Searching advice for selfhosting critical data

Submitted ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨hamsda@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

Hello everybody,

my plan is to switch from Android to GrapheneOS. In this process, I want to get rid of my reliance on my google account as much as possible.

To this end, I’d like to selfhost some “critical” data, e.g.

contacts
calendar
online drive for files (e.g. google drive alternative)
some basic note-taking app (like google keep)

and so on.

I do some selfhosting already, though it is not that kind of “cannot lose this” data. So I’d like to share my thoughts and ask for your opinions and experience for the process.

More details for what I want

contacts

have to be syncable to the phone
if possible, some webinterface to edit / browse

calendar

has to be syncable to the phone
webinterface + sync to desktop / phone
if possible, send invite-links to events to others

drive

files of my choosing must be offline-available
ever other file should not use storage on the phone
if possible, able to share links to download files
if possible, able to share links to view with online editor (see below)

document editor

think google sheets / google docs
if possible, able to share links to view documents online

smartphone photos

auto-backup camera folder

There may be some things I’m not thinking about right now, but this seems to pretty much be it.

If possible, all of this should be accessible only via vpn.

What I already have

I have a pfSense physical appliance that’s already managing my home network, got an OpenVPN already setup, dynamic DNS working properly for the lack of a static IP, etc.

I own 2 mini-PCs (some Intel NUC, some passive-cooled zotac with an intel with 4c/8t). One of them (zotac) is currently running as my Proxmox Virtual Environment Hypervisor, managing 3 VMs.

I also have a second PC which misses some critical parts, so it is not currently in working condition. I think there’s an AM4 mainboard and 16 or 32GB of DDR4 RAM in there. I could make a NAS or a new hypervisor out of this, but the case (Fractal Design Define 7) is quite big and a full PC is probably worse for energy-efficiency than my 2 mini-PCs and is going to be more expensive.

Not much in terms of storage sadly

1x 6TB external USB HDD (used for backups)
1x 2TB external USB HDD (used for data)

What I plan to do

The kind of data I’m going to be hosting myself now is very import, so it cannot be lost or corrupted.

But the feature list doesn’t seem to be overly complicated. This seems like something nextcloud could do.

This means, I will probably need to buy

2x 4 TB HDD for storage for data RAID
2x 8-10 TB HDD for backups
2x external RAID case

Then I could connect the data RAID to the already running zotac pc and spin up new VMs for nextcloud and whatever else I might need and start serving my data from home.

The Intel NUC will be used as a Proxmox Backup Server, connected to the backup RAID. Keeping some daily, weekly and monthly backups.

On the phone-side, I’d have the vpn always active. Whenever active, sync of contacts, calendar entries, photos etc. should be possible.

Questions

Is there anything I missed? Did any of you already try something like that? Does anybody here see a potential problem with any of the above?

Can anyone recommend a RAID-1 external enclosure without a fan and some quiet and energy-efficient HDDs?

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Comments

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themachine@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
As far as the “what you want” stuff goes, Nextcloud can do all of it and I use it for exactly that.

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- hamsda@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Oh, it’s nice to hear somebody already did that, thank you!
  
  Did you have any hiccups or general problems with nextcloud or calendar/contacts/photos sync? Did you do any specific thing to harden security, other than using ufw, fail2ban and changing sshd config?
  
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  - themachine@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Haven’t had any issues whatsoever.
    
    I’ve done nothing special regarding security and have it exposed to the public internet. I intend on having fail2ban look at its logs but I’ve not yet set that up (entirely out of laziness).
    
    If you want to be very secure I would recommend having it entirely behind a VPN. I personally use tailscale+headscale for my internal only services but like I said I have Nextcloud publicly exposed as I want to be able to access it from potentially any device.
    
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  - MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Nextcloud does have a problem with the online editor. It frequently bugs out and moves things out of order or just doesn’t feel snappy.
    
    Some time ago there was also saving issues
    
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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
For document editing, I have had fairly good luck with OnlyOffice, although it is not without its issues. Others also recommend Collabora, which plays well with NextCloud and LibreOffice.

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gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I’ve done this.

For contacts, calendar, and files, I use OwnCloud, although NextCloud is as good/better. I couldn’t figure out Self-Signing certificates, which is supposed to be pretty easy, but I am kind of a dummy. NextCloud requires it. On my phone, I use DAVx5, and I replaced the GrapheneOS stock apps with Fossify apps as needed - although that is up to personal preference.

For photos, I use Immich, which is hands-down the best option.

NextCloud also has options for document editing, photo backup, and notes, but I can’t testify to those.

Syncthing is an ideal way to seamlessly sync files and folders between devices, but you will end up with the files on both devices. I use it sparingly, and they are phasing out android support. It’s still very useful to migrate large file libraries and act as a stopgap for other services.

