Hey folks. I’ve been running a media and torrenting server off an Odroid HC2 running OpenMediaVault 6 on Armbian. It’s been doing pretty great, and I have it set to run docker containers for qBittorrent, ProtonVPN, the *arrs, etc.

The problem I’m running into is that the HC2 has an arm32 CPU that is not supported by most apps, so I’m stuck running old images. I want to upgrade to a newer mini PC/SBC that is more future-friendly. I’d like it to be capable of running Plex streaming at 4K, Radarr/Sonarr/Prowlarr, etc. as well as other apps as docker containers. I might repurpose the HC2 to just run self-hosted NextDNS.

Here are my questions:

  1. What mini PCs or SBCs would you recommend? I’m leaning strongly towards a mini PC over an SBC because it would be more powerful, I don’t need specialized software for it, recovery and backups are much easier, etc. I’m not too concerned about power usage unless it’s extravagant.
  2. Which OS would you recommend as a media server?
  3. What is the simplest way to transfer my server over with minimal fuss? I use private trackers, so I’ll have to very carefully stand up the new server and transfer over torrents, etc. in one fell swoop. I’m guessing I should just be able to install the apps and then transfer over the configurations and media files and change permissions, etc.
  4. Anything else I need to consider?

Thanks!

  • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    I’m in the same boat. My poor HC-2 is struggling on memory running Omada (WAP controller) and HomeBridge, among other things. I use Emby so I don’t need transcoding - supports 4k streaming just fine.

    Right now I’m looking at one of the fanless Intel four port software routers, like this one.. But for a machine like that I’m going to use ProxMox to spin up a Firewall/Router/VPN/Networking VM - not sure which OS/image. That will remain separate from my media and web serving. I will probably end up just off-loading the network tasks to the new machine, and leave my HC-2 running as a media server. That way I can restart and upgrade the systems independently. Using ProxMox, it may be possible to move the media services onto a second VM on the same machine, but I’m not sure what advantage that might give me, if any.

    • TechAdmin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I recommend reading up on LXC within Proxmox. They are containers so run on bare metal but you interact with them a bit like normal VM. There are some prebuilt templates for a few different distros available for download too.

      My current test proxmox setup is intel quad-core 10th gen i5 nuc with 32GB ram, 2 * 2TB nVNME, and 1TB SATA SSD. I have a few different LXCs for things like NVR, ZeroTier, TailScale, and a general docker one where I have plex, emby, jellyfin, and supporting apps. All LXC that need it have been configured for access to the iGPU and the host retains access.

      • antlion@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Thanks I will learn LXC once I have a new 8 core Intel machine. I also want to hose this website that needs an outdated php/Apache setup so it would be nice to keep that in an isolated container.