So I’m wanting to get into self hosting, and I could use some advice! I’m not sure which device to use for what. There’s a lot I’d like to do, and I don’t know how I should divide everything up by use case.

Should I have a dedicated network device for security, handling domain blocking and VPN?

Roughly how much processing power should I be devoting to this?

And how should I deal with gaming in two locations? (It seems like it would be annoying to have to start up my desktop PC every time I want to play games on the couch. Is it viable to just run everything from the PC and use a thin client for desktop and couch usage, or is latency going to be a huge issue? It’s probably not good for stability, either.)

My list of devices I can use:

Desktop PC, RPi, Intel compute stick, and an old laptop. I’d be willing to get more hardware, but not looking to spend big.

The full list of what I’d like to do:

Pihole/adguard, wireguard VPN (I’d like to route my phone traffic through my home network. Currently using TrackerControl, but I’d like tracker/ad blocking with a regular vpn too, and it would also be nice to be able to manage things remotely)

HTPC interface, with the ability to play games from desktop or couch

Home assistant (Maybe with voice recognition? That’s a low priority though)

Nextcloud and/or NAS, Media management with *arr, as well as some easy backup solution

And some headroom for a few other miscellaneous things. (Minecraft server? Website / email? All low priority.)

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance for any help or suggestions. I wrote out as much as I can to hopefully avoid the XY problem. I just don’t know where to start, and I don’t want to set everything up and then immediately realize I should have done it all differently!

  • DecentM@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Depending on your specs, I don’t think you need to buy hardware. You can scale later if you run out of resources. This is how I’d separate your stuff:

    • Desktop: SteamOS (or Bazzite IMO), for gaming. Install Kodi on it for the HTPC interface, and add a shortcut to it on the big picture UI
    • RPi: Home Assistant OS. They have images for the Pi, which will let you install updates and addons from the gui. Addons are just containers, so you may be able to run a service or two if you run out of resources on the other machines.
    • Compute stick: Some server OS (I personally like Fedora Server, but loads of options are available here. Bazzite is Fedora based, so you can use knowledge you gain on one, on the other). Nextcloud (reconsider this, Nextcloud is a complaint magnet from what I can well, there are alternatives to most of its functions), your *arrs, torrent client etc. Stuff that is okay if it goes down for a bit.
    • Laptop: Same OS as the compute stick. Whatever doesn’t fit the stick, plus Pihole/Adguard. For DNS though, I’d recommend using a cloud provider instead of self hosted, because if it goes down, you’ll be stuck reconfiguring your DNS before fixing it (since if dns goes down, you can’t easily access websites to look up stuff). IMO NextDNS is a good option, both free and paid tiers, and it does adblock lists too.

    Edit:

    • For remote management, ZeroTier and Tailscale are both good options at the moment. I use Tailscale, but they recently announced they want to IPO at some point, so I’ll be moving to Headscale (the self hosted version essentially) if they start enshittifying.
    • For remote gaming, check if Steam remote play works, or set up a Sunshine server on your PC.