NUC - Mini PC

[warm terrace]

I am currently running HA on a raspberry pi. However, I was wondering would it be possible to use an NUC and then also use this as a server to back up my laptop data on the go. Has anyone got any recommendations on what hardware would suffice and also what software would accomplish this?

I have searched through the archived posts and I see that a NUC and proxmox seems to be where I need to start. Has anyone got any recommendations for a decent NUC or a decent mini PC for this? I'm happy with something cheap enough even from ebay. I'm in Ireland

[round mango]

Congratulations @warm terrace! You just advanced to level 5!

[warm terrace]

http://www.adverts.ie/28781581 anyone got any thoughts on this?

[terse vault]

That seems fine. But do you have an old desktop/laptop already handy? HA can run on Proxmox VMs, so any hardware that can run Proxmox will work. Save money and the environment!

Another thing to think about is, can you get a server with more than 1 Ethernet port? If he's, you could relatively easily use it to replace your router too. I was looking into that the other day. That's my one regret of settling on a used tiny PC for my Proxmox host that only has 1 Ethernet port.

[warm terrace]

That's an interesting point. I do have an old laptop but I don't think the power consumption would be particularly low to run it 24/7. I like the idea of replacing the router but what would the WiFi coverage be like emanating from a mini pc?

Or do you still use the regular router for WiFi?

[terse vault]

Yup the router working on the mini PC/nuc will not emanate wifi itself, you could use your old router in AP mode to provide wifi.

[warm terrace]

Sounds really interesting and a good project. I'm finding it really tough to find the best mini pc/nuc for this application though. Any suggestions? Thanks so much for your help

[terse vault]

Have a look at pfsense or opnsense, two popular free virtualisable router softwares. There are related recommended hardware.

[warm terrace]

Cheers 👍

[past fern]

Does your SFF PC have any internal pcie ports? If so grab a cheap Intel nic card and now you can use it as a router. Also, you can do the same via usb3, maybe a little slow, but you can put your low bandwidth items on that.

I use a Lenovo think entre m93p as my HA, AdGuard, Docker, Heimdall system. It runs good once I got HA moved over and fixed.

[terse vault]

Exact same model here! I've now just got HA, Adguard and a simple file share server running on it. So there's plenty of capacity for a pfsense VM to also run on it. I got a half height mini pcie nic, intending to use the slot meant for wireless to add the second Ethernet port.

I'm intending to use it as my primary router connecting from the internet, so I didn't go down the USB Ethernet route to avoid that becoming the main bottleneck for the whole house.

[warm terrace]

Just look at heimdall now, looks really cool

[past fern]

Yes, I plan to use Heimdall with Wire guard and Guacamole to only have a few holes in my firewall to be more secure.

[warm terrace]

I just bought a mini pc barebones from Ali express and ram and memory from Amazon. I plan to use it to learn about proxmox, backing up my data, running HA, retro pi. At some point it may also become my router. Heimdall looks really good. Most of this is new to me except for HA

[viscid loom]

hello, I'm starting at home assistant and I want to integrate several devices both zigbee and WiFi. for that I bought the sonoff dongle, however to put it running I'm afraid that a Raspberry is not enough, because I'm going to put an add-on to detect people in my camera. and due to the scarcity of raspberry, maybe the best option is a mini PC, do you have any recommendations?