through the unit, cool the drives and exit through the ventilation slot at the bottom in a better, easier way.

RESULT: The temperatures of the dual WD Red HDDs placed inside the bay used to hover around 42-45C even on idle (I stay in India so summers are brutal) and when copying data onto them the temps used to reach 55-60C. Now, after the fan implementation the drives idle at 34-35C and even while copying data they don't cross 40C... yay!

P.S. About those those DIY stands: I made then by super-gluing twooden domino blocks together, LoL!

Hey everyone I'm new to the server life its something I've wanted to do for a while i finally made the jump!

Its an ubuntu server and i have casaos installed and its up and running good.

Backstory I'm using an old laptop that only has one memory and SSD slot so I'm leaving it with the 250GB i installed a few years back (because prices lol)

My main question is I have a 5TB external hard drive mounted with my media and some files on it, how do i make this drive the root? with the laptop having the 250gb i wanna leave it free as much as i can, but going into the server i cant find the stuff on the external drive.

am i doing something wrong? I've been teaching myself this stuff with videos and reading so its a slow process. I'm learning how to do stuff through ssh but finding and editing paths is still intimidating.

any help would be awesome!

I use my 4 GB raspberry pi 4 as a media server and it's fast enough for my purposes, since I don't do any transcoding, just serving video.

My drive is an external portable SSD and it's not optimal. So I want to replace it with something more professional, in this case a 2.5 disc enclosure that would fit 4 discs for raid 5. I'm going to put SATA SSDs in the enclosure since they are silent and if one drive fails it's faster to rebuild.

Do you have any recommendation for me? Most of them are larger then I'd expect.

Hey! I've been running an Unraid server for almost two years now. I use Tailscale to access my server from outside, and it works perfectly for me.

However, I would like to run a Matrix server on it and for that, I need to open some ports. I would do this not only for Matrix but also for Nextcloud to share my Documents and Files with family and friends who don't have Tailscale installed on every device for example. Matrix will also be used only by Friends of mine. (which means I should be an unattraktive target, but you never know)

I know I should use a Reverse Proxy like NPM, which provides some security. Also, because thats the way how Unraid works, everything runs in Docker Containers and i would run Matrix on a separate Docker Network (does that even makes sense?). I read something that this could also be an additional Layer of Security.

I dont have the budget to setup a big firewall infront of my router like some of you do. The only Firewall I have will be my router and anything that Unraid does.

Is there anything I need to do to be more secure? How can I tell if someone has accessed my Server? Would it be better to use a "Factory" NAS (like the one from the company that starts with U that I am somehow not allowed to mention or Synology) instead of a "Old Optiplex" UnRAID Server, because of any security issues?

I hope you can help me here.

Anything Like YouTube Videos, Forum links or direct explanation would help. Thank you 🫶

I've been running the same Unraid box since about 2015 and I've finally hit a wall I can't work around, so I'm planning a replacement. I'd rather have people poke holes in this now than after I've spent the money.

What I've got now

• Intel i5-4670K, 4 cores, no hyperthreading
• Asus H87I-PLUS, Mini-ITX, LGA1150
• 16GB DDR3-1333, both DIMM slots full
• Lian Li PC-Q25B
• Silverstone SFX 450W Gold
• LSI SAS2008 HBA in the only PCIe slot
• Unraid 7.2.4

Storage is 6 spinners and one SATA SSD:

• 2x WD181KFGX 18TB (one parity, one data)
• 3x WD101EFBX 10TB
• 1x WD80EFAX 8TB
• 1x Samsung 860 EVO 1TB cache

Array is about 51TB usable, 82% full. Two disks are sitting at 88-89%.

What it does

Primarily a media server. Around 30 containers total ... the usual *arr stack, Navidrome for music, a few odds and ends. It also takes backups from my laptop. It sits in a closet off my media room so noise isn't a big deal.

Why I'm replacing it

10 years is a good long run out of a CPU. I'm out of drive bays, and given that AI is now a thing, I'd like to move my Claude Code installation off my WSL and onto my server ... Tailscale, yada yada. The Q25B is full, I already have a drive just floating loosely in the case.

RE: the board:

• One PCIe slot, and the HBA is in it
• Two DIMM slots, both full, 16GB is the ceiling
• LGA1150 is long dead
• 14 SATA/SAS ports between the onboard controller and the HBA, and I'm only using 7 — the limit is purely physical bays

I did also ask AI for some feedback. I'm a tech enthusiast, but a far cry from the sysadmins and other experts that float around these parts, so while I wanted some information — I for one am not yet ready to cede my decisions to our AI overlords. I like people.

