Where to host my Immich
Hi! I’m brand new to self hosting. I have built many websites, but have never set up a docker, and I rarely use any CLI. I seek a list of the top few places I should consider hosting, e.g. Digital Ocean droplets, AWS, A2 Hosting…thank you!
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:wave: Hey @KerryK,
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Any sort of cloud hosting is going to be pretty expensive, especially for storage
You're usually better off running something at home
Hmmm…something being a separate computer from my normal computer?
Ideally yes, but you can run it on your PC if you need/want
Sounds impractical as i’m usually traveling. But if i ran it from my own pc where would files be stored? also on my pc or in the cloud?
For practical solution, you can get a small NUC and small NAS (2-bay) run the server at home, then use Tailscale as VPN solution to always access you home network and server
that is the least cost, the only monthly expense at the point is some electricity and storage cost for cold storage backup (few bucks/month)
Thanks. what is cold storage backup? Like backblaze? which I already have
Correct
backblaze
Got it.
so you have an off site backup of your data in case things happen at home
I will look into nuc and nas which i’ve never heard of. I assume if power goes out i lose all access.
On to the example of hosting with aws, a2 or digital ocean…does anyone here do that?
And can you clarify what expected costs would be for a normal personal user and for an organization that invites users to set up galleries. Imagine 50 people with galleries of a couple hundred images
that depends on how much they price their storage cost
let's say 50,000 photos and videos
taking all storage space, you are looking into 1-1.5 TB/month
couple of hundred images? Those are rookie numbers 😛
I know a few users run on Azure
If you're running it for a business then definitely just eat the cloud cost
(but also maybe consider just paying for something managed like google photos tbh)
How big is your media library?
I don’t want to use google…prefer the privacy of self hosted. @bo0tzz
I am going with an example of 1tb.
Just to clarify, NAS and NUC are names for types of hardware. a NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a computer that typically has many more storage bays than is usual for a unit of it's power, along with a network interface to access anything you want to store.
A NUC (Next Unit of Compute) used to be an Intel ultra small form factor computer, but now encompasses anything that is basically lunchbox sized or smaller. These typically don't have much space for storage (apart from ssd/nvme) but are usually still quite powerful, unlike NASes.
Of course nothing stops you from having a more powerful NAS or a ridiculously sized nvme stick in your NUC
About $40-50USD / month for a hetzner server with 2x4tb drives (smallest size available on the auction page).
You could also get a nas that supports docker and do it all on there
what cost is this? electricity? this is a unit for the home?
Here are my findings with a cost comparison, let me know what you think…
Cloud, ish
I explored two hosting options…
1. NAS + NUC Setup:
• Hardware and Hosting: I could house the setup at a network-knowledgeable, home-owning friend’s residence, where they could manage the physical setup.
• Costs: A one-time hardware investment of ~$300 for the NAS and NUC, with ongoing costs of ~$14/month ($8 for electricity, $6 for Backblaze B2 backup).
• Benefits:
• Allows unlimited hosting of open-source projects (like Baserow and n8n, which I also need) without additional costs.
• Long-term savings as the initial hardware investment offsets cloud subscription costs over time.
• Estimated Cumulative Costs:
• Year 1: $468
• Year 2: $636
• Year 3: $804
2. DigitalOcean Droplets + Spaces:
• Hosting: Use DigitalOcean for Immich with 1 TB of storage and droplets for n8n and Baserow.
• Costs: ~$30/month for Immich (droplet + Spaces) and ~$12/month for two additional droplets ($6 each for n8n and Baserow). Total = ~$42/month.
• Benefits:
• No upfront hardware costs.
• Scalable and professionally managed cloud infrastructure.
• Estimated Cumulative Costs:
• Year 1: $504
• Year 2: $1,008
• Year 3: $1,512
Summary of Findings:
• The NAS + NUC setup is more cost-effective over time, with Year 1 savings of $36 and increasing savings in subsequent years. It provides flexibility to host unlimited projects but requires an upfront investment and reliance on a friend’s hosting.
