Comment on Server upgrade/replacement help
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 2 weeks agoI would (read: does) keep it that way. When your server inevitably goes belly up because of a misconfigured firewall or whatever you’ll thank yourself when the lights still turn on and your robot vacuum keeps going.
I have considered that and am not 100% decided either way but would love the convenience of having everything in one place though this can also he a drawback like you mentioned and “in one place” is just a matter of opening a new browser tab even if it’s on a separate machine, so maybe not really worth it. The Pi actually boots off a SSD since I’ve been burned by faulty SD cards in the past so it should be solid.
What’s wrong with keeping your old hardware?
I would actually love to reuse as much as possible since a primarily media server doesn’t need a lot of horsepower. I am wanting to go to an Intel GPU so that I could ditch the 1080TI and I can get them for a discounted price, but another user suggested the 5700g which would allow me to keep the mobo and RAM. The case is actually fantastic for being quiet, and the PSU is a decent platinum grade from when it was originally built. So all is looking good here except for the data transfer aspect since I need an intermediary machine to transfer from but I do have a few SFF PCs, micro PCs and laptops sitting around collecting dust that might be up to the task.
As for the OS. “Not Windows” is probably a bit intimidating at first but you seem to be pretty technical so it isn’t really an issue as long as you can read and process information.
This is going to be another challenge as I have played around with Ubuntu in the past and have a basic understanding of CLI, but struggled with random issues and getting myself into trouble and not knowing how to get back out of it. “You don’t know what you don’t know” was really in play after stuff like an update would cause everything to come crashing down and not knowing why. With my hobbies, it seems like something I really should learn but have really struggled with. I’m sure a lot was hidden with editing magic but the video I watched on TrueNAS made it look easy to pick up with a nice GUI so that I’m not spending all my time pasting esoteric commands into a terminal.
I wouldn’t mind a mini rack but don’t have anywhere to put it. Maybe when we move to a new house someday, that’ll be one of the first things I get.
fry@lemmy.sdf.org 1 week ago
TrueNAS might be a good middle ground then. Haven’t used it myself but I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about it (and it’s predecessor).
It really comes down to personal preference. A pure Linux distribution for example is certainly more flexible and will absolutely do everything and more that TrueNAS does. But a nice gui where everything just works and does exactly what you need sounds x100 times better than spending a whole weekend trying to fix something that you borked by accident. And if you want to learn how things work under the hood later on, you can do it at your own pace. At a certain point those terminal commands will stop being esoteric and start making sense.
If you have some old hardware just lying around, then install it and try it out. Just dip your toes and evaluate for a few days/weeks.
Also - after some quick googling. Mounting your windows disks shouldn’t be a problem. So no need for some temporary/intermediate storage unless you want another backup.