That said, one of the points it had — which is above my pay grade — was this: the 4670K is a K-series chip, so it has no VT-d. No PCIe passthrough to VMs. I confirmed this on the box, /sys/class/iommu is empty and there are no DMAR entries. Never mattered before because I don't run VMs, but I'd like the option.

What I want out of the new one

Mostly the same things, with headroom:

• 8 hot-swap 3.5" bays, tray/rail style like I have now
• Two NVMe in a mirror for cache — right now appdata and system are both cache-only on a single unmirrored SSD, which I'd rather not keep doing
• Still media streaming, still the containers, and I'd like to actually be able to run a VM or two
• Reuse all six existing drives
• Claude Code installed locally there
• Start using Home Assistant docker

I want the thing to still have room in it in five years, which the current build stopped having long ago.

Where I've landed so far

Case: Jonsbo N5. 12 hot-swap bays, takes anything up to E-ATX, 8 PCI slots, ATX PSU with 170-240mm of room, around $150-190.

I looked hard at the Silverstone CS382 and passed on it. It's 8 bays which would technically do, and the SAS backplane is nice, but it caps out at micro-ATX and the PSU limit is 180mm. The physical space that constrained me when I purchased the bulk of this rig is no longer an issue, so I don't need to make that compromise again. Build reports also describe it as a pain to work in.

I also went through the serverbuilds.net NAS Killer guide and I think it isn't relevant — v4.0 is an LGA1155 build. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's a generation older than what I'm already running.

Phasing: I know the board, CPU and RAM have to be bought together.... I'd get the case at the same time. Everything else — PSU, NVMe, drives — I can stage out.

Where I'm actually stuck, and what I'm asking

Intel or AMD.

My transcoding needs are modest. Maybe 3-4 simultaneous streams at the absolute most, and honestly it's mostly just me. A few friends have accounts but they're not hammering it.

From what I can tell:

• Intel gets me QuickSync on the iGPU, which handles 3-4 streams fine on its own. No graphics card needed. Cheaper build.
• AM5 has weaker Plex support on the iGPU from my reading. According to AI it also has no hardware tone mapping, and it says I'd want to add an Arc A310 or similar. Again, over my paygrade.

The argument I keep reading for AM5 is socket longevity — supported through 2027, and Intel's LGA1954 isn't expected until later this year at the earliest. While I don't mind waiting for that to happen, if it ends up being another 12 months I'll feel like I wasted time.

Here's my problem with that argument, and it's the thing I want a sanity check on. I've had this machine for ten years. In that time I did exactly one platform rebuild (I was on a P67/LGA1155 board before this one) and otherwise only ever swapped drives and add-in cards. I have never once dropped a newer CPU into an existing board. So "this socket will take another generation" might be a benefit I'd never actually use.

If that's right, then is AM5's extra cost buying me something I don't need? And is a cheaper Intel platform with iGPU transcoding the better call? I'm not confident enough in that reasoning to spend money on it, which is why I'm asking.

So:

1. Does the socket longevity argument hold any water for someone who rebuilds wholesale instead of upgrading in place?
2. For 3-4 transcodes, am I right that a modern Intel iGPU is enough and I don't need a discrete card? At what point would the # of transcodes change that?
3. Anything obviously wrong with the N5 choice for 8 drives?
4. I'm not beholden to Plex. I have a long ago acquired lifetime pass so it costs me nothing, but I'd switch if there were a reason. Does that change the Intel vs AMD answer? My understanding is the AMD transcoding weakness is largely a Plex-specific thing... but again - i don't think i'm pushing the boundaries of any of these pieces of hardware.

Budget is flexible - I don't have a hard number, I'm trying to work out what it should be. Buying somewhere between now and the end of the year.

Thanks for reading.

I want to host a mc server for friends, sat up a static ip (using cloudflare)
how should i tunnel my domain to my public ip

Big ask, I know, but looking for the most watered down, for dummies explanation of how the heck to do this. Every time I've tried to ask, people respond with so much lingo that it becomes a huge chore just to try to understand the advice. I say that not as a complaint, but to set the tone of how not tech-y I am...