• The DigitalOcean setup has no upfront costs, offers ease of use, and scales efficiently but incurs higher cumulative expenses over time, especially with multiple droplets.
The decision depends on whether I prioritize long-term savings and flexibility (NAS + NUC) or ease of deployment and scalability (DigitalOcean).
Just keep in mind hardware doesn't live forever
It can live long, but there's no guarantee
(my disks are almost 10years old for reference)
That’s a long time! I usually assume a life of a few years
backblaze publishes stats for their disks every quarter: https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze-drive-stats-for-q1-2024/
I read the stats every year 🙂
Is the $300 hardware including drives?
Here’s a breakdown of the estimated hardware costs for the NAS and NUC setup:
Hardware Components:
1. NAS (Network-Attached Storage):
• A basic 2-bay NAS (e.g., Synology DS220j or QNAP TS-230).
• Estimated Cost: $150–$300.
• Additional Hard Drives:
• $50–$150 per drive, depending on size (e.g., 2TB–6TB).
• For a 2-bay NAS with 2 x 4TB drives: ~$200–$300.
2. NUC (Next Unit of Computing):
• A compact, energy-efficient computer for hosting applications.
• Estimated Cost: $200–$600, depending on specs (CPU, RAM, storage).
3. Optional: UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply):
• Protects against power outages and ensures smooth operation.
• Estimated Cost: $50–$150.
Total Estimated Hardware Costs:
• NAS with Drives: ~$350–$600.
• NUC: ~$200–$600.
• Optional UPS: ~$50–$150.
• Total Estimated Range: $600–$1,350 (depending on specs and optional components).
Please let me know what you think!
Yeah that makes more sense, not $300 for Nas&nuc
and is the ups important?
Yes.
You could eliminate the nuc and go with a nas that supports docker if you want, it wouldn't be priced better, but may be a simpler setup
does the nas start out with storage? or it allows me to connect hard drives as the storage?
It also won't be as performant
oh yes, less pieces would be better
depends on the NAS you buy
you can also just build your own of course
A nas is a computer without (typically) hard drives. It has software to make accessing it over the network easy
so let’s assume i want to start at 2 tb and i want nas with docker
This is usually the cheapest route. Needs some knowledge of course, but scraping together whatever pc bits will do the job and throwing in some drives is a tried and tested approach
You can basically build a miniATX form factor server with raid Z1 of two 8TB disks
ohhh I was assuming i could purchase it
If you want super simple it doesn't get simpler than Synology. You'd get a 2 bay plus series. Then buy some network grade (or better hard drives)
It will not be able to harness the largest immich smart search compatible models however
Both are options
doubt i’d need that but why can’t it handle it
It's just where you balance all the tradeoffs
NAS usually has lower spec CPU so machine learning tasks and video transcoding tasks can take longer
Needs more ram. I run a ds423 and it handles the 3rd(?) largest model just fine. It is unofficially running 18gb ram though
also they don't have much RAM, and you need at least 6GB of RAM for base Immich installation due to the size of the machine learning models will need to be loaded into RAM before they get used
the easy route cost more but I think so YMMV
if cost is not a huge factor you can make the trade off
if you like building PC/server, you can save quite a bit
we need an Immich hardware box lol
i do want super simple, and i’ve never built any computer anything so that’s not an option.
I've only been asking for one since day 3 of finding immich
=))
Let’s summarize 🙂 Should i get a synology 2 bay plus. if so, is that the ds423? where do i purchase it
there are plenty of sites you can buy from like Amazon or Newegg
If you get a nas that can also support Plex then you can leverage the GPU to offload the cpu. It is about 7x faster allowing you to use a better search model
I feel like this would not work as well as we expect lol
This isn’t home assistant that runs well on a small SBC
I can get whatever you all recommend 🙂
It'd basically be building one of those integrated NASes lol
with a pre-burned Immich image
A ds918+ or DS423 would be my recommendations, the 918 will be going out of official support soon however. I'm not sure if they have a 2bay model that has an iGPU
Immich image
🤔
With auto-updates and dns proxy
just FYI synology numbers their systems as [number of max supported disks - 1 or 2 digits][Year of introduction]
so 423 would be 4 disks year 2023
Oops, my bad, ds423+
This does not mean the enclosure always HAS that many disks, just that you can achieve it with maybe an extension bay
True, unfortunately I don't think the 2bay units support hardware transcoding - I could be wrong though
note the "diskless"
as in, buy your own disks 😛
That's what I have. I'd also suggest putting a dualrank 16gb ram stick in there. (About $20-50)
But now you see the price of a "simple" nas
what does the ram stick do? the drives would be standard western digital style drives? Like 4tb each? would be more than i expect to need but good for future proofing
And… raid setup… if it us important
• RAID 1 (Mirror): Two drives mirror each other for redundancy; the other two can be used similarly.
