I like @pgo_lemmy’s answer best, but instead of rebuilding the original system, (assuming you did the default ZFS installation) you can add the bigger device as part of a mirror, let it resilver, install the boot loader, and then detach the smaller device from the mirror. It should automatically grow to the bigger size once the smaller device is removed and the only downtime you’d have is from installing the bigger device. Check the PVE wiki and you should find some details on this method.

You’ve got some good options, but let me mention that if you dig Odoo, there are alternatives to pretty much all the “Enterprise” apps. Just use the Third Party App Store or browse through the OCA (https://apps.odoo-community.org/shop).

I don’t have a real preference, but one more advantage to the plugin route is that if you need something that’s not available, cobbling together a plugin is much simpler than modify most projects directly.

I recently spent a lot of time doing this with Odoo and I was very grateful for the modularity.

By the way, in case you haven’t found it, there is a pretty decent wysiwyg editor plugin for DokuWiki. I use it at work and it’s been pretty simple for my users.

I’m sure you already know this, but do note that with Z2 compared to mirrors, you should expect a decrease in performance and an increase in rebuild times in the event of a drive failure. Not saying don’t do it, but make sure the perceived benefits are worth the trade offs.

Here’s some more info on the topic: https://jrs-s.net/2015/02/06/zfs-you-should-use-mirror-vdevs-not-raidz/.

The two pieces of software have very different topologies.

In very broad strokes: Something like FunkWhale uses a server-client model. To get to it, you connect to it remotely and you need some way to get there. By contrast Syncthing behaves as a mesh of nodes. Each node connects directly to the other nodes and the syncthing project folks host relays that help introduce the nodes to one another and penetrate NAT.

No, you may not need a paid domain to use your self-hosted FunkWhale server (I haven’t dabbled with that service in particular). There are a few options.

1. You could probably use the direct public IP address or alternatively
2. Use a dynamic DNS provider (like afraid.org) to resolve your IP address
3. Use a VPN on all of your clients and use local DNS to resolve your FunkWhale server’s local IP address.

These all assume that you have a public IP address on your router and not one that’s being NAT-ed by your ISP.

Again, these are very broad strokes, but hopefully it helps point your in a direction for some research.

I’m not sure if this what you’re after, but it sounded to me that you were describing monitoring. Might be worth your checking out librenms or zabbix or checkmk. Those would give you a good overview of the health of your stuff and keep track of what’s where.

I have synapse server running in docker on a VPS and it’s been pretty reliable. At my office I use it as sort of a self-hosted Slack replacement. For our use case, I don’t have federation enabled, so no experience on that front. It’s a small office and everyone here uses either Element or FuzzyChat on desktop and mobile. It runs behind an nginx reverse proxy and I’ve got SSO set up with Authentik and that’s worked very well. Happy to share some configs if that would be useful.

I’ve only ever tinkered with it slightly on a Proxmox host, but I ran it locally when I was testing it and it was glad to setup the VMs on the same system it was on.

You can definitely run VMs or containers on your desktop system and there are a lot of ways to do that (as others have said). If it’s the automated, reproducible setup you’re after (and you are purposely avoiding docker), give a look to terraform and ansible to create and provision your software.

The answers for this will vary widely, but the thing I think many people overlook when planning out expenses is a plan to back up the data. Having the file server is great, but start planning now for what to do when it breaks. Where will backup copies of your data live and how will you restore it?

As to the server itself, the hardware completely depends on your desires. Some like second hand enterprise gear; others prefer purpose-made home NAS devices or a DIY rig. On the software side my thought is keep it simple if you’re starting up. There are good readymade options (TrueNAS, XigmaNAS, openmediavault, unraid, etc). They’re all great and they help get up and running quickly. They also have a lot of tempting knobs to turn that can cause unexpected problems if you don’t fully understand them.

To my mind file servers have to be reliable above all else, so I’d avoid running anything besides file sharing on your server until it’s running like a top and then only add more layers one at a time.

Sorry for all the philosophy, but I really do think this is a common stumbling block for people getting started.