Good day, friends. Since catching the self-hosting bug, I’ve set up a couple of Proxmox home servers with a bunch of services I enjoy.
Now I’d like to set up a server and local network on my sailboat so I can self-host servarr, pihole, and other services while traveling. The tricky part is that everything on the boat is 12V and I would rather not use an inverter, if possible. Also, it needs to be ultra-low power so I can leave it on at all times and not to deplete my batteries too much.
Criteria:
- ultra-low power
- Small form factor
- runs on 12V
- 10 TB of storage plus ability to make full local backup
- Capable of hosting servarr, audiobookshelf, freshrss, etc. via docker
- HDMI output
- Full local mirror/backup of the entire file system, including the media library.
- We will have two laptops and two Android phones to access the server, so the server doesn’t need to run a desktop environment.
I’ll have a mobile wifi router and a cellular signal booster (or maybe Starlink eventually) for internet access. Since internet bandwidth will be limited and expensive while traveling, I don’t want to have to re-download a massive media llibrary if the storage media fail. Thus, I want the media library to be mirrored or fully backed up or synced locally.
What hardware and Linux distro would you use in this situation?
Hmmm, looking at the cost of large SSDs, I think you’re right that I should downgrade my storage requirements. Or perhaps I could use a large HDD that is turned off while underway for “long-term” storage and a smaller SSD for media that I want immediately available. That would avoid the problem of spinning a HDD while bouncing around in high wind and waves.
And, yes, we do have books, lol. But we also enjoy movies. :)