Hi everyone,
I’m just getting started in the world of selfhosting and wanted some advice.
I’m currently using a 2015 MacBook Pro (i7 with 16gb of RAM) running Sonoma as a small Jellyfin Server. I’ve got an externally powered 4TB HDD connected for media storage. It’s been going fine, and I use it to access Jellyfin on several devices across my house, I don’t have remote access set up.
I’m planning to move home in the next year and I’m thinking about long-term solutions which will allow me to self host more than just Jellyfin, so I wanted some advice. I have some experience using Linux on laptops, and I can troubleshoot networking stuff using ChatGPT. I don’t work in IT/ software but I’m a decent end-user.
Here’s what I’d like to self-host: More robust Jellyfin setup - I’d like access to my media outside of my home, so probably using tailscale or similar. An NAS with a cloud storage solution which will eventually allow me to move away from iCloud. Home security server - a small setup, I’m thinking 2 ip cameras and easy access to footage on my phone. I want to ditch ring for multiple reasons / don’t want to rely on a subscription service. A pi-hole to block adds across my home network.
Moving home is going to be expensive so I’m not trying to spend a tonne of money. Which leads me to ask. What kind of setup would you guys recommend I invest in? I can spend about €500-600. Ideally, I’d like to be at a point where everything I run is open source. I assume I can’t expect to scale up using my 2015 MacBook Pro? Is is possible to install something like proxmox on these machines? my other option would be a small mini pc, perhaps running proxmox. Do I need to buy a dedicated NAS in your opinion? I have 10tb in external hdds that could serve as a makeshift setup.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
As others have commented, stick with the Mac.
I recommend installing proxmox on it and run the apps you want. You can run pihole in a VM.
Do you need a NAS? Not really, but if you have cash available maybe get a used tower, use the disks you have and install TrueNAS. And this will only cost you max €200I’m running the following apps as docker container on a 12+ years old Alienware M14x R2 ( spec: https://dl.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_alienware_laptops/alienware-m14x-r2_reference guide_en-us.pdf).
Upgraded RAM to 16 GB, and replaced HDD with internal SSD for better system throughput.
Instead of Wi-Fi, I connected it to LAN for better network throughput.
The performance is good for me and my wife even though I’m running it in power saving mode.
OS: Ubuntu Server 24
Apps: (On rootless docker)
- Nextcloud AIO
- Jellyfin
- Vaultwarden
- AdGuardHome
- DrawIO
- IT-Tools
- SearxNG
- LibMedium
- Traefik
- Linkwarden
- Squid
- Quetre
- Portainer
- Transmission
When working remotely, I’m using Tailscale to access it.
Macbook Pro should work fine. Buy extra PCs if you it’s not enough for you. Also, I recommend buying a domain from a legit provider
The services you’ve mentioned are all pretty low compute impact, just bandwidth, so I’d expect your MBP to be fine. Transcoding for jellyfin is the only real wildcard, and that depends on your media and client setups. I run pihole, homeassistant, immich, and kodi on a raspberry pi 4 with plenty of overhead for more services. NAS is nice if your library outgrows a single disk and your storage bandwidth gets choked by USB multiplexing.
My suggestion is to consider a cheap VPS and vanity domain for external access. Domains cheap as $5/year; fair VPSs cheap as $30/year. Use SSH to forward localhost ports on the VPS to container ports on the MBP, then nginx on thee VPS to reverse-proxy to those forwarded ports. You get unique names for every service, LetsEncrypt certificates, and an offsite location for critical backups. Make sure you are the one paying for VPS & DNS so they don’t get surprise-cancelled.
Thank you, I’ll look into VPS, that’s new territory for me.
Re transcoding on Jellyfin. Yes that’s something I have considered. A lot of my media is x265 10-bit 1080p stuff, decent quality but not huge lossless blu-ray rips. I stick to encodes that are about 4-8gb a movie. Clients connecting to the server are a couple of laptops and two smart tvs using the native Jellyfin apps. So far I’ve only run into issue with things like AV1 files or very large 4k rips that won’t play on smart tv, mkvs play fine.
So some 2015 MacBooks came with Broadwell-eDRAM chips, great CPUs with (IIRC) a 64MB cache chip the CPU or GPU could use.
https://chipsandcheese.com/p/broadwells-edram-vcache-before-vcache
If that’s what yours has, it’s a gem, and punches way above its age/clockspeed for the power draw. Keep it!
Jellyfin might be able to use its iGPU (and not just the hardware blocks) for some offloading as well, though I’m not sure of Broadwells Vulkan support or what exactly Jellyfin uses it for.
Yeah mine is a Broadwell i7, 3.1ghz with boost up to 3.4ghz, model number 5557U. The guy I bought it from maxed out the specs at launch and I bought pretty cheap a few years ago. For a ten year old device it runs like a dream and handles pretty much anything short of gaming and video editing with ease
5557U
Ah, no eDRAM on that one I think, though I’m not 100% sure.
Still, with 16GB its plenty for a server as others said.
Add storage via good USB hub or use a multi-bay storage box later on. The have built-in hubs. E.g. Terramaster or OWC Mercury Elite Pro.
For the highest possible resource utilization and security support beyond Apple’s, you could try installing Linux and using Docker containers for everything. You should be able to run quite a few services.
The next best option resource-wise is to run a large Linux VM and docker containers inside it. The Docker for Mac setup does exactly that. This is how we solved running a complex and resource hungry tech stack locally for development at a past workplace.
Then come running services in multiple VMs.
I would build a cheap PC based on a G series Intel CPU. The G7400 is cheap and will handle anything you want to transcode, plus won’t get bottlenecked with IO and other processes you might want to run later like the Arr stack. You probably don’t need more than 8GB of RAM. This will give you lots of flexibility to choose the right OS which suits you, which software you want, upgrades, and especially HDDs down the road (if you get a case with HDD slots). I started small and ended up with 15 disks over the years.
Unraid ($250) is one option but it’s expensive and buggy. TrueNAS is a very popular ZFS based solution which is free. Windows is also a surprisingly good option. It’s your lowest effort option by far. You can replicate Unraid functionality with SnapRAID and DrivePool ($50).
You can use Tailscale to access your stuff from outside the house.
There’s also a self hosted open source alternative but I’ve forgotten what it’s called.
