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Hello everyone, I'm currently in the process of setting up a home lab VM server tailored for gaming purposes. My plan involves pooling together some of the primary PC components with a close friend to build this lab. Essentially, we aim to configure two instances and allocate both my friend's GPU and mine to these instances. By doing so, we intend to access the VMs remotely via Parsec, enabling us to game from any location with a stable internet connection (meeting Parsec's minimal requirements, naturally). Now, onto my questions: If budget constraints were non-existent, which hypervisor would you recommend for optimal gaming performance in this scenario? and what would win second place if money was an issue? Considering that my server will be operational round-the-clock, would it be more prudent to utilize my current high end consumer-level CPU or invest in one of those enterprise-grade CPUs designed to handle heavy workloads and prolonged usage? Looking forward to your insights and recommendations. Thanks in advance!

Budget (including currency): $0 (ideally, but I can spend more if necessary) Country: United States of America Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mini PC -> Server or Home Security Laptop -> Server or Home Security Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Cameras (all are reolink): 3x CX410 (4MP PoE) 6x B400 (4MP PoE) Pre-Built Systems: Laptop: HP x360 ee100 (R7 - 5700U + DDR4 SODIMM RAM + 2280 NVME SSD) Mini PC: Morefine 600 (R5 - 6600H + DDR5 SODIMM RAM+ 2280 NVME SSD) All Storage Available to me: 2280 NVME 128GB SSD 2280 NVME 512GB SSD 3.5" 1000GB WD Purple Drive (surveilance) 3.5" 500GB WD Green Drive (power efficient) 3.5" 500GB WD Black Drive 2.5" 500GB Toshiba HDD (x3) 2.5" 500GB HGST HDD 2.5" 500GB Lexar SSD CPU's Available to me: i5 - 4790 i5 - 4770 E3 - 1245 v3 RAM Available to me: 4GB DDR3 DIMM RAM (4x) 8GB DDR3 DIMM RAM (2x - ECC) 8GB DDR4 SODIMM RAM 16GB DDR5 SODIMM RAM GPU's Available to me: Radeon R5 340X Prebuilt Desktops: Dell Optiplex 7020 SFF (Case + PSU + Motherboard) Dell Optiplex 7020 MT (Case + PSU + Motherboard) Prebuilt Servers: HP Prodesk Servers (1U and 2U) Accessories: HDD Dock with 4 HDD slots and USB 3.0 connectivity Based on IPCamTalk.com's guide for buying a CPU: "To determine which CPU you need, first add up the total megapixels per second (MP/s) you intend to run. Then multiply by 10 to get a rough idea of the CPU Mark score that would be recommended as a minimum. For any CPU that does not support Quick Sync Video, add about an additional 40% to the requirement." - https://ipcamtalk.com/wiki/choosing-hardware-for-blue-iris/#but-what-cpu-do-i-actually-buy To my understanding, Quick Sync is an intel thing, so... (123*9)*1.4 = ~1600 Basically all my CPU's are overkill for this: 6600H (18K) (3K single thread) 4790 (7.2K) 4770 (7K) Xeon (7K) To my understanding, the best plan moving forward is to forget all the other PC's, and use my Mini-PC for my home server, and my BlueIRIS box. Based on the performance numbers compared to wattage, the 6600H is the price to performance king when it comes to electricity cost. Could I make a VM with Blue Iris, and give it a single thread of the 6600H, then keep all 15 other threads for the VM Host like proxmox? My end goal is the following: I currently have a Z Fold 5, Meta Quest 3, and Nothing else. I am using a USB C capture card to feed the video signal of Samsung Dex into my Quest 3, and using Samsung Dex for Chrome Remote Desktop into a Windows VM hosted on the PROXMOX server, when I need a Windows VM, I can send something through SSH on an SSH terminal with a terminal app on my phone to my PROXMOX server to spin up the Windows VM. I would like to sell my Optiplex's, the HP Desktop Style Server and so on to be able to buy some DDR5 SODIMM RAM for the minipc running proxmox and the Blue Iris install. Would it be better for me to use the Intel XEON chip with ECC RAM for the BlueIRIS install for 24/7 reliability or will just the Morefine be good enough? Ideally I'd also like to be able to replace Google Drive by connecting the HDD Hub into my Morefine miniPC, and using the 4 HDD's in RAID 10. (Could this double for a Mediaserver too is this asking too much of the 6600H? What media server would work best given this situation?) Do you guys see any pitfalls with this plan or do y'all think I'm good to go?

Howdy! I plan to run a Minecraft server on my windows PC for some friends... but I want to do it safely. Some people recommend Cloudflare, and some people recommend a VPN or some just using a firewall with exceptions for the Minecraft port. Does anyone have experience or knowledge of how to safely port forward it? My initial plan was to port forward a VPN as I would also be running a homelab with a NAS and a couple other resources I'd like to access outside of my home network, but some people say it's still not safe and I just want to know the opinion of someone who has done similar themselves and could give me advice. Thanks in advance!

A few months ago I bought a Supermicro tower server. I have been using 4 (+1 boot) SATA SSD drives and running TrueNAS Scale on it. Just now I switched out the SATA cabels that were connected directly to the motherboard to an HBA. And now the server won't turn on. And I don't mean it wont POST or BOOT. It won't even power on. When I disconnect the HBA and the PCIE riser, it POSTS fine. Even if I only connect the riser by itself with nothing at the other end of it, same issue. I tried two different risers and same thing happens. The HBA is a Broadcom 9300-16i, but since the problem happens even without it connected I don't think it's an issue. Is it just some BIOS setting I am missing? Is my motherboard faulty? Here are the specs: Mainboard: Supermicro X9DRW-IF CPU: 2 x Intel Xeon 2680 V2 RAM: 16 x 16 GB DDR3 1333 MHz ECC PSU: 500 W (Bronze)

Hello! I have built a computer using parts that were given to me, It is my second PC and I would like to use it as a homelab as well as have it be able to play games occasionally when friends are over. Some of the things I want to do with the home lab are, run a NAS, run game servers, Have a repository of my blu-rays and dvds, as well as some music. I have briefly used plex and I think I want to try another solution. I am wondering about using docker to create a temporary environment to play games so I can easily open and close it when needed? Any advice or thoughts are welcome. I am mainly looking for what Operating system to use as a base to do all of these things. Thank you! Specs: threadripper 1900x, 32gb G.Skill Ripjaws ddr4