Hello guys,
I haven’t been active in forums much, but now wanna use this as a way of looking for advice. Please excuse any noob-ish mistakes.
initial situation:
- 3 users in 3 different locations .... that’s why web access will be a major factor
- my connection (where the server will be located) : 500mbit/s down - 50mbit/s up
- other users: about 100mbit/s down - 10-20mbit/s up
- every user should be able to upload images which preferably can be organized in some kind of program and can also all be accessed by everyone
- every user should also be able to use the server as a backup for different PCs (both Windows and Mac) and use it as general file sharing
- I do have experience in building desktop PCs and have a generally good knowledge of hardware
- I don’t have old hardware laying around to reuse
- budget preferably around the 500€ range or less, but possibly more if necessary and worth it
- noise and power efficiency are a concern
Questions:
Self build or get something pre build like a Synology “xyz”
I’m thinking self build can save me money, it’ll be fun cause I like tech and it can be adapted to my purpose better and can be expanded better.
- is what I am looking for possible to achieve?
- How much storage would make sense? For how much more does one plan?
- what about zfs and raid?
- I know raid isn’t a backup, so how would I realize a backup for the server data itsself? Or rather when is another level of backup necessary?
- what kind of OS would be used? I heard of plenty of options like freenas, Ubuntu, windows server, unraid...... Do different OSs affect power consumption and CPU requirements significantly or all the all kinda equal?
- How does one choose/decide on an OS?
- server or consumer hardware? I’ve a lot more knowledge of consumer hardware and would kinda prefer that because of that I guess. But tell me otherwise if beneficial.
- how much CPU power is necessary? Since I read in multiple threads, that once you have a server one will keep adding features and use it more and more for different applications I don’t wanna limit the future usability by getting a too weak CPU. From what I can gather something along the lines of a quad core should suffice!?
- how much ram does a server need for my basics tasks? what would be future proof? How does one estimate the ram needs of a server in general?
- do I need a gpu/apu? Or rather how do the GUIs of the different OSs work?
- Do I need to worry about security when thinking about web access and so on?
- the connection of the users and me are sufficient once the biggest chunks of data have been loaded onto the server from what I can tell. Incremental PC backups should and occasional photo uploads shouldn’t be too slow.
- read and write speeds won’t need to be top of the line, since over the web the connections petty much cap out around 6,25 mb/s right? so I would only need to consider my local network speed which is 1 Gbit/s if any I guess.
- when does an ssd cache make sense?
- I read a lot about VMs. What can be VMs be used for? When does using one make sense? How much more CPU and RAM would implementing VMs require?
- what other server applications are most common and useful for private use?
Sorry for the wall of text. I thought about this topic for quite a while now and also read many different threads. I hope my questions are clear and make sense. I’d be very grateful for any advice and tips I can get.
Thanks a lot to everyone in advance!
musicbreaker