Help planning my homelab

[Glensafro]

Hi all,

NAS/Homelab newbie here and I'd appreciate a steer on what I'll need to plan for hardware-wise in order to achieve my goals over the next little while. 

First, a quick summary of where I'm currently at:

Using old gaming rig on Windows 10 as an HTPC/Plex server, based in the lounge. Basic specs are: i5 4690k / 8gb DDR3 RAM / GTX 960 / 250gb boot SSD / 2 x 4TB HDD storage drives in a two-way mirror using Windows Storage Spaces (I know, I know...)

Home Assistant running in docker (plus a few other containers for other things - cloudflared, mariaDB etc) on an old Mac Mini (i5 3210m / 16gb DDR3 / 500gb HDD

I'd like to bring things all under one roof in HexOS if I can, plus add some additional functionality, without spending a fortune. My current thoughts (assuming HexOS matures enough to deliver the features in their roadmap) are that I'd like to:

- Run HexOS natively

- Run Plex server directly on HexOS

- Ideally run Home Assistant directly on HexOS, but open to running it in a VM depending how the HexOS one-click implementation looks

- Run photo backup server with Immich directly on HexOS

- Run a VM with Windows 10 (required for Sky Go, and a couple of other apps)

- Ubuntu VM for other docker containers (cloudflared, mariaDB etc)

- I'd also like to begin using Frigate NVR in the next couple of years, but I'm not totally sure where that fits into the puzzle.

- Buddy backup with my brother's HexOS instance once that feature is introduced (and my ISP gets around to running FTTP to my address, but that's out of Eshtek's hands I guess)

I'd like to return the Mac Mini to its place at the heart of my guitar rig (don't ask), so I intend to retire that from any Homelab duties. My gut feeling is that the CPU I'm running in the HTPC won't be up to the task (I don't think the 4690k even supports virtualization anyway?) , and that adding at least one more storage drive to the mix would be beneficial for further expansion going forwards. 

I guess my biggest question is does my list of requirements look sensible, and what kind of bones would I need to support it? New CPU/RAM/Motherboard? New GPU for Plex transcoding? 

I know that's been lengthy, so to anyone who's bothered to read and reply you have my utmost thanks in advance!

 

Edited December 30, 2024 by Glensafro
Correction from Picasa to Immich

[Mobius]

if you are gonna be running multiple vms you may want to look into proxmox. From inside proxmox you can probably host 3 vms meeting your needs (Windows, ubuntu and HexOS)

[Glensafro]

I've seen a lot of people speak highly of proxmox so I'm open to using it, but I'm not that familiar with it. What would the advantage be of using that over VMs inside of HexOS? And would I need to upgrade my 4590k to run it?  

[Mobius]

Proxmox is built for the sole purpose of running vms efficiently. So it'll likely run smoother using less resources than hexos

But i don't use it myself so this this all hearsay 

I'm also not familiar enough with it to tell you if your cpu is strong enough for certain but my gut feeling is that ubuntu +Windows at the same time might be tough for your cpu since it's a quad core that's over a decade old.

[PsychoWards]

It depends on your use case and what you need. Do you mainly need the NAS and the VMs are just "nice to have" or are the VMs important and Hexos is just one part/VM of many for you?

If I see that you want to spin up Ubuntu and Windows, you might as well go with Proxmox and Hexos as a VM, however this comes with it's own challenges. A lot of guides on how to install truenas are outdated/recommend suboptimal settings and you can only pass-through your GPU to 1 VM, meaning if you pass through your GPU to hexos for plex streaming, you can not use it in your ubuntu VM for machine learning in Frigate NVR (this is just an example, not sure Frigate NVR uses GPU acccleration). But on the plus sidey Proxmox is specifically developed to manage VMs and you typically find a lotnof guides and help for itm

Whereas if you use barebone Hexos, you don't have to fiddle with the VM pass-through stuff for Hexos, but the VM managing part might be less optimal and less performant.

According to the Intel spec page, your CPU supports virtualisation. However, it will likely be on the week side if you want to run those 3 OSes together. Also Hexos requires minimum 8GB of RAM, meaning you need to significantly upgrade your memory. Your CPU supports max up to 32GB of RAM and that is probably what you should aim for, since 16GB might be to little.