• RAID 5/6: Combines drives for fault tolerance with distributed parity.
• RAID 10: Combines mirroring and striping for performance and redundancy.
for 2-bay I will go with Raid Z1, best perf and make the most sense for that setup
so if 1 drive fails, you can just put a new one in and it will auto rebuild
I think mirror is superior to Z1 for 2 drives
It’s a lot less overhead
ah I meant to use mirror, I mistakenly thinking Z1 is interchangeable for mirror
I recently switched to ZFS so I did a lot of reading 🙂
what are the estimated dimensions of this 4bay synology?
I think they have it on their website
i tried to find it and couldn’t :/ too much info
you all recommend 4 bay because 2bay is too small for expected needs?
It'll make the interface seem snappy, and let you load larger immich search models
Because the 2 bay models to my knowledge don't support hardware transcoding
Dimensions:
• Height: 166 mm
• Width: 199 mm
• Depth: 223 mm
• Weight: 2.18 kg
what does the ram stick do
The ram stick does this
looks like dual rank is not a brand as i expected. what exact 16gb stick should i buy?
https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?d=dual+rank+16gb+ram+stick
This is the one I got https://www.ebay.ca/itm/156314993777?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=2ddyyhfCRJy&sssrc=4429486
eBay
Samsung 16GB x 1 DDR4 2666 MHz 2RX8 PC4-2666V 260 Pin 1.2V SODIMM L...
Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Samsung 16GB x 1 DDR4 2666 MHz 2RX8 PC4-2666V 260 Pin 1.2V SODIMM Laptop Memory at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
for drives, is this correct
4TB WD Red Plus (WD40EFZX): ~$100–$120
Yep, I believe cmr is what you're looking for
That’s really expensive per terabyte
~$1k/tb if you consider 1TB is all that is being planned for
I mean the drive itself
You can get like $15/tb I think , even lower at times
not when you're looking for low tb?
Updated Summary with Initial and Recurring Costs
Proposed Hardware Setup
1. Synology DS423+ (Diskless) NAS
• Model: Synology 4-Bay DiskStation DS423+
• Price: $499
• Specifications:
• Height: 166 mm
• Width: 199 mm
• Depth: 223 mm
• Weight: 2.18 kg
• Purchase Link: https://www.newegg.com/synology-ds423-4-bay-intel-celeron-j4125-processor-diskless-system/p/N82E16822108829
2. WD Red Plus 4TB Drives (x4)
• Model: WD Red Plus 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive (WD40EFPX)
• Features:
• 5400 RPM, CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording)
• SATA 6Gb/s, 256MB Cache, 3.5 Inch
• Quantity: 4 drives
• Price: $100 each ($400 total)
• Purchase Link: https://www.newegg.com/red-plus-wd40efpx-4tb-hard-drive-for-nas-systems-5400-rpm/p/N82E16822234533
3. RAM
• Model: G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 3200 Desktop Memory
• Price: $32
• Purchase Link: https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-16gb-ddr4-3200/p/N82E16820231941
4. Electricity Costs
• Monthly Energy Usage: ~43.2 kWh
• Monthly Electricity Cost: ~$5.62
5. Backblaze B2 Costs
• Monthly Storage Cost: ~$6 for 1TB backup
NAS Costs Overview
• Initial Cost: $931 (Includes NAS, 4 drives, and RAM)
• Recurring Monthly Cost: ~$11.62 (Electricity: ~$5.62 + Backblaze B2: ~$6)
Cumulative Costs for NAS Setup (Including Backblaze B2)
Year Total Cost (NAS + Drives + RAM + Electricity + Backblaze)
Year 1 $1,070.44
Year 2 $1,209.88
Year 3 $1,349.32
DigitalOcean Option
Setup
• Includes hosting for Immich, n8n, and Baserow:
• Immich: $30/month (Droplet + Spaces)
• n8n & Baserow: 2 additional droplets at $6/month each
• Total Monthly Cost: $42
Cumulative Costs
Year Total Cost (DigitalOcean)
Year 1 $504
Year 2 $1,008
Year 3 $1,512
Comparison
• NAS Setup:
• Initial Cost: $931
• Recurring Monthly Cost: ~$11.62
• Allows flexibility to host multiple open-source projects without additional hosting costs.
