I have an old Alienware r8 and several 2-4 TB HDDs gathering dust in a closet. The Alienware actually runs remarkably quiet and it occurred to me I could turn it into a DIY NAS.
I’m not entirely sure where to start though. Some immediate questions:
- What’s a good NAS OS to install?
- Any fun things I can do besides plex transcoding with a 1080 GPU?
- Would it make sense to run a Pixelfed/Mastodon server off this guy?
- Can I run a RAID on it without buying a separate HDD bay?
Background:
I already have a Synology NAS running Plex. It transcodes 1080p fine which is really all I need it for.
Other than a Plex port forward, I have zero experience putting services out on the public web (but would like to learn!).
Hosting on the public web isn’t too crazy - start with port forwarding on standard ports (443 for sale/web) and add in a dynamic DNS address.
More than likely your residential ISP doesn’t change your IP that often, but Dynamic DNS solves that problem before it hits. I use Cloudflare, but mostly because I’m lazy and haven’t moved off of them after their most recent sketch behavior.
I had a quick search but couldn’t identify anything obvious… Could you clarify what cloudflare did recently/why one might want to avoid them?