Cross-posted (hopefully properly) from !selfhosting@slrpnk.net

Looking for some advice on what to do with my selfhosting setup. I currently have 2 Vostro 430's (salvaged from work), and have retrieved 5(!) newer computers from work:

• 1 ThinkStation P330 (1x16gb ram),

• 2 ThinkCentre M720 SFF's (4x4gb ram each), and

• 2 ThinkCentre M73's (mixed ram amounts/brands, may salvage from the Vostro's depending)

The Vostro's are currently setup with 1 of them being baremetal Debian with a Pihole, and a Debian VM with a Headscale server, and the other being baremetal Debian with... just a few containers, and baremetal tailscale as an exit node (I don't like this, need to do better). Using Authelia with a password to block incoming connections, and Traefik as my reverse proxy. It also has 2x10TB and 1x7TB HDD's in Raid1.

My current plan is to see if the M73's are good enough for light emulation (PS1 for sure, PS2 maybe) and Jellyfin, hook 1 up to my TV (to replace the 25' HDMI that is slowly killing itself under it's own weight), and 1 for a relative, connected to my server via Headscale/Tailscale.

I currently have 1 of the M720's hosting a small webserver to learn HTML so I can replace my workplace's website (I did do a temporary replacement already, but it's not great). Trying to decide if it is staying completely separate, or if I am utilizing it in the overall setup.

Now, what I am looking for advice on, is how best to utilize what I have, and any recommendations on better software to use.

• Do I dedicate each computer to different tasks, or learn how to do a docker swarm/kubernetes cluster/something else?

• Should I set up one device as a dedicated NAS, using a NAS focused OS, or continue to use SSHFS mounts?

• Should the file storage be on the best hardware I have available, mid ranged, or should I save one of the Vostros specifically for being a NAS with nothing else running on it?

• Should I learn how to do SSO with Authelia, or is there a better program for SSO (I want to do better with security, and SSO feels like the best place to start)

• What do you recommend as a reverse proxy? I have my Traefik configs working great for automatic service discovery, but the way it stores the certs feels impossible to extract for other services that ask for them, and I have no idea what I am doing wrong with that - hasn't been a problem, but I feel like I should be doing better with this.

I had other thoughts, but they swam away while writing this. If you ask a question/make a comment and I don't answer right away, it means I fell asleep and will answer tomorrow. I am open to any and all suggestions, and am happy to answer any clarifying questions!

Looking for some advice on what to do with my selfhosting setup. I currently have 2 Vostro 430's (salvaged from work), and have retrieved 5(!) newer computers from work:

• 1 ThinkStation P330 (1x16gb ram),

• 2 ThinkCentre M720 SFF's (4x4gb ram each), and

• 2 ThinkCentre M73's (mixed ram amounts/brands, may salvage from the Vostro's depending)

The Vostro's are currently setup with 1 of them being baremetal Debian with a Pihole, and a Debian VM with a Headscale server, and the other being baremetal Debian with... just a few containers, and baremetal tailscale as an exit node (I don't like this, need to do better). Using Authelia with a password to block incoming connections, and Traefik as my reverse proxy. It also has 2x10TB and 1x7TB HDD's in Raid1.

My current plan is to see if the M73's are good enough for light emulation (PS1 for sure, PS2 maybe) and Jellyfin, hook 1 up to my TV (to replace the 25' HDMI that is slowly killing itself under it's own weight), and 1 for a relative, connected to my server via Headscale/Tailscale.

I currently have 1 of the M720's hosting a small webserver to learn HTML so I can replace my workplace's website (I did do a temporary replacement already, but it's not great). Trying to decide if it is staying completely separate, or if I am utilizing it in the overall setup.

Now, what I am looking for advice on, is how best to utilize what I have, and any recommendations on better software to use.

• Do I dedicate each computer to different tasks, or learn how to do a docker swarm/kubernetes cluster/something else?

• Should I set up one device as a dedicated NAS, using a NAS focused OS, or continue to use SSHFS mounts?

• Should the file storage be on the best hardware I have available, mid ranged, or should I save one of the Vostros specifically for being a NAS with nothing else running on it?

• Should I learn how to do SSO with Authelia, or is there a better program for SSO (I want to do better with security, and SSO feels like the best place to start)

• What do you recommend as a reverse proxy? I have my Traefik configs working great for automatic service discovery, but the way it stores the certs feels impossible to extract for other services that ask for them, and I have no idea what I am doing wrong with that - hasn't been a problem, but I feel like I should be doing better with this.

I had other thoughts, but they swam away while writing this. If you ask a question/make a comment and I don't answer right away, it means I fell asleep and will answer tomorrow. I am open to any and all suggestions, and am happy to answer any clarifying questions!

So I am currently using PurelyMail for my email server, as it's hard to beat <$0.40/month for unlimited aliases, which I fully intend to replace when I can afford to justify a VPS. It is incredibly slow to use their webmail, and even checking for new emails can take awhile, so I was hoping to mitigate as much of that as possible by having a local copy of my emails and connecting to a self-hosted webmail/connecting my phone app to the local email server instead of the 3rd party one.

This would also act as an interim step to moving my email service to a non-US VPS smoothly, since I would have a copy of all my emails when the time comes.

The problem I am facing with this is being overwhelmed by choice, while not being sure of what I actually need. Every time I search this, I see suggestions of running a stack of 2-10 services, but not really a good explanation of why those services are needed - and some of the explanations seem to contradict each other (I use x services that seems to be feature complete, but I do this function with y service because that's how I set it up 10 years ago), and I am just not sure what I actually need.

I'm also not sure the best way to safely set it up within my current setup. Is it doable with Traefik+Authelia in docker? Should it be it's own dedicated VM? Should I make sure Traefik is watching port 143, or is it safe to forward the port directly to the container/VM?

For services I need to achieve what I want, what is actually necessary/not necessary?

• I see dovecot mentioned a lot, and it seems to have a lot of environment variables that aren't at all listed in it's docker documentation. man dovecot also did not seem very enlightening to me.
• I've also seen imapsync mentioned to be paired with dovecot, what does it do that dovecot doesn't?
• While trying to figure out what I need, I have also seen things like docker-mailserver. This seems to be far more than necessary for my use case though, should I bother looking into it, or keep it simple?
• For mail clients, what is the benefit of Thunderbird over something like Roundcube? Is it worth running a Thunderbird container if I want a webclient, or should I stick to a purpose-built one?