• Cumulative costs (Year 1/2/3): $1,070.44 / $1,209.88 / $1,349.32.
• DigitalOcean Setup:
• Initial Cost: $0
• Recurring Monthly Cost: $42
• Easier scalability but higher cumulative costs by Year 3.
• Cumulative costs (Year 1/2/3): $504 / $1,008 / $1,512.
Does all this sound about right?
I will also add that you guys are AWESOME! I had been considering piwigo or Photoprism but knowing how helpful you all are I will definitely go with immich!
how did you come up with a monthly cost of $11.62? I feel like that's high, but yea the rest sounds about right
I haven't considered the input numbers but that doesn't seem that high to me
Ofc electricity cost varies a lot with location
about 20kwh / month?
That'll go for €6 here in NL
Add backblaze backups and you're well on the way
we spend about 8c/kwh here
Gimme!
:p
guess that makes sense then
lol
gotta love living in a place where we export hydroelectricity
I'd sugget different ram. The soldered ram is 2666 so I'd stick with that frequency, and you're looking for dual rank, not dual stick ram. And sodimm
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-16gb-260-pin-ddr4-so-dimm/p/0RM-002H-00154
or
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-16gb/p/0RM-002H-000S4
or
https://www.newegg.com/samsung-16gb/p/0RM-002H-00086
would be recommendations
Assumptions for Monthly Costs at Home Hosting
1. Electricity Costs:
• Based on the Synology DS423+ NAS running with four drives.
• Power consumption: ~43.2 kWh per month.
• Electricity rate: $0.13/kWh (average in the U.S.).
• Estimated Monthly Electricity Cost: $5.62.
2. Backblaze B2 Costs:
• Cloud storage used for offsite backups to ensure data safety and redundancy.
• Storage requirement: 1TB.
• Estimated Monthly Cost for Backblaze B2: $6.
Total Monthly Recurring Costs for Home Hosting: $11.62 (Electricity: $5.62 + Backblaze: $6).
backblaze is billed by usage, so for starting you are looking at ~$1/month 😄
wouldn't it make more sense to populate 2 drives instead of 4? I feel like 2x10tb drives are cheaper than 4x4tb
With 4x4tb you'd get more usable storage if you accept a redundancy of one drive
only by 2tb, and you'd have no room for expansion
I actually like the idea of 4 drives as then I could use one for personal use and one for organizational use. And I assume that the raid mirror setup means each is backed up (to the 3rd and 4th drives)
So when people say "x is not a backup tool" what they are actually saying is "you probably don't actually want a single point in time copy of your data", which is what that tool is doing.
And that "backup tools" exist today that:
- can run on a schedule
- only copy new/changed data (incremental)
keep track of changes over time in the backup, with the option to restore to a previous version
This gives you the ability to recover a file that was deleted some time ago, restore to a point prior to data corruption, etc., all while being space efficient (similar blocks are deduplicated)
Popular backup tools are restic and borg.
You'd be better off using them together as one storage pool, unless you plan on just pulling 2 drives out
Does this sound correct?
