I’m intending to set up a home media server PC for streaming to my TV (Jellyfin or Plex), which can also serve as a Home Assistant box. Over the last few months, I’ve picked up decent parts on sale (e.g. i5-12400, 32gb RAM, 4x 18TB HDDs, 1TB SSD), and they are all here. Presently I have Home Assistant running on an old Intel NUC, so I want to set up my media server PC to be able to take over Home Assistant duties when the NUC dies.

I’m a bit unsure here, so I am asking for advice on how to set all of this up with minimal fuss. A friend is encouraging me to just install Linux then Jellyfin/Sonarr/Radarr/SnapRAID/etc and simply buy a new NUC when the old Home Assistant box dies, and I’m inclined to go that route because frankly my work is mentally tiring and I don’t have the willpower to fight a bunch of issues between software and systems I’m not familiar with. Having set up Home Assistant OS on the Intel NUC in the past, I have some limited experience with setting up Linux, using the terminal, etc, but frankly I really prefer a GUI and for things to be as simple as possible.

I would prefer to have some VMs/containers so that I can run Frigate and other processor intensive applications that the Home Assistant NUC can’t handle, but worry that setting myself up to enable this in the future will be too much hassle in the short term. My hope is that someone can help reassure me that my intended approach is solid, and point me toward useful resources to minimize the hassle of setting this up.

I believe that I want to set up Proxmox, with two VMs to start (I will need to learn how to install and use Proxmox). On one VM, I’ll install Home Assistant OS to be sure that it works, and then will leave it only until my current Home Assistant NUC dies. One the other VM, I’ll set up my media server. In the future, I’ll likely spin up a third VM for running Frigate.

On the media server VM, I’ll install Jellyfin, Sonarr, Radarr, some kind of auto downloading/indexing software, and SnapRAID. Should these be installed directly on Linux, or should I be figuring out dockerized containers? With SnapRAID, I intend to keep one one of the four drives as the parity drive. Is there something I should be running that makes the remaining three drives look like one big drive and handles load balancing, or is that not necessary? Should the hard drive related things be on another VM for any reason? Are there good tutorials for setting up Proxmox to enable all of this without significant issues? As you can probably tell, here is where I start to get uncertain.

I’m intending to set up a home media server PC that will run Jellyfin/Sonarr/Radarr/SnapRAID/etc on one VM, and Home Assistant OS on another. I am seeking input and assistance from people who have similar setups who can advise on how to proceed with minimal hassle on my part.