docs VS OpenMediaVault

It's a DNS proxy, like pi-hole, but it seems a lot more powerful than Pi-hole that is basically just a configured dnsmasq server to be user-friendly.

https://docs.pi-hole.net/

I highly recommend the documentation or this video (which also has a blog) that I followed.

Protip: Setup a DNS Sinkhole on your network and you can easily block Vizio and other devices from calling home to update. https://docs.pi-hole.net/

version: "3" # More info at https://github.com/pi-hole/docker-pi-hole/ and https://docs.pi-hole.net/ networks: dns_net: driver: bridge ipam: config: - subnet: 10.2.0.0/24 services: pihole: depends_on: [unbound] container_name: pihole image: pihole/pihole:latest hostname: pihole networks: dns_net: ipv4_address: 10.2.0.100 ports: - "5335:53/tcp" - "5335:53/udp" - "7000:80/tcp" environment: TZ: ${TZ} WEBPASSWORD: ${PWD} FTLCONF_LOCAL_IPV4: ${HOST_IP} # Set to server's LAN IP, used by web block modes. PIHOLE_DNS_: 10.2.0.200 # Upstream DNS server(s) for Pi-hole to forward queries to, separated by a semicolon DNSMASQ_LISTENING: all # "Listen on all interfaces, permit all origins" # Volumes store your data between container upgrades volumes: - /var/lib/docker/volumes/pihole/etc-pihole:/etc/pihole - /var/lib/docker/volumes/pihole/etc-dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d healthcheck: disable: true restart: unless-stopped unbound: # https://github.com/MatthewVance/unbound-docker container_name: unbound image: mvance/unbound:latest hostname: unbound networks: dns_net: ipv4_address: 10.2.0.200 ports: - "${HOST_IP}:53:53/udp" - "${HOST_IP}:53:53/tcp" healthcheck: disable: true restart: unless-stopped

Absolutely. Check out the Pi-Hole documentation here: https://docs.pi-hole.net/

See https://docs.pi-hole.net/

You might want to consider the previously mentioned MergerFS and SnapRAID, or MDADM and LVM for your setup. OpenMediaVault [https://www.openmediavault.org/ is a solid choice in this regard. Additionally, if you're planning to run something like Proxmox, you could look into deploying Starwind CVM on top of it. Pretty much like in this guide: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/resource-library/starwind-virtual-san-vsan-configuration-guide-for-proxmox-vsan-deployed-as-a-controller-virtual-machine-cvm/ .

You would better to install OMV instead. It's a ready to use fileserver solution with web interface.

So I'm working on a similar setup with an ancient desktop my in-laws were getting rid of. I installed OpenMediaVault directly to the hard drive (it's so old that I assume it wouldn't work too well as a hypervisor), with a 4TB external HDD attached. OMV supports Docker by means of a plug-in and I'm running a Jellyfin container with no issues at all. I'm still manually downloading everything to the HDD but *arr containers are my next step, as well as setting up a gluetun container to route all that through a VPN.

That is possible (it's automated to a certain extent). It also depends on the NAS OS. Unraid, for example, can work with drives of different sizes while using the largest one for parity. TrueNAS uses ZFS so you won't be able to just add a drive to your RAIDZ and expand it. There's also openmediavault: https://www.openmediavault.org/ that uses Linux Software RAID and you can add a new drive there but you can't combine drives of different sizes. And there's also Starwinds NAS that supports both Linux Software RAID and ZFS: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas. Plus, I would avoid SMR drives in RAID: https://nascompares.com/answer/list-of-wd-cmr-and-smr-hard-drives-hdd/

I'd put it like that: if you have a spare PC, then it's definitely worth trying. I would also look into openmediavault (minimal RAM needs): https://www.openmediavault.org/ and Starwinds NAS (supports both ZFS and Linux software RAID): https://www.starwindsoftware.com/san-and-nas