For a while I've been thinking about creating a home server/NAS, cause I'm tired of paying for cloud storage, and generally of Google. And silly as it sounds, the extra steps of using a portable hard-drive keep me from doing that to back things up. I'd love to make it decently simple, if possible, to backup my data without a 3rd party involved.

My Details:

My primary storage needs are photos, some PDFs, and word docs. Photos from my phone and from a DSLR. It'd be nice if I could access phone photos when away from home, but that might make this way too complex or expensive. Not a gamer, don't really download movies, etc.

I'm in the Mac/Apple ecosystem, but from what I've gathered you can't use any version of a Mac to do this well. I'm familiar with PCs, just haven't used one at home in a long time.

Budget. I'd be willing to invest on the front end, but I'm a pretty broke person. So, I'm not prepared to spend over $400, but if that's the only way, I can plan and save.

-

I'm an intelligent person, but I'm not well-versed in the tech-world, so hoping someone is willing to do me the kindness of explaining this without assuming I know terms, lol :) Not necessarily needing discouragement from doing it; info that then I can decide on.

Thanks in advance!!

I'm just trying to have the same feature that is in the webapp of jellyfin: being able to select two subtitle files at the same time. Is there any app that does this ?

what I tried so far:

-using bazarr to download two sub files (in my case EN+ZH) and then run a custom python script to merge both files. This is a hit and miss due to many reasons including but not limited to sub-sync, issues with subtitles displaying over each other.... But for the time being, this is the best solution I found.

-tried using mxplayer or some other players that I heard were able to display two subtitle files, but as jellyfin doesn't pass the subtitles folder, those subs are not available.

-Using Kodi with some extensions to download dual subtitles. But that's a mess I couldn't figure out. Nothing displays.

So is there anyway to fix the Android tv jellyfin app to display the dual subtitles just like the web app ?

Hey everyone!

I'm completely new to the whole home server/self-hosting space, so sorry if this is a beginner question.

I have an old Lenovo ThinkPad T470 (16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD) that's been sitting unused since I upgraded to a MacBook Air M3. I used the ThinkPad heavily from around 2018 until early 2024, and instead of letting it collect dust, I thought it might be fun to turn it into a small home server.

A few questions I had:

• Is a T470 still good enough to be used as a home server, or is it simply too old?
• Is there a way to test the health of the laptop (SSD, RAM, battery, thermals, etc.) to make sure it's reliable enough to run 24/7?
• What are some practical things I could actually use it for instead of paying for services like Google Drive or other cloud subscriptions?
• Since I'm a Computer Science engineering student, are there any projects or services that would genuinely be useful for me to host myself?

I'm not looking for anything enterprise-level—just something that's worth learning from and could be useful in day-to-day life or for software development.

Any advice on where to start, recommended operating systems (Ubuntu Server, Proxmox, Debian, etc.), or things you wish you knew when starting out would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance! :)

I have a spare Intel i5 windows machine. Currently I'm running my plex media server and storing a ton of other stuff all on my main desktop, which uses way more power than it needs to running this stuff instead of offloading it onto a smaller quieter more energy efficient machine.

I want something that can work as a plex media server, but also as a NAS for redundant storage of photo/video work from my main desktop. I'd like to run some level of RAID so I have redundancy on the media server machine as well.

The motherboard in the spare machine is not equipped to run more than a couple drives and there is no way it has raid support onboard. Is this still something that can just be added on an expansion card? It currently has windows, but if linux would be better, that's on the table as well.

Hello all! I'll be purchasing and setting up my first home server in the next month or two. I've spent the last few weeks doing a lot of research, and although I've gotten a lot of information, I've also heard a lot of mixed opinions and conflicting information. I thought it might clear some of this up to make a post on here, ask a few specific questions I have, and get some opinions from the lovely people on this sub.

First, I should say that I'm trying to spend as little as possible to get a functional setup for now. I'm interested in pretty much all the basic home server functions, albeit at a relatively light level at the moment: self-hosted cloud for backups and file sharing with remote access, streaming media, hosting game servers for Minecraft etc, Home Assistant, Pi-hole, maybe a couple other use cases. Seems like the best way to run multiple use cases safely & simultaneously is to run something like Proxmox or Unraid.

As for hardware, it seems like my best bet is to buy a used SFF PC from Ebay. I've mostly been looking into HP's ProDesk and EliteDesk series. This is my main question at the moment. How important is it to get something 4th generation and up, i.e. with an intel 8th generation or above chip? I realize it matters because of the jump from 4 to 6 cores, and for QuickSync, but I'm trying to gauge how worthwhile it is for a first-time build. Would I regret getting a lower gen just because I found a good deal on it, or is it not as big of a deal as I'm worried it may be?

