One pool for disks of every size.
An open-source home server platform: a management layer over mergerfs and SnapRAID, with a web UI and a CLI.
Mixed disks, one pool, one parity disk.
mergerfs and SnapRAID already solve the storage problem. What is missing is the management layer: setup, scheduling, monitoring, shares and apps without hand-editing config files. Hoserva is that layer. It generates the configuration and drives the proven tools instead of reimplementing them.
What it does
Core Hoserva capabilities
Mixed-size pool
Add disks of any size to one pool, with no rebuild and no capacity lost to the smallest disk. Pooling is done by mergerfs.
Parity with a guard
SnapRAID parity on a dedicated disk. Parity is written only on your schedule or when you ask, and a threshold guard holds back a sync when too much has changed.
Shares, backup, monitoring
SMB and NFS shares, users and permissions, SMART and spin-state monitoring, notifications, and config and appdata backup.
Web UI, CLI, one API
A Go daemon with a web UI and a CLI that both talk to the same documented API. Nothing only one of them can do.
How it works
From disk to interface
Hoserva drives the proven tools instead of reimplementing them. A Go daemon, hoservad, keeps its state in SQLite, generates the mergerfs and SnapRAID configuration from it and runs every long operation as a job. The web UI and the CLI are two clients of the same documented API.
Diagram of four layers, from top to bottom. The web UI and the CLI both call one documented API. The API is served by hoservad, the Hoserva daemon. hoservad drives mergerfs, which pools the data disks into one view, and SnapRAID, which writes parity to a separate parity disk. At the bottom are the disks: data disks of any size and one or two parity disks.
Coming from Unraid
Guided migration · in development
A guided migration for existing Unraid servers is in development. It reads Unraid’s configuration, adopts the data disks as they are, without copying them, and recreates your shares, accounts and containers on Debian. Unraid 6.12.x and 7.x are supported.
What migrates
- Data disks, adopted in place: no copying, no formatting
- Shares, with the same names
- User accounts, created without passwords
- Docker templates, converted to Compose stacks you review and start one at a time
What does not
- Passwords: every SMB client reconnects with a new one
- Plugins and custom configuration
- Virtual machines
- Encrypted, ZFS and multi-device btrfs disks, which Hoserva refuses
What it costs
Plan for hours of downtime and a full parity build: Unraid’s parity disk is erased and rewritten as Hoserva parity. From the moment you stop the Unraid array until the first Hoserva sync has finished, the array has no redundancy. Everything before the step that formats the former parity disk can be undone; after it, going back means restoring from a backup.
Unraid is a trademark of Lime Technology, Inc.; Hoserva is not affiliated with it.
Apps
Curated catalog · in development
Apps run as Docker Compose stacks. Hoserva’s catalog is a curated set of templates, each a Compose file with a Hoserva block, validated in CI. Every merge builds one archive, signs it and publishes it at catalog.hoserva.dev.
Nothing unverified is used
Hoserva uses a downloaded catalog only after its signature verifies against the public key built into hoservad, and an older signed catalog cannot replace a newer one. Every installation also carries a snapshot, so a first run or an offline install already has a catalog.
Apps are part of the current development phase and are not released yet.
Parity is not backup
Parity keeps the server running when a disk dies. It lives in the same box as your data and is updated on a schedule, so it is not a second copy.
What parity protects against
- A failed data disk: rebuilt from parity as of the last successful sync
What it does not
- A file you delete or overwrite, once the next sync has run
- Ransomware or corruption that gets past the threshold guard
- Fire, flood or theft: the parity disk is in the same server
Hoserva backs up its own state: the configuration nightly and each app’s files weekly, to local destinations by default. SFTP, S3-compatible, WebDAV and rclone destinations get a copy off the server. The files in your shares are yours to back up.
Read why parity is not backup →Hoserva is in development and has no release yet. The storage core and the NAS features are built; apps and a guided migration from Unraid are the current phase. It is self-hosted open source under AGPL-3.0, with no Cloud offering.