Ntfy works on channels. Channels manifest as paths under the server URL. For example, ntfy.sh/gadgetwisdom would be a gadgetwisdom channel. By default, the ones on the public server are all public, meaning that you can only hide or restrict them by having a hard to guess channel name, if you host the server, you can add access control globally, or on a per channel basis to require authentication for subscribing, publishing, or both.

• Priorities – Ntfy supports custom priorities from 1 to 5, with 3 being the default.
• Templates – If a service sends data in JSON format, you can write a template for Ntfy to interpret it, rather than having to set up something in between to do that.
• Action Buttons –  You can add buttons to view a webpage, send a http request to a URL, or on Android only, trigger an Android intent.
• Attachments – You can send attachments using a file or URL link in a message. Files expire in a few hours, but linked files would be available longer.
• Icons – To help identify different messages, notifications can have an icon.
• Phone Calls – Ntfy supports via a Twilio account notifying people via phone using text to speech.

This leaves a lot of creative opportunities for integrations.

• Maybe I want to have urgent messages phoned to certain people. Setting priority levels and noises can also help with this.
• Action buttons could allow me to instantly react to alerts with simple actions.
• Attachments already let me view snapshots from my Frigate feed, but what else could I send.

As I look to better integrate this, this service reveals a lot of simple options I can leverage.

Then came Dropbox. You installed an app and it synced everything in a designated folder to their servers. But Dropbox, like many services, became slower, bloated, etc.  So, I moved on to self hosting. First with Owncloud, and then with its fork, Nextcloud.  These platforms no longer bill themselves as file synchronization platforms, they bill themselves as ‘collaboration’ tools.

This is the problem that has taken me to look for a new solution that just does files. No more, no less. And while my instance of Nextcloud is still running, I am giving Syncthing a try. Syncthing requires no central server. It ticks all the security boxes: open protocol and encryption.

I installed a copy on my server, which allows me to synchronize the files there and back them up, in addition to syncing the various computers that need the files. It also, being peer to peer, allows me to have different folders synced to different systems, which allows for a bit more independent flexibility than the centralized systems, but also a bit more setup time.

Syncthing works perfectly on a local network, but has some challenges on the public internet. There are two services Syncthing provides for thi: A discovery server and a relay server.

Syncthing runs several public discovery servers, which assist in helping instances find themselves, but you can run your own. Discovery servers are safe enough to use publicly, although using them can identify that a device exists. The other server is a relay server. It allows relaying between devices that may be on different networks. The information is encrypted, so it is unlikely a malicious one could do much more than disrupt communication.

But regardless, I set up my own private discovery and relay server, and neither can be used without a token that I have to manually add to each device when setting them up. So, it is as secure as I can make it.

It remains to be seen if it will fully suit my needs, but so far, it is lightweight, flexible, and dumps all of the unnecessary cruft I do not want.

The Problem

This brings me to my latest debate. Do I get one or more efficient computers with power efficient processors that can reliably handle low level tasks, or a single beefier computer? Technology has caught up to this while I was just letting my server run, because it just worked. Most home servers are idle most of the time, as you aren’t getting the demand a server with many users would receive, even with a full household. My NAS is running on an N100 CPU with 32GB of RAM.

The N100 has 4 cores, which is akin to having 4 different CPUs.  My server is running a processor that is a few generations older, with 6 cores. The benchmark of the N100 is about 1/3 of the score given to the older processor, but also uses a 10th of the power consumption. The NAS has an average usage of 3% CPU, as a NAS needs RAM to cache data, but serving it takes very little in terms of capacity.  By comparison, the server with the more powerful processor, running Jellyfin(a media server), Immich(photo server), Frigate(NVR), and more, is averaging 20% of more.

Plenty of CPU Maybe, but what about GPU?

Some of this involves hardware transcoding, using the GPU, to transcode video streams for Jellyfin. Frigate can use the GPU to run object detection. So, purchasing a Mini PC means another GPU, and the CPU can handle some low demand services. The alternative is to go for a an external GPU. However, the used computer my beefier CPU is in, is one I bought refurbished, only to discover that the PCI-E slot I would need to do that was not soldered onto the motherboard for some reason, which brought me to the idea of dividing the server, rather than replacing it entirely.

Multiple Computers…but in Software? Virtualization

Some people who have homelabs opt to go in a completely different direction. Virtualization. They have multiple virtual computers running on one server. There are advantages to this in that you can tear down a virtual computer and replace it, you can back up each piece separately. That leaves one with a lot of choices. I’ve read dozens of opinions and talked to several people about this.

Is more hardware better than virtualization? And if the idea of a low power CPU is to reduce energy costs, how does more than one of them help?

Final Thoughts and a question

As a final thought, having multiple pieces of hardware increases complexity, and thus maintenance time, but independent hardware means a failure in one system doesn’t mean a failure in another, the same isolation virtualization offers.

I have gone back and forth on a conclusion. I have seen people who run their entire infrastructure on a mini PC. That may be good for many people, but some might find themselves straining under the load.

But, what do you think? Am I better off upgrading or bifurcating?