Rethinking my server and network setup

I agree with walter too. Docker is awesome if you learn it a little. Make sure your state is stored outside the container, then you can roll back/forward easily without issue.

We run massive production workloads at work with docker, so much simpler than the alternatives.

 

IMO you should just run Hass.io on either a raspberry pi or intel Nuc, and then run adguard and Unifi controller as addons for hass.io

Set and forget

The Hass.io addons are just docker containers , i run half a dozen of them on my nuc and all my medie related dockers run on unraid, great setup, easy to manage

 

Just to buck the trend I have a bunch of Raspi's for single use tasks, and it works great and chews bugger all power. I didn't go the docker route for the following reasons -

1. I already had the Pi's left over from other projects, and
2. I suck with docker, and for what I'm running it isn't worth the effort to learn

So I have 5 x Raspi's to cover my deluge, pihole, observium, unifi, and syslog needs. Have them sitting in an old NVR case in my rack, has worked fine for over a year now.

 

Looks interesting, Im thinking of moving to PIs as well to reduce power consumption.

 

Its only an incremental learning step from knowing enough linux to run multiple pis/apps to configuring docker properly.

Heck you likely don't even need ingress, just docker-compose and correctly mapping the ports with parameters.

I've got half a dozen VMs and half a dozen containers running 24x7 on a ZFS file server AND one of the containers is plex. Haven't had any of the issues you've discussed, but all the containers are brought up/down via a single docker-compose, I store state outside of the containers (doesn't have to be rocket science, map a share or map a directory or whatever). And I map the ports correctly, which isn't hard as I do it once in the docker compose then every time the container obeys the same setting.

If its too hard and the apps will run off rPi resources then why not just go back to VMs? a bunch of single core 512Mb RAM VMs should be fine, and you get all the benefits of virtualisation, AND stay on x86 where everything is guaranteed to run/have the correct package for. If you're too lazy to do it in KVM then just run off free ESXi.

I can't think of anything more annoying than dealing with half a dozen separate Pis, the spaghetti cabling/PSU mess, gimped USB NICs/gimped wireless/gimped CPU/gimped RAM/ARM vs x86/no local storage, moving your KB/M around to troubleshoot etc. When you could just get someone's second hand Skylake box and blow the pi combined CPU/RAM away for the same price (pick your poison, linux/win/esxi doesn't matter) or if you're appearances OCD, a NUC or something similar.

 

Even a Skylake system at idle would chew more power than my half a dozen Pi's at full noise, and they only take up 1U out of my rack. Considering the services I use them for I could run all of them on one Pi4 with docker, but I had Pi2's and 3's lying around so might as well put them to good use. It really isn't *that* bad, gimped up or otherwise.

 

so you are going to run a file server / media server off a pi via USB? The OP needs to run a file server / openmediavault anyway

 

Running Docker and managing containers inside Synology DSM is certainly piss easy.
Not to mention all the ported DSM packages that simply just work natively and update without issue.

 

I do that for deluge with a 5TB drive and a Pi4 which at least has gigabit NIC and USB3 which will be enough for a lot of home users, but yes I agree that a NAS or FreeNAS/OMV/etc is a much better solution. In which case you have the hardware anyway so go the docker route.

 

Current plan is to get a DS918+ (given the 420+ is basically the same unit) and see what I can run in Docker on it, hopefully it will be better behaved than the OMV instance.

I found out some of why I have been having issues with restarts. When we get a power out NUT wasn't playing nicely with the SmartUPS and just shutting the machine down hard which required disk checks on restart. Evidently family wouldnt wait for the disk checks to complete and hard reset the NAS with the power button... cue further issues.

So, still considering running PiHole independently though on a separate Pi with PiUPS as at least that way it can come back independently and keep 'the internet' running even if the Synology needs to do disk checks on start.

 

I have about 10 or so dockers running on my DS918+ without issue. It's been great for the past couple of years. However Pihole was always an exception. Some people say they have it running but it does require some tweaking to a point I reckon a standalone pi might be best for that. Coincidentally I have the DS918+ on my desk copying everything over to a new un-raid setup due to needing to use some SAS drives, but the Synology will be missed for it's simplicity and being rock solid. Was a great all in one server.

 

Planning on selling the 918?

Yeah, PiHole and Hass.io regularly report lots of pain with docker. Ironically Pihole was the easy and flawless one to get working, it was the human interaction that caused it to have issues.

 

Wanna go the xpenology route? I've dabbled with it for a day and so far so good.. But decided against using it personally as I'm still more comfortable with FreeNAS + jails. Eventually plan to convert my spare N54L into xpenology for my father in law though.

 

I have a friend who runs Xpenology and basically ends up spending half a day or a day migrating releases. No thanks.

 

I have a QNAP NAS that was running VM's for my various services (including PiHole and Unifi Controller) but it would take the network down if it ever needed rebooting and after a few other small issues I decided to move to a Pi. I'm running a dedicated Pi4 (which is overkill) for PiHole + Unifi + PVOutput + OpenVPN, all native. I have an image of the µSD card saved for quick restores if it's ever needed (hasn't been yet). I was looking at setting up a second Pi for redundancy, but in the end went back to a VM on the QNAP running Raspian.

I've never had any luck getting docker containers working, although I haven't invested much time in trying to understand it better since VM's work for the handful of things I need/want.

I think a couple of Pi's is a great idea and if you have a POE switch, POE hats can keep things neat and this little thing can even rack mount them for you:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4125055

 

With the Pi just setup a cron rsync for the settings and data back to the NAS.

 

The only one i agree being seperate is pihole, i dont run it but i run adblock on top of openwrt, and i just moved my internet routing from my old router to an rpi4 in the garage with a cable to the modem. Runs routing and DNS in and out of vlans towards my switch.

I did have it as a VM as i have an esxi server, but server down internet down, not great. Now my old router is just an Access point and no smarts, no cpu problems.

 

While I find the dockers are great, getting them working well together on my NAS (QNAP) was painful enough that I have given up on getting Pihole working in a docker. The best I could get was pi hole, or the other dockers I was using working, never both together. Further online "solutions" stuffed the network stack on the NAS, so ended up killing all dockers.

As to the issue with Pi's and cables, I did see the following that might be of interest for someone starting from scratch, basically a cluster Pi setup, but can still run each individually.
http://linuxgizmos.com/cluster-platform-supports-seven-raspberry-pi-compute-modules/