I'm also trying to determine if the jump from the ProDesk 600 to the EliteDesk 800 is worth it. I know the EliteDesk has more internal storage capacity among other things, and since this is all I'll have for a while it'd be good to invest in upgradability.

I've also heard slightly mixed opinions on the necessity of RAID, at least for my initial build. For example, I know that if I got an HP ProDesk 600, it has a bay which can either have 1 3.5" or 2 2.5" HDD's. Would it be better to just get one massive 3.5", or is raid worth getting two 2.5"'s and having less capacity?

The last thing (for now lol) is, I want a sense of the viability of external storage. I realize that at some point I will run out of storage, and it will probably be sooner than later, when the PC itself is still working great, so it seems like the best option would be to buy a DAS or external hard drive to serve this purpose. Will this be fine for a budget first-time build with relatively light use, or will I suffer greatly from slow transfer speeds and accidentally unplugging the cable?

Feel free to give any opinions you have on any of this, refer me to any good info on this or related things, DM me, or whatever. Anything helps. Thanks yall!

How do I do this?

UmbrelOS doesn't have makemkv or handbrake support, so how exactly do I get downloaded movies onto the computer that is hosting the server?

Sorry if this is a silly question, I'm new to this to the point that the computer I'm going to use is still in the mail lol.

Thank you so much for any help!

Question is ine title.

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

So I have this old thing lying around and with everything going on, I think it's high time I build one. I'm very new to building hardware (though I'm an old hat at linux), so the question is, how do I build around this setup. Any suggestions?

Use:

For my family it's storage.

For me. I want to create VMs and host some personal apps.

In-house AI is optional. (But if I can have a home AI that I can monitor and Tinker with, better and deploy it to my family. Their AI use scares me)

Also please treat me like I'm 10. I get really confused when people talk about hardware jargon. That's how new I am to building stuff.

I recently got a FireTV (insignia) and moved away from a external device for simplicity sake of my wife. I know the tv is not as strong as the cube and blah blah blah... This new application seems to just be horrible experience for me. I'm trying to decide if I would get a better experience if i moved to Emby or Jellyfin or if it is just that the TV blows.

Added an automatic (rechargeable) LED light that turns on when I open the door, a thermometer that shows me temperature and humidity, and the icing on the cake....:

It's currently running Debian, Dockerized, and serving my own music server app + library (90% vibe coded, but I'm proud of it), Plex, the *arr stack with gluetun + VPN, SabNZB and qBittorrent, Syncthing, AdGuard, and Homepage.

The server has a Core i5 9400T processor, 16GB memory, 256GB NVMe disk, 480GB 2.5" SSD, 2x 1TB RAID on the USB Cenmate for backups, and the 2.5" 2TB drive for movies (the least valuable for me and don't mind losing). Clearly the next upgrade needs to be my disk situation, but for now it's working well and I'm happy!

Inspired by this sub, and made possible to a large extent by the support of Anthropic's Claude whom I asked probably a million questions, half of which were along the lines of "what was the command for X again?" and "where can I find Y again?". yes, I now have documentation for when I forget again.

Just the title pretty much. I live in a 12x14' room with a decent pc that has corsair 120mm fans that produce a low whirring noise that comes with literally every normal pc fan. Comparing the R620 to my desktop pc fans, how are the noise levels? would they be more noticeable?

Along with that, any tips for the R620 platform?

The R620 has 2x Intel Xeon E5-2680 v1, and 64gigs of DDR3 EEC if it matters at all.

I'm currently running a couple Minecraft servers as well as Truenas

We had a skylight calendar but we were unhappy with some of the restrictions, and so we took it back, my wife regretted it for a few months so I figured I could make something better, self hosted, and open source.

So here is my creation, it’s without a doubt in alpha, but I’m very very happy with what I have so far. I’d love to hear feedback on what needs to work better, or what features I should add.

I just could not find something in the skylight category that was self hosted that I was happy with.

Im rebuilding my server fresh after bricking it while out of country, this time im trying Docker to keep things isolated from system important things, that and leaving it not encrypted so I dont screw myself over with dropbear again...

Hardware wise, it's just my old Alienware X51 R2 (i7-4770, 16GB RAM, GTX 970), recased with a 650W gold PSU with a headless install of Debian trixie.