For our storage configuration, we will have a storage pool using either RAID 5 or Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) to balance redundancy, capacity, and performance. RAID 5 distributes data and parity information across all drives, allowing the system to recover from the failure of a single drive while maximizing usable storage. SHR, a proprietary option from Synology, offers similar benefits to RAID 5 but allows for more flexibility with mixed drive sizes, making it easier to expand storage in the future. Both options ensure data integrity and provide a reliable solution for hosting applications and managing backups efficiently.
Put two large drives in a mirror, then when that fills up you can add another mirror to expand. Put all of that in the same pool though, no point in separating stored files on a disk level, just make separate folders for them
Not a fan of raid 5. Raidz (which is the ZFS implementation of raid5) is better
With raid5 I think there’s a bigger risk of total loss versus loss of just some files if you have 1 disk with catastrophic failure and a second disk with some damaged blocks
Thanks for your input. Here is my updated plan and rationale:
For our storage configuration, we will use Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) to balance redundancy, capacity, and performance. SHR is a proprietary option from Synology that offers similar benefits to RAID 5, such as distributing data and parity information across drives to allow recovery from a single drive failure, while maximizing usable storage. However, SHR provides additional flexibility by supporting mixed drive sizes, making it easier to expand storage in the future without reconfiguring the entire system. This flexibility, combined with Synology’s user-friendly setup process, makes SHR the ideal choice for our needs. While alternatives like RAID 5 also provide redundancy and comparable usable storage, they lack SHR’s flexibility for future upgrades and require more complex reconfigurations when replacing drives. Another alternative, mirrored pairs (RAID 1), offers excellent redundancy and simplicity, but at the cost of significant storage capacity, as only 50% of the total drive space is usable. Since our current data size is modest (around 1TB) and we do not expect to fill the drives soon, SHR offers the best balance of scalability, storage efficiency, and data protection for our use case.
SHR with btrfs and snapshots is my vote
I published this summary:
Self-Hosting Open Source Software: Choosing Between Home and Cloud Servers
https://zero2webmaster.com/self-hosting/
If any edits or additions are needed, please let me know. Thank you for the help!
Dr. Kerry Kriger
Zero2Webmaster
Self-Hosting Open Source Software: Home And Cloud Servers
The growing availability of high-quality open-source software is transforming the technology landscape, offering powerful alternatives to traditional SaaS
There seem to be styling issue here
Ohhh I didn't check the mobile view. Thanks for letting me know.
This is the web view btw
on Chrome, MacOS
I just fixed it as far as I can tell. And added links to the images.
css is hard man
😄
I don't have that issue, which browser are you using @Alex Tran 👀
Must be a chromium derived one
Huh I had the issue in Edge, wiggled the width of the browser and now they are back te being well aligned
just normal Chrome
That's chromium too 😛
I know, it is not a Chromium derived one
oh well
it is
my bad
2 cups of coffee and still cannot read
That's much better than my 4 year old, could drink a whole thermos and he still would not be able to read. 😂
The version with the messed up images was probably in your cache. Clear cache and it should appear fine. I rarely touch any css. I use Kadence Blocks for page design
I'm curious...how long would it take a knowledgeable person to set up all the hardware and the software we discussed?
Not including immich. Just preparing the nas, backups, raid, etc
Knowledgeable? Probably an hour or two, but it will really depend on whether it's their first time with the specific software or hardware
I could take my sweet time getting it right but for hardware and installs I already know I could probably set it up in an hour, barring slow downloads or such
looks like a ds224+ also has ML transcoding abilities, so that would work instead of the 423+
Thanks. I'll check it out.
I added this to the article as a less expensive alternative:
https://www.newegg.com/synology-ds224-2-bay-intel-celeron-j4125-2-0-ghz-processor-diskless-system/p/N82E16822108840
If any of you like frogs and want to help save them, please see this volunteer opportunity I just created on the SAVE THE FROGS! website:
https://savethefrogs.com/technologist/
Kerry Kriger
SAVE THE FROGS!
Volunteer Opportunity: Technology And Systems Specialist
SAVE THE FROGS! is seeking a volunteer Technology and Systems Specialist to assist with technical infrastructure that supports our frog conservation efforts.