Is HexOS right for me?

[Tyler Holdener]

Sorry in advance if this isn't the right place to post this.

 

I setup a homeserver a few years ago that is currently held together by good vibes and duct-tape. I want to make something more streamlined and better organized than whatever it is I have going on now.

I am currently running windows 11 with an ubuntu VM that handles all my docker containers. I was curious if I could just run HexOS and use it's on app store to more or less recreate my environment. I have listed the services I use below along with the specs of the PC (the drives are setup super weirdly I know) Thanks! 🙂

 

PC Specs:

 CPU: i7-9700k

GPU: nvidia 3080

RAM: 64gb DDR4

Storage:

2x 500GB SSD drives (one for the operating system and one for a backup)

1x 6TB SATA (first drive I got for setting up media still holds some movies and TV shows)

1x 20TB SATA (Media, tv, movies etc)

2x 8TB SATA that are currently configured in a RAID0 I know this is weird I was learning and never raided a drive before (More media)

 

Services:

Windows: .Arr stack (Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr), OMBI, NZBget, qbitorrent, RustDesk, Scaletail and Tantualli 

Link/Docker Containers: Portainer, Adguard Home, Karakeep, Homepage

 

I've already backedup all my configs and wiping all the media off my drives isn't a big issue since there is nothing important on them. Any help of advice would be appreciated. 

 

[mill3000]

Hello.  If you want to run a Windows VM then hold off on buying till we release that feature. Also try to setup your drives the following.

Boot drives. 2 256 GB or 128 GB drives.

3 Hard drives for data. 3 minimum so it can grow. 

If possible 2 NVMe drives for apps. This makes everything run much faster. 512 GB or 1 TB should be good. 

Also a good branded UPS. 

 

Hope this helps.

[Todd Miller]

Hmm.  I believe the simple answer is yes.  Now let's dig deeper.  The ninth gen chip, GPU and memory amount are will within specs.  I hesitate to get into your storage with so many drives and sizes.  Are you intending to create multiple pools to allow the single large drives to run at full capacity?  You may have some additional planning to do there as it looks like @mill3000has already given you a starting point to work from.  As far as "more or less recreate my environment" there doesn't look like there are any major hurdles beyond the VM and as you see, that is in the works.

Now for the question I am morally obligated to ask. why HexOS?  Or more specifically, what do you looking for from HexoS and beyond the marketing materials, what do you know about HexOS?  For me, I have a production Unraid setup on equipment a generation newer.  It performs exactly as I need but I don't touch it.  If it breaks I phone a friend.  Offering beer and pizza get me nearly 24/7 support from the person who set it all up and does yearly upgrades or from their equally network smart spouse.  Really, I don't touch it.  I don't like this situation but as I watched them set it up I knew it was out of my league.  When I want to add media or docs I have a landing directory mapped to windows and I run specific BAT jobs to handle all the processing.  So it all works.  I just don't know how.  That is why I got HexOS.  I got way newer hardware thinking if something fails I want it to be something I did.  I picked Unraid over TrueNAS and Docker or (I think) Portainer under Linux and wasn't really interested in learning and of that.  HexOS sounded simple to run and it has been simple for me to run and manage.  I personally don't care about VM's today but that is an example of the handful of things you need to understand about HexOS. 

As of today and in my opinion, it has a simple and straightforward setup.  That setup makes some assumptions that make sense if you want to install some of their 23 "curated" apps.  I had trouble with the first apps I installed 15 months ago but with a little research and talking to a few others in the same boat it was easy to work around.  With the exception of the last batch of apps added to the curated list I have installed them all to see if I would find any issues.  I have also added about 5 apps not curated following guides on youtube.  The only real downside to me of HexOS is it's dependent on TrueNAS.  I saw this up front when I purchased the app so I went in eyes wide open considering the fact that I really didn't want to learn TrueNAS.  To be specific, I underestimated how much time I would need to spend in TrueNAS verses HexOS.  I welcome rebuttal to my next statement but in my case I believe it to be true.  If I stand by my original reasoning for buying HexOS, then I expect to be almost completely satisfied.  And where I might not be, it's not HexOS that caused the issue.  I can't believe Realtek and TrueNAS haven't found a solution to my transfer speed being reduced by 90% on a straight copy.  I expect I will install Jellyfin, Immich and Tailscale but even in those cases, this issues I have had are in the hands of Jellyfin and Immich.  It sounds like you are looking for a little more that the core HexOS application so your mileage may vary.  And when you are told what is being worked on for the future (and that does not happen nearly often enough), it's a pretty aggressive list of potential life improvements.  On a side note, I have no idea what the "ARR stack" is or does but it was requested and seems to make folks happier?  Don't buy anything until you are ready but I don't regret my purchase.