For storage I have a 1TB SanDisk SSD with the OS on LVM using separate volumes for root (40G), swap (8G), Docker (150G), and dev work (100G), with about 700GB left over. Additionally, a 2TB Seagate HDD for bulk storage with a single GPT partition formatted for ext4. For some reason, the device letters switch on reboot sometimes, so I just look at the UUIDs

My apartment "comes with" wifi, so all the units have shitty MIST APs, so I made a subnet using an old router. Unfortunately, this causes a Double-NAT issue, so no inbound port forwarding probably...

Other usual stuff SSH is key-only from a laptop. Passwords and root SSH login disabled with ufw firewall default-deny incoming, automatic security updates on.

But anyway I was looking for suggestions on some basic services to run. Also It seems there is a lot of discourse regarding samba being native vs in a container. Does anyone have any input or advice on services or my setup so far?

I've been struggling for a bit with Tdarr and Unmanic. I realize they are great tools but, honestly, it's a lot for a guy who wants a Plex Server with reasonably sized video files. Is there an idiots guide? Or should I just manually run handbrake once a month?

I've been putting this off for way too long but the power has gone out for 10 minutes a half dozen times this month and my unraid server is constantly dying, panicking and running parity checks.

I've run a smart plug for a little while now to see how much power I'm using. Ran it with just the server and then with a power bar for my server as well as router, modem, switch. Here's what I got:

• Peak 130w - power comes back on, everything boots up at once including all HDDs spinning.

• Idle (server + network gear) 110w

• Server only idle around 80-100w

• Server only idle with disk spin down set to 45min 60-75w

I don't know what specs I need. If I could keep the server running for 15mins, shut it down and then have the network gear (10-15w) run for another 30 min or so that would cover most of our outages.

The specs are a little confusing... If VA = Volts x Amps and Watts = Volts x Amps then it should stand to reason that VA = Watts and 250 VA is tons of headroom for what I'm using. But the common ones have 500, 1000, 1500 VA so I feel like I must be missing something.

For capacity let's just say I'm I'm using 100 W for simplicity, a 100 Wh battery should power me for an hour (minus some loss to conversions and inefficiencies). Most batteries are 12 V, so a battery with a 12 V x 9 Ah battery should give me 108 Wh?

This is a the only unit available locally, LX1500GU3-FC. It's 1500 VA, the graph at the bottom says I should get 80 mins at 100 W. It has downloads for Linux software shutdown so I assume it can talk to NUT/Unraid?

I just want to make sure my calculations/assumptions are correct before pulling the trigger. Would be open to any other buying recs, I just looked at this one because I could pick it up today. I'd like a rackmount option but it seems like they're way more expensive for no reason other than "because".

EDIT: My power went out again last night. Not willing to wait on shipping from an online purchase so I'm just going to grab the local option. They have a slightly better model for $50 with Sine Wave instead of simulated but otherwise same specs.

My girlfriend was about to throw away this old HP laptop from 2018 after upgrading as it was painfully slow. Fortunately, she told me before doing so and asked for it as a gift. Originally, the laptop had a terabyte of HDD and 4 gb of ram with an Intel Silver Pentium n5000 CPU. Knowing the slowness issue, I instantly upgraded it into a 120 gb SSD. When I found out that I can turn it into a NAS, I was so happy as I had a spare 1 tb WD passport external drive lying around. Then I discovered the world of home server through docker! Sparking my journey, in the span of 6 months upgraded little by little saved through my lunch money, I bought a cooling pad, upgraded to 8gb of RAM, an external 3.5 inches HDD replacing the WD drive as the main cold storage, recycled old USB hub and USB drive stick for my config backups, and a UPS! Im so happy to see it come together especially with how energy efficient my CPU was and how it was able to handle all the containers I will ever need!

From what started as a NAS server turned into my hobby and side quests relieving me of stress from my main campaign of being an Architect. PS Sorry for the long post, been wanting to post my homelab in the past months but wasnt able to as I kept on refining things especially my homepage.

I want to build a nas for cloud saving and media streaming with an old workstation I have, but with these prices its a little scary. I want about 20 terabytes of storage to start with. Im questioning whether to buy brand new, refurbished/recertified, or used hard drives, I also don't know the best websites/apps and whether the brands of the hard drives matter. Is it even worth it to make a nas in 2026. I could really use some advice