I recently learned the hard way that self-hosting multiple services on an underpowered Synology NAS can be catastrophic. Better hardware and upgrades are expensive, but using what I already have was cheaper. Unfortunately, my South African location made it difficult to find affordable devices.
My NAS has limited RAM, which restricts what I can host. I’ve been conservative about moving services, reserving it for 24/7 access. However, when I hosted a demanding container, one service pushed me over the edge.
Paperless-ngx, a great tool for self-hosted document management, was too resource-intensive for my NAS. Its mobile app and server crashed repeatedly, causing a domino effect that made my system unusable. After recovering from the crash, I realized my NAS resources were overburdened.
To avoid similar issues, it’s essential to be conservative with what you want your NAS to do. While some services have clear requirements for processing power, others depend on tasks. By learning from this experience, I’ve set up a warning system to monitor my RAM usage and migrated Paperless-ngx to my main PC with more powerful hardware.
Source: https://www.xda-developers.com/self-hosting-underpowered-hardware