I’m a techie by trade who matured using proprietary technologies like Windows, but reached my breaking point once ads were introduced at the OS level. Since then I’ve been on something of a personal vendetta against big tech. It’s been about 4 years now, and I thought I’d share my experience.
My first and predominant interest was securing a means of private communication that wasn’t centralised. Like many before me, I stumbled upon Matrix. Adoption was problematic; I couldn’t help people understand why using WhatsApp, Discord, etc. was a bad idea. But ultimately I managed to convince most of the people in my circle to migrate to my Matrix server by adding IdP (using Keycloak). The login is also tied to various other services, but the carrot that drew most of them in was my Jellyfin instance.
It’s running on a home server with ~60TB of hard drive space, and each user also has access to Seerr for requesting content, so it’s become quite an extensive library over time. Building the server cost somewhere in the region of 5k to set up (it hosts far more than just Jellyfin), plus a small monthly fee for the VPS I use as a reverse proxy. I offer everything free of charge as a labour of love for the people I care about.
I also provide free tech support to any of my users running any instance of Linux, both hardware and software. Windows users are advised to search their issues online, or allow me to install a dualboot Linux option to help them reach a resolution. I even go as far as offering a free 256GB NVMe for this purpose, provided they’ve a free M2 slot in their builds.
In my experience, bringing the layperson into the open source world is definitely possible, but it comes at great personal expense. People don’t like change, but evidently they hate adverts even more so.
I’m keen to hear about others with similar experiences this far down the rabbit hole. what have you found that works in helping with wider adoption of open source technologies in your communities?
Could you provide some details on your media server setup? How is your data stored? What kind of hardware and software solutions do you have in place for that media library, how does it connect to the server, and do you have a backup solution for that much storage?
Thanks for any and all details you are willing to share. 🙏🫶 I’m looking to migrate my media server (Jellyfin also) from inside a normal PC case to some kind of server setup. Not a whole rack that fits in a closet or anything. Just something less Desktop PC-y.
Sure, I’d be more than happy to! It’s a home server build that started life as a gaming pc, so it’s not a rack setup in any stretch of the imagination. I’m not at home currently so can’t give exact specs offhand, but the setup is essentially:
OS: Ubuntu running on 256gb NVMe (not backed up I just replace if/when it fails)
Jellyfin/Navidrome Media: 3 SATA HDDs totalling ~60TB (2 x 15TBs, 1 30TB, no RAID, no backup. I call this my replaceable media, as I can simply redownload if a drive fails)
Config/compose files and ‘irreplacable’ data stores: 2 x 4TB NVMe (RAID 1, 7 rolling daily backups, 4 rolling weekly to a much more modest machine on the same network. This includes configuration/database etc. for jellyfin)
Entry points are all handled via a single VPS using a wire guard reverse proxy. So I’m using domain based access for all services I’m running. The only one that seems to struggle is Navidrome, which can lose sync. But jellyfin works flawlessly with this setup.
Off the top of my head, I believe the specs are something like:
The case itself is a fractal meshify 2 XL. I got it due to the lack of RGB way back when, but it fits everything listed quite comfortably, as well as an AIO cooling system for the CPU.
If you’re looking for large storage solutions, NAS servers definitely fit the bill, and make setting up RAID a breeze. But you can quite easily find large scale SATA based drives, which fit into most mid to large cases, commercial or personal. My current build is nearly at its limit now (I think there’s a single available sata port left… Maybe another M2, can’t recall), so going forward I will likely invest in a decent NAS, but I’ve never felt the need for a rack solution if I’m honest.
Another thing worth mentioning is that the server is not quiet. The ironwolf drives in particular can drum up a fair bit of noise when busy. I’ve got the server setup in my home office, so it’s no issue personally. But it would definitely cause me sleep issues if it were in my bedroom.
Solid.
I like that you’ve done what I’ve done - considered what’s actually worth backing up and what can be replaced. So many people when selfhosting don’t make that distinction and get overwhelmed when they try to back up /everything/ - so much so they don’t bother, or half-arse it. (No 3-2-1, no periodic restores to test, no offsite or what-ifs etc)
Making that plan to save what’s important reduces the burden hugely.
Thanks, Glad to hear I’m not the only one and there’s method to the madness! I did start out with building in redundancy into the media drives, but once space ran out I came to the same conclusion. Nobodies going to cry if the ~27 seasons of law and order need to be redownloaded, so there’s no problem with a lack of redundancy.