Homelab

Hey fellas,

Been back and forth on my backup need decision and hope to get some insights from anyone.

My needs:

• Local backup of household devices (laptops, PC, phones)
• Have the local backup as a self hosted cloud for the household users
• Streaming content. Probably plex but without transcoding or Kodi
• VPN
• Occasional servers/containers for pet projects

What I've been comparing so far:

Synology DS1621+

Saw someone selling one with 20gb ram, 2 cache SSDs and 5x8TB drives for around 1000$ on marketplace.

Pros:

• Ready setup + drives.
• Comfort of Synology infra
• Plug and play with limited to no tinkering

Cons:

• Limited to Synology OS
• Not the most capable specs
• No options to repurpose the device come End of Life time

Total cost for now = around 1000$

Mini PC + enclosure

• Used Optiplex micro 7070 with 512GB NVMe 16GB Ram for 160$ on Ebay
• Sabrent USB 3.2 5-Bay enclosure 215$ new or find some used one cheaper
• In case of using Unraid - 129$ for OS + 10$ for a flash drive
• Starting with 2 20TB drives from Serverpartdeals or similar, netting roughly 500$

Pros:

• Almost plug and play
• Freedom to choose any OS
• Ability to repurpose the machine later if needed and use the enclosure just as a DAS
• Ability to chain the enclosure later via 10gbps USB-C
• Powerful machine compared to synology
• PC + enclosure would be using USB-C 10gbps speeds, and the HDDs won't be saturating it
• Can add the drives later with ease (if going with Unraid)

Cons:

• Enclosure doesn't turn on automatically in case of power outtages
• More tinkering to do. While a con, still relatively comfortable with this amount
• Stuck with USB. Seen both good and bad comments about this usage
• Possible noise issues

Total cost for now = around 1014

DIY PC

I'd just follow something like NAS Killer V6 from serverbuilds.

Total cost for now = around 800 (with 2x20TB drives)

Pros:

• All the pros of Mini PC
• More possibilities to extend/customize compared to Mini PC (better NIC, more drives, etc). Basically every single item can be upgraded and changed as needed in the future

Cons:

• Too much tinkering. While I have built PCs before, I haven't done so in a long while and don't know if I'd want to deal with all that again
• Bigger overall form factor

Personally, I'm leaning towards Mini PC + enclosure for now. Anyone has this setup working reliably for some time? I like the form factor, enough freedom and cost/time spent seems reasonable.

That synology offer is a one off thing on marketplace and might be gone anytime. If I would want to get just the synology nas, the second hand deals on ebay start at 1000$ without RAM, SSD or drives. Too steep of a price to pay imho.

DIY PC feels like too much work for the cost and I don't think I want to spend that much time and energy on working on it and end up in the constant spec improving wormhole.

Maybe I'm missing something. Right now I'm budgeting around $1000 for the ordeal with as least headaches as possible with the setup while having some sort of future proofing and freedom.

Any suggestions are welcome.