Gonna check it out!
Is it easy to setup automatic responses to the alerts, f.e. restarting a service if it isn’t answering requests in a timely manner?
Have you used it together with Windows Servers too?

I’ve used SNMP a lot together with nagios so I should be able to handle it. :D

I’ll have a look! Cheers!

Cheers! I’ve heard of Prometheus/Grafana but VictoriaMetrics was a new one. Gonna look into it!

I consider client devices to be a big risk factor and if I can keep them from having direct access to the Backup NAS and the IoT I consider that a big win. A simple ransomware attack on a client device would find any NFS/SMB shares the client can access and start encrypting - having the Backup NAS on a separate VLAN that only the server can access stops most of those from affecting the backup and makes restoring a lot easier. I would definitely recommend having an offline backup of the NAS as well in case of the server being breached.

I agree with this, protecting everything behind a VPN is the way to go. I help friends setup their vpn client to my stuff if I want them to access an internal service.

• Single switch, yes. Personally I would probably aim for a managed (must have for vlan support) switch with at least 16 ports where 8 has PoE+ (Power over Ethernet) with at least 100W total budget. The goal would be to power access points and that security camera through PoE instead of separate psus.
  A cheaper alternative is to skip PoE for now and buy an 8-port managed switch now and a secondary PoE switch in the future if need be.
• There are access points with VLAN support, so you can have an access point deliver multiple SSIDs that belong to different VLANs. Two things to look for here is Local Management and PoE powered. You don’t want your access points to become paper weights when the cloud management system is shut down. I don’t want to use cloud management at all to be honest.
• PoE allows you to protect your camera and your APs with the same UPS you put in to protect your network rack.

Draw up some plans beforehand, quick example where I forgot your video doorbell that would be on a separate SSID/VLAN through the APs if it uses WiFi. Which is kind of the point with drawing it up. It helps you find out what you missed.

edit: And that is just an example on how to draw it up. I imagine you want your security camera and doorbell to save video on the NAS, so then their vlan need to be able to communicate with the NAS vlan, as another example of missing stuff in the drawing.

If you go for SSD another thing to think about is the TBW on them. Buying a low endurance SSD might save some electricity but will cost more in SSDs over time. Example:
Crucial P3 Plus M.2 NVMe SSD 2TB (2.67W on your link) has 440TBW compared to Kingston Fury Renegade M.2 NVMe SSD Gen 4 2TB (4.92W on your link) with 2000TBW.
Those few watts you save on using the Crucial P3 Plus will be less than the extra cost in buying new SSDs earlier.
The site I checked TBW on has the Kingston Fury at $9.4 more than the Crucial P3 Plus.

I think proper datacenter 3.5’’ HDDs will give you the most efficient Wattage per TB disk space
Seagate Exos X20 Harddisk ST20000NM007D 20TB SATA-600 7200rpm is supposed to have
Power Consumption 5.4 Watt (idle) | 9.4 Watt (random read) | 6.4 Watt (random write)

Regarding management UIs I’m a fan of Cockpit (https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit https://cockpit-project.org/)

Regarding management UIs for docker I believe most use either portainer (https://github.com/portainer/portainer https://www.portainer.io/) or dockge (https://github.com/louislam/dockge https://dockge.kuma.pet/).

Regarding Samba most NAS devices simplify it a lot, but it isn’t that complicated to do on Fedora either and once you’ve got it setup it’s not gonna need a lot of tinkering. (https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/quick-docs/samba/)

Whether you invest in a NAS or not I recommend you invest in a USB disk large enough to act as a backup for the storage disks. That’s not an investment for later but one you want right away. And do make certain it takes backups, not replicates data. A popular option is Borg Backup (https://github.com/borgbackup/borg https://www.borgbackup.org/)
If I went for a NAS I would Borg Backup the laptop to the NAS and then use the NAS own backup software to backup to the USB.

If you liveboot Fedora or something with USB - how’s the upload then?
Should be a quick way to determine if it’s software or hardware based.

edit - Seems that others have had upload troubles with latest Proxmox and fixed it by downgrading:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Proxmox/comments/19d0bf7/slow_upstream_thru_proxmox81/

So… no need for a DE :)

No real need for me to remove it either, but your point stands. :)

Cockpit
I do know about and use Cockpit with said virtual machine manager but I mostly use it as a shutdown/boot/restart app in my phone and a convenient service monitor and log viewer when troubleshooting.

