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🤜🤛 Synergy Plan: Starfleet & Risa

Objective: Balance workload based on hardware strengths to maximize performance and responsiveness.

📊 Hardware Comparison

Feature starfleet-compute (Mac Mini) risa-recreation (HP EliteDesk)
CPU i7-3720QM (Ivy Bridge, Gen 3) i5-8500T (Coffee Lake, Gen 8)
Cores 4 Cores / 8 Threads 6 Cores / 6 Threads (True Cores)
GPU HD 4000 (Legacy) UHD 630 (Modern QuickSync)
Storage ~1.5 TB Total (1TB HDD + 500GB SSD) ~256 GB NVMe (Fast but Small)
RAM 16 GB DDR3 16 GB DDR4
Strength Bulk Storage & Background Jobs Media Processing & Responsiveness

🏗️ The Roles

1. risa-recreation: "The Front of House" (User Experience)

This machine is newer, snappier, and has a modern GPU. It should run everything you interact with directly or watch.

  • Role: Media Server & Gateway.
  • Services:
    • Plex / Jellyfin: (Moved from Starfleet). Relies on UHD 630 for flawless 4K/HEVC transcoding.
    • Immich (Server + ML): Facial recognition will run 5x faster here than on the old Mac.
    • Gaming: CS2 / Palworld Servers.
    • The Gateway: AdGuard Home & Nginx Proxy Manager (ensures fast DNS/Web loading).

2. starfleet-compute: "The Engine Room" (Heavy Lifting)

This machine has more storage space and threads, making it ideal for large databases and "slow but steady" background crunching.

  • Role: AI Core & Data Hoarder.
  • Services:
    • Ollama (AI): Keeps the "Local Brain" active.
    • ChromaDB: Vector database for AI memory.
    • Arr Stack (Radarr/Sonarr): These don't need a fast GPU, just storage access.
    • Download Clients: qBittorrent / Sabnzbd.
    • Local Backups: Use the extra 1TB drive as a staging area or backup target.

🚀 Execution Strategy

Phase 1: The Media Airlift (Risa)

  • Goal: Move Plex and Immich to risa-recreation.
  • Config: Mount /mnt/vault via NFS.
  • Action: Deploy Docker stacks.
  • Benefit: Immediate improvement in playback start times and seeking.

Phase 2: The AI Bunker (Starfleet)

  • Goal: Dedicate resources to LLMs.
  • Action: Ensure Ollama has dedicated access to the 16GB RAM (unburdened by Plex).
  • Optimization: Use the local SSD (/mnt/ai_ssd) for ChromaDB and Model storage to speed up AI retrieval.

Phase 3: Network Glue

  • Goal: Unified Access.
  • Action: Run Nginx Proxy Manager on risa. Point plex.the-lal.net to risa's IP (192.168.1.21). Point ai.the-lal.net to starfleet (192.168.1.35).

✅ Pros & Cons

Pros Cons
Speed Massive UX Boost. Plex/Immich will feel "instant" on Gen 8 hardware. Migration effort required.
AI More RAM for Models. Freeing Starfleet from Plex prevents OOM crashes when running larger models (e.g. Llama-3-8b). Network traffic increases (Plex reading files from NAS over network).
Efficiency Right Tool for Job. QuickSync saves power during transcoding.

🏁 Recommendation

Green Light. This split is logical. The Mac Mini is too old for modern video codecs (HEVC) but perfect for text-based AI and file management. The HP EliteDesk is a media powerhouse disguised as a tiny PC.