I’ve never done any sort of home networking or self-hosting of any kind but thanks to Jellyfin and Mastodon I’ve become interested in the idea. As I understand it, physical servers (“bare metal” correct?) are PCs intended for data storing and hosting services instead of being used as a daily driver like my desktop. From my (admittedly) limited research, dedicated servers are a bit expensive. However, it seems that you can convert an old PC and even laptop into a server (examples here and here). But should I use that or are there dedicated servers at “affordable” price points. Since is this is first experience with self-hosting, which would be a better route to take?

  • Ebby@lemmy.ssba.comEnglish
    2·
    28 days ago

    Heck yeah! Old desktops or laptops are how most of us got started.

    Things to consider:

    • Power- this will be on 24/7 probably. That adds up
    • Speed- not just CPU, but RAM, disk access and network interface can limit how much data you want to move.
    • Noise- fans can suck (pun intended). Laptops tend to run quieter

    I’m sort of looking to upgrade and N100 or N150’s are looking good. Jellyfin can do transcoding so that takes a little grunt. This box would work well for me. It’s not a storage solution, but can run docker and a handful of services.