Me and my friend have an identical setup at our houses: Windows server VM with a drive we use for media, nextcloud, photos on our local network...

The idea is to create a backup folder on the drive that I will share with him and he with me which we will mount and where we'll upload backups of documents and other important files like immich library and it must be encrypted so we don't have access to each others files.

From my research we would use Tailscale as VPN and Veeam for creating encrypted incremental backups. (It's possible right?)

Is this an optimal setup + can we setup tailscale so the connection is only between the two servers without access to the whole network?

Also how to setup access to the shared folder? We would have to create users for each other or set the folder permissions to rw for everyone right?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Right now it has 2x 16GB 2RX4 PC4-2133P-RBB-11 in slots A1 and A2 (one for each CPU)

I want to upgrade to at least 64GB so can I just buy another two identical sticks?

Do they have to be exactly the same or if any HP 2133 16 GB kit with part number 726719-B21 compatible? I saw many very simillar sticks with a few different letters on ebay.

And is 4x 16GB optimal configuration? It would be in slots A1B1 and A2B2 right?

So my friend found the hard way that his new server doesn't support M.2 NVMe SSD when he put it inside the PCIe adapter. He can't boot from it.

My question is: Can he return the NVMe drive and put a regular SATA M.2 SSD in the PCIe adapter or will it also not work?

I'm planning an upgrade to my homelab with a Proliant DL360 G9 with 256GB SSD for ESXI and 4*4TB HDD in raid 10.

It will be used for Nextcloud, Immich, media management, adguard and many, many more apps under Docker in Linux VM. Maybe NVR in the future.

So with this setup I would have two datastores: The one SSD with ESXI and a logical 8TB drive.

I have this idea: Create a Windows server VM and create a this folder structure for example:
share -> nextcloud_data

-> Immich_data

-> media

-> friends_backup etc... you get the idea...
and mount this shared folder in the Linux VM.

Is this a good setup? How much space from each datastore should I assign?(Install VM to SSD and add D drive with maybe 7TB?) What about a throughput between the VMs and shares? How to easily and securely manage access?

Bonus question: A friend will have identical setup. We would want to backup the most important files to each others servers. What VPN do you use to setup a connection between two servers? Or setup VPN on router?. as for the backup part I thought about using Veeam.

Right now I use an old Dell compaq (i3 3220, 12GB RAM, small SSD + 2TB HDD)

I use it for Owncloud, game hosting and automatic media management.

I want to upgrade to something more solid and with parity so I can actually use it for more than movies that I would be sad when lost but nothing world-ending. Plan is to use TrueNAS and throw maybe 4x 8TB drives in there with raidz1 with thy ability to add more later. And move all my docker stacks there.

I found a local seller of old refurbished servers and the prices and capabilities look very good but I want to go through reddit homelab experts first.

some of the good looking listings listings: (Prices converted from CZK to EUR)

• Dell PowerEdge R610 12-Core 2.26 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core L5640 | 8 GB | 6x SFF | 6/I | iDRAC6 | 4x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 74€
• IBM System x3630 M3 12-Core 2.26 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core L5640 | 16+ GB | 14 disků 3.5" | ServeRAID M5015 | IMM port | 2x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 102€
• Dell PowerEdge R620 12-Core 2.00 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core E5-2630L | 16+ GB RAM | 8/10 disků 2.5" | 1Gb/10Gb | Ethernet/SFP+ ) - 139€
• Dell PowerEdge R510 12-Core 2.27 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core Intel L5640 | 16 GB | 12x LFF | H700 | iDRAC6 | 2x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 167€
• Dell PowerEdge R620 v2 12-Core 2.40 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core E5-2630Lv2 | 16+ GB RAM | 8/10 disků 2.5" | 1Gb/10Gb | Ethernet/SFP+ ) - 198€

and many, many more (you can check the link above).

Big plus is most of them have 2 year warranty.

Questions:

1. Are they worth it? Can I find something better elsewhere?

2. power consumption is bad right? :D. Could I turn one CPU off or take one out entirely?

3. noise - can the fans be adjusted so it's actually usable somewhere where people live. Or can I upgrade the fans to something more manageable?

I just moved to company data plan and downgraded from 20GB to only 5GB (good thing it's free) but with that I can't listen to podcasts online on the road (1h+ daily).

For other podcasts I used Google Podcasts (RIP), now I moved to Podcast Addict. It's great for already added podcasts but some of the stuff I like to listen to is either slow to reach it (WAN Show by LTT) or not available at all (This week in video games by SkillUp).

In the mean time I just download it with newpipe to a same folder and podcast addict finds it - tedious and a mess since it has no logic.

I tried some docker apps like Tubesync but there seem to be no option to only download videos containing a phrase - so it doesn't download all the other videos from their channel.

As for the syncing part I could maybe use owncloud? or RSS seems good? I don't know if it's the right solution though)

Any ideas how to automate this task?