I have my own home-server and it’s not really a problem maintaining it as I’ve been through a steep learning curve. Now I have a friend who has an ancient Synology and it is always causing terrible problems for him.
If I were to set up a little server for him with docker services running things like immich and syncthing etc, would this be set and forget enough to not cause problems for him? Ideally he wants his own cloud so relatives can store and share files, photos, and possibly movies too. He isn’t the most tech savvy, but he knows his way around Windows and PC’s generally. He doesn’t live that close so I can’t be at his if anything went a little pear-shaped. I could however ssh into it at least.
Is this feasible or practicable? Or would he have to learn Linux and Docker et al.?
I used solely rely on a 4gb rpi4, running dietpi (debian-based) and several docker services. This was back in the good old days when they were available and correctly priced. Once I figured everything out it was very easy to set and forget, with the occasional update here and there and very few breakages (because there’s very few things to break).
I would do a couple minutes of maintenance 2-3x a month, usually consisting of running dietpi OS updates, updating docker images, and occasionally rebooting the server. With unattended-upgrades and solid security setup prior to bringing stuff live, it was fairly hands off.
The fact is there is no such thing as a TRUE set and forget server, as in “Well, I’ve set up your server, I’ll check in with you in a year or two.” Usually there’s something that needs to be touched on a regular basis, but if you set it up well enough the hands-on time should be minimal.
Maybe if he trusts you enough to set everything up he can give you remote access via VPN and SSH so you can do a bit of support here and there.