# Meeting Notes: Self-Hosted Photo Library

**Date:** July 29, 2026  
**Time:** 2:00–2:45 PM ET  
**Location:** Video conference

## Attendees

- Maya Chen — Project Lead
- Daniel Ortiz — Infrastructure
- Priya Shah — Security and Privacy
- Alex Morgan — Backend Engineering
- Jamie Lee — Product and UX
- Sam Wilson — Family Archive Coordinator

## Agenda

1. Review requirements and current photo collection
2. Select the hosting and storage approach
3. Define backup, security, and access policies
4. Plan migration and rollout

## Discussion Notes

- The current collection contains approximately 1.8 TB of photos and videos across phones, laptops, external drives, and two cloud accounts.
- The library must support automatic mobile uploads, shared albums, face and object search, duplicate detection, and retention of original metadata.
- Remote access should be simple for nontechnical family members without exposing the service directly to the public internet.
- Daniel proposed running the application in containers on the existing home server, with originals stored on mirrored 8 TB drives.
- Priya noted that disk mirroring protects against drive failure but is not a backup. At least one encrypted off-site copy is required.
- Jamie recommended starting with a small pilot group to validate mobile uploads, album sharing, and account recovery before migrating the full archive.
- The team agreed that original files should remain unchanged. Thumbnails, search indexes, and other generated data may be rebuilt if necessary.
- Initial migration tests should include RAW files, HEIC images, Live Photos, long videos, and files with missing or incorrect timestamps.

## Decisions

- Deploy Immich in containers on the existing Linux home server.
- Store original media on a mirrored storage pool; keep the application database and generated assets on SSD storage.
- Use individual accounts rather than a shared household login.
- Require HTTPS and multifactor authentication for administrator accounts.
- Provide remote access through the existing private VPN during the pilot. Public access will not be enabled.
- Use a 3-2-1 backup strategy:
  - Primary copy on the server
  - Local backup to an external drive
  - Encrypted off-site backup
- Preserve the existing folder structure during the initial import and retain the source drives unchanged until migration validation is complete.
- Run a two-week pilot with three users before beginning the full migration.

## Action Items

- **Daniel:** Prepare the server, mirrored storage pool, container configuration, and HTTPS endpoint by August 5.
- **Priya:** Document account, password, multifactor authentication, VPN, and backup-encryption requirements by August 5.
- **Alex:** Build a representative 100 GB migration test set and verify metadata, checksums, duplicate handling, and supported media formats by August 8.
- **Jamie:** Create a short pilot guide covering mobile upload, album sharing, search, and account recovery by August 8.
- **Sam:** Inventory all source devices, drives, cloud libraries, and approximate storage totals by August 2.
- **Maya:** Select the three pilot users and schedule the pilot review for August 22.
- **Daniel and Sam:** Complete one backup restore test before the pilot begins.
- **Maya:** Confirm the full-migration schedule after the pilot review.

## Open Questions

- Which off-site backup provider offers the best balance of cost, retention, and restore speed?
- Should the long-term setup support selected public album links?
- How should scanned photos with unknown dates be organized?
- What is the retention policy for deleted photos and videos?

## Next Meeting

**Pilot Readiness Review:** August 12, 2026, at 2:00 PM ET