Wireguard/OpenVPN
I really should try out Wireguard sometime but currently OpenVPN is fast enough for my bandwidth and I was already proficient with setting it up before Wireguard.
The WebUI definitely looks useful.

For linux this is as easy as script <filename>, ex:
[user@fedoragaming ~]$ script 20240313InstallingJellyfin.log
Script started, output log file is ‘20240313InstallingJellyfin.log’.
[user@fedoragaming ~]$ exit
exit
Script done.

edit: and for Windows I recommend using putty, it can also save sessions to logs.

My Debian Hypervisor do have a DE (GNOME) to be able to easily access virtual machines with virt-manager if I mess up their networking, my Debian VMs run CLI only though.

Regarding your last section I agree strongly - I only expose my vpn with no other incoming ports open. You also don’t need to invest in a domain if you do it this way.
I don’t mind helping my friends install their openvpn client and certificate and it’s nice to not have my services bombarded with failed connection attempts.

I definitely agree on starting to tinker right away and to setup snapshot/backup for your stuff and then break it. It also makes one learn how to roll back and restore which is as important as setting up the snapshot/backup in the first place.

Basic knowledge that makes selfhosting easier

1. Some networking basics (Firewall, VPN, NAT, DHCP, ARP, VLAN) makes every selfhosters life easier.
   1b. Your ISP router probably sucks, but you might be able to experiment with some static DHCP at least. I’m a fan of the BSD based routers opnsense/pfsense but depending on what router you have you might also be able to run OpenWrt on your existing router.
2. Some management system and filesharing basics (NFS, SMB, SSH, SCP and SFTP).
3. Learning how to set up a backup for your stuff. The hypervisor you choose may or may not have a built in solution.
4. Checking out a few different hypervisors (Proxmox, Incus, KVM/QEMU, etc) and find out which one you wanna dive deeper into.
   4b. Learn how to make a snapshot for easy rollback in said hypervisor ASAP. Being able to undo the last changes that broke a machine is a godsend.
   4c. VM, LXC, Docker and Podman basics (what are they, how do they differ, which one fits my usecase?)
   
   I know Flackbox has a good CCNA (networking) study guide on youtube, but that is way too in depth for a self hosting beginner.
   Here’s some introduction to different parts of the network:
   Free CCNA 200-301 Course 06-05: IPv4 Addresses
   Free CCNA 200-301 Course 23-01: DHCP Introduction
   Free CCNA 200-301 Course 12-04: ARP Address Resolution Protocol
   Free CCNA 200-301 Course 21-01: VLANs Introduction
   Free CCNA 200-301 Course 21-04: Why we have VLANs

Yeah getting stuck behind CGNAT IPv4 and no IPv6 would break setting up your own vpn server. That would cause me too look for another internet provider.
I only got 100mbps at home so I’m still running openvpn as I don’t gain anything worthwhile from wireguard.

I honestly prefer selfhosting my home vpn using Wireguard or OpenVPN.

Material Files support both SMB and SFTP - https://f-droid.org/en/packages/me.zhanghai.android.files/

Any router that supports latest openwrt will be able to do a mesh network, if you have the option to run cable I would recommend ethernet backhaul instead.

Sometimes there are caveats when setting up the mesh, f.e. the firmware issue and fix here:
https://www.tekovic.com/blog/openwrt-80211s-mesh-networking/

Hardware list:
https://openwrt.org/toh/start?toh.filter.supportedcurrentrel=22.03|23.05

edit:
OpenWrt Mesh guide:
https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/80211s
https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/mesh11sd

edit 2 adding the openwrt warning here:
It is unfortunate that some manufacturers have used the word “Mesh” for marketing purposes to describe their non-standard, closed source, proprietary “roaming” functionality and this causes great confusion to many people when they enter the world of international standards and open source firmware for their network infrastructure.

The accepted standard for mesh networks is ieee802.11s.
The accepted standard for fast roaming of user devices is ieee802.11r.

These are two completely unrelated standards.