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Re: [Sheflug] Home recommendations



On 2025-02-28 16:12:23, Perry Ismangil wrote:
The one thing I did not regret buying for home is 4 bay Network Attached
Storage, from Synology. It's still well supported after a long time,
receiving updates etc.

Seconded, we have one at work and it has been running for 13 years now with zero issues. Ours does only storage, but it has a good suite of other apps you can run (e.g. a mesh VPN like tailscale or zerotier).

At home I run an OS called XigmaNAS, a no-frills NAS-centred freeBSD. It's like freeNAS used to be before they changed to a more enterprise focus.

On the remote-access front, if you are interested, I would very much recommend one of these peer to peer vpns (zerotier, tailscale, nebula et al). Yes you have to install the clients on every machine instead of just setting up your router, but the advantage is that it punches through NAT pretty much wherever you are without any hassle.

I tend to run lots of boxes but it's because I am old and my stuff has been running for years. An old NAS. A kodi media player (recently put a jellyfin server in there too for multi-device access). A homeassistant server (for controlling radiators).

However I have noticed a lot of people just having one box and running proxmox on it. To be frank this seems like a better setup. I tried proxmox at work and was very impressed with how easy it was to set up VMs.

On a networking front I have a very tall narrow house, so I found several wifi points have helped for wifi coverage. Ubiquiti is ok, if you can get Ruckus it's even better. eBay is good for this. Ruckus APs have the controller on board the actual devices so you don't have to run a server to run the network. If the controller goes down, another AP takes over.

We have a PoE switch in the cellar that powers all the wifi APs. It's neat only having one cable to each hotspot, but be warned some of these swtiches have noisy fans designed for datacentres. I'm very lucky to be able to hide it away. (my NAS is also horrifically noisy and hides downstairs next to the switch).

If you are into running your own router/firewall I can vouch for opnsense. I have a device from Protectli that runs opnsense but I gather you can get similar devices for cheaper elsewhere. Also you could just build your own.

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