So I've been planning on getting off Google photos for a while now and want to test Immich as a replacement. To that end I've got myself a raspberry pi 5 (8gb) and paired it with a 1tb nvme SSD. I have been familiarising myself with immich documentation and content on securing rpi network, but I would appreciate if you could provide me with more insight or basics that I should look out for. I am still in uni so it will be connected via eduroam.
I'd recommend dietpi and docker on your pi then manage services such as Immich with portainer and use caddy as a reverse proxy (super simple config and comes with things like let's encrypt SSL built in). Also I'd suggest storing images on a mirrored raid array using two USB HDDs. And also storing an encrypted backup once a day somewhere on the cloud. Or at least in another location. This is what I've done anyway. Hope that gives you some things to look into!
So I have a large immich database and a slow CPU and really wish I spun up a docker swarm to kick in some extra CPU when needed. Otherwise, it does work exceptionally well on lower power devices, just takes a looooong time.
Oh, and read changelogs because not all updates go smooth. ;) My stack has been down since the last release and I haven't had time to fix it.