You know what finally pushed me to start my homelab adventure (after deciding to self host my Telegram chatbot which I havent)? My wife’s ever-increasing Google Photos subscription! While I tried nudging her toward OneDrive’s family plan, discovering Immich opened up a whole new world of possibilities that got me genuinely excited about self-hosting.
Looking around my desk, I found a couple of hard drives gathering dust and thought, “Hey, maybe I should get a Synology NAS.” But wow, those prices! Even without drives, they were asking for a small fortune. Sure, it would’ve been plug-and-play, but where’s the fun in that? Besides, I love a good DIY project.
The universe must have been smiling at me because the timing couldn’t have been better. Between 11.11 and Black Friday/Cyber Monday, the deals were practically irresistible! After diving deep into research, I found myself caught between Unraid and TrueNAS. Unraid won my heart with its flexibility – perfect for someone like me who wants to grow their storage organically.
Then came the reality check – my wife’s photo collection was over 1TB! That’s when I knew my initial storage plans needed a serious upgrade. Black Friday to the rescue again with two 4TB NAS drives!
Setting up Immich was my next challenge. While I could have gone the LXC route with a mounted NAS share, Docker on Unraid just felt right. And you know what? It’s working like a charm in its current Docker-in-VM setup.
Black Friday’s bounty also included two Unraid starter licenses. Installing it on my old PC was surprisingly smooth – got two 1TB drives running with shares that my Android phone could access without breaking a sweat. But here’s where it got interesting: Samba shares over Wireguard? Not the remote access solution of my dreams. I’ve got my eye on File Browser now, though I haven’t taken it for a spin yet.
For now, I’m like a kid waiting for Christmas – those NAS drives can’t arrive soon enough so I can give Immich a proper home on Unraid. Still scratching my head about the perfect 3-2-1 backup strategy. Backblaze looks promising, but moving mountains of data? That’s going to be an adventure in itself!