Hey folks,

Hope you’re all doing great!

I recently got my Beelink with N100, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. I went ahead and added a 2TB SATA SSD to it. Currently, I’m deciding on which OS to install on my server.

As a first step to self-hosting, I’m considering getting an external USB HDD since I don’t have any storage solution in my house. My primary purpose for now is to set it up as a media server.

I started with TrueNAS, thinking I could build a good media server with USB attached devices on top of the NAS OS. Unfortunately, it didn’t go well as I didn’t like TrueNAS apps at all; it was lagging quite badly on that machine.

I switched to Unraid and am currently running it using NVME and SATA SSDs as a cache pool, with the USB HDD as a final layer when SSDs get filled up. I prefer containers more on Unraid, but I still enjoy having Docker YAML files and full control over it, given my background with containers.

However, while I like Unraid, I’m still on trial and exploring multiple threads/posts. I’ve come to realize that I might not get a “real” storage solution from such a mini PC, as USB HDDs are not recommended. I’m unsure if it’s worth paying for something that is not recommended at all. Perhaps it would be better to get a NAS when I need it and just call it a day.

This brings me to the question of what I should run on this machine. I enjoy playing around with containers and OSes, and I’m considering installing Proxmox, but I’m not sure if it’s worth doing that for a 16GB memory device. Alternatively, I’m thinking of going with bare Ubuntu Server or CentOS with Docker containers.

Any suggestions or insights would be greatly appreciated!