u/jinxed718

Finally own my photo library instead of renting it from Google. ~18k photos/videos, 2 users, running Immich for a couple weeks and it's been great. Here's my full setup and backup strategy in case it helps someone.

I'm in Bangladesh, so latency and cost drove most of the choices.

Hosting — Oracle Cloud "Always Free"

• VM.Standard.A1.Flex (Ampere ARM): 4 OCPUs / 24 GB RAM — free tier
• Region: Singapore (~50–80 ms from me)
• 200 GB boot volume (the free block-storage allowance)
• Ubuntu 24.04 + Docker, standard Immich docker-compose

For a free box, 4 cores + 24 GB runs Immich comfortably, including the ML/face recognition.

🔐 Backup strategy

1. Live copy — the working library on the OCI server
2. Local copy — rsync to an external HDD at home
3. Cold cloud copy — daily incremental rclone to OCI Object Storage (Archive tier), on a systemd timer

💰 Cost

• Compute + 200 GB storage: $0 (free tier)
• Archive storage: $0.0026 / GB / month
• Optional future spillover volume: $0.0255 / GB / month

A self-owned Google Photos replacement for basically nothing.