There are tons of notes apps, and it largely comes down to preference. I settled on NotallyX, which can import your Keep notes directly (using Google Takeout iirc). It also has the option to store files externally, which means they can be synced for backup. There are also self-hosted web-apps, like Memos, or the slightly more adventurous Blinko.

I got a lot of great input from this community not too long ago.

The one Google feature I am not able to reproduce is Google Messages. If you use texting to any degree, there are some FOSS apps with pretty nice basic features (I’m using Fossify which is nice). However, there are none that have solid group-messaging features, reactions, and other RCS capabilities. It seems to be a technical/logistical/legal hurdle that is presently insurmountable. Lots of people don’t use texting anyway, so it may not be a concern for you.

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- hamsda@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Thank you for sharing your experience of the process!
  
  On my phone, I use DAVx5
  
  I’m a little confused after looking at the website. What exactly does DAVx5 do? The regular re-sync of contacts, calendar and files itself? Shouldn’t that be done by the contacts app / calendar app on regular intervalls?
  
  with Fossify apps
  
  I just downloaded fossify calendar on my android a few days ago to test it and got to see the other fossify apps :)
  
  syncthing phasing out android support
  
  Oh man, I already use syncthing for ~5 GB of files and I use it on my android too. Seems I’ll be trying syncthing-android-fdroid in the future then.
  
  There are tons of notes apps
  
  There really are a lot! NotallyX looks nice and simple, but memos also looks very interesting. And thank you for the link, I’ll go dive into that tomorrow.
  
  The one Google feature I am not able to reproduce is Google Messages
  
  I do not need RCS-compatible messengers. What I send via SMS is nothing more than pure text, also no group chats. I use signal and element for my “fancy” messaging needs :)
  
  I use Tailscale
  
  I’ll look into it some more over the next days, but on a quick glance, this seems like it is an online service where you need an account? If that’s the case, I’d prefer using my already running OpenVPN server to do the job.
  
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  - gedaliyah@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    DAVx5 basically acts as the connector between your server and your calendar/contacts/files apps. I would imagine that this could be built into an app, but there are a lot of ways that such apps can sync or operate locally. I’m guessing that it is just a little more specialized than most developers want to get.
    
    Thanks for the Syncthing-Fork tip! For now the official version is working for me, but I’ll have to migrate myself soon.
    
    From my understanding, OpenVPN provides the same secure remote access as Tailscale, by a slightly different method. You should be fine to use what you’ve already set up.
    
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catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
3-2-1?

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- hamsda@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Thank you for your input!
  
  I also thought about the 3-2-1 backup rule, but am unsure if that is overkill.
  
  My VM-backups and file-level-backups are proxmox backup server (pbs) backups. Meaning, to have them offsite, I’d need to rent a dedicated root server on which I am able to install pbs to act as an offsite sync-target. With TB of backups, this is gonna get very costly very fast.
  
  I thought about regularly exporting encrypted calendar and contacts onto some free online storage, hoping I can automate this process.
  
  With what I have layed out in my post, to lose contacts and calendar events, both my intel NUC and the zotac mini-PC have to be corrupted at the same time. Or both RAIDs simultaniously failing both drives. Am I not paranoid enough or is that an acceptable level of failure-safety?
  
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  - catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨32⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
    Or a house fire, or flood, or lightning strike, or theft. Or just plain fat fingering something and deleting it all.
    
    If you really mean life-or-death critical, yeah, 3-2-1 is the starting point.
    
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  - MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    The offsite rule is mainly in the scenario where your house burns down for example, or if someone steals your stuff. It can happen.
    
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  - AtariDump@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    I also thought about the 3-2-1 backup rule, but am unsure if that is overkill.
    
    Maybe you shouldn’t be home hosting important data if you think this is overkill.
    
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garshol@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
ZFS on the bottom, Nextcloud on top. Which distro is up to you. Mine is to be set up with nix on my next refresh this fall. Already in testing.

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- hamsda@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Thank you for the tipp!
  
  Though I gotta ask: would ZFS still bring an advantage, considering that the RAID is going to be managed inside the external RAID enclosure, so ZFS would never see the actual disks? Or did I misunderstand how these enclosures work?
  
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Jjoiq@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Memos is pretty usefull for me. App on fdtoid momemos is superb. Syncthig takes care of google drive ish needs. Immich for photos.

Mealie keeps food interesting.

Have not done calendar or contacts yet.

Running a few on a low power pi5 using docker for the most backup pihole runs on baremetal.

1 16tb external and 2 5tb external. Not the best but i dig it.

I need a nuc.

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