Stuff the Server Does
It became clear over the past few weeks while the server was down that the essential function, according to my family, is basically just Plex. This shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, but the non-Plex functions are definitely not very visible to the rest of the family.
I’ve been running SmartOS for several years, with most services in their own dedicated O/S zone. It’s been unremarkably straightforward.
Services/VMs
By RAM allocation, the services are as follows:
| Service | VM | GB RAM |
|---|---|---|
| Plex | LX | 2048 |
| Backblaze | OS | 2048 |
| Workbench | OS | 512 |
| Dropbox | Bhyve | 512 |
| Calibre-Web | OS | 256 |
| Fileserver | OS | 256 |
| Time Machine | OS | 256 |
| MiniDLNA | LX | 256 |
| nginx | OS | 256 |
| syslog | OS | 128 |
| blog | OS | 128 |
Plex and MiniDLNA both need something specific for network broadcasts, but are able to get it via the Linux compatibility layer. Dropbox doesn’t run natively here, so it’s inside a Linux VM. Specifics on the remaining items:
- Plex has been the hub of our family media for a long time. Media is stored on a designated volume to which Plex has read access. MiniDLNA hosts school content that doesn’t really sort into the primary media library.
- Backblaze is a fantastically cheap s3-compatible storage service. I use rclone for nightly syncs from designated backup folders from the fileserver to the backblaze service. Since there are so many files, this needs lots of RAM. In this zone, I also run nightly backups of my gmail account.
- Workbench is basically a scratch space for stuff. It doesn’t get a lot of activity, but I like having it.
- Calibre-Web is a web frontend for a calibre ebook collection. I’ve been reading ebooks since the Palm Pilot days, and they’re all stashed here.
- Fileserver provides ssh access to files, including backup destinations.
- Time Machine is an AFP share for Mac backups.
- nginx is a reverse proxy that consolidates services into TLS via reverse proxy. I have LetsEcrypt set up, and it just works.
- syslog is a log aggregator for network stuff.
- blog is this site, generated by Hugo.