pms-wiki VS OpenMediaVault

If you want a fully open and free solution, https://perfectmediaserver.com should do the trick.

Alex Kretzschmar from Jupiter Broadcast (Linux Action news, Linux Unplugged, Self Hosted) used to maintain https://perfectmediaserver.com/ as a guide to do this.

I am creating a list of parts for building multi-purpose server that will be running Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 as I am relatively new to Linux and a GUI will ease me into the structure OS as become more familiar with the CLI. Also, I am using perfectmediaserver.com as a general guide. For some context, I also have a gaming PC with some older parts I may donate to the server build. Specifically, I am considering possibly transferring:

Have you looked at the resources here, https://perfectmediaserver.com/

I myself prescribe to the teachings of the IronicBadger(Alex Kretzshmar) from the Self-Hosted podcast and (when I get one setup) intend to follow the guides on his site https://perfectmediaserver.com and use mergerfs to turn a JBOD to a single filesystem and use SnapRAID for redundancy.

I went with this guide https://perfectmediaserver.com/

Trashguides and Perfect Media Server have great setup guides and linuxserver.io has all the docker-compose templates. Good luck!

It's supposed to be a "Perfect Media Server"/NAS/Router/Smart Home Hub/Hypervisor in a Small Form Factor footprint. I want to combine as many appliances as possible into one. Single point of failure is okay, I use the network alone, only I will suffer if any of the services (including Internet) goes down ;). I value less power consumption (0,35€/kWh...) over redundancy currently.

Are there any good tutorials? I’ve read the Perfect Media Server (PMS) series but it’s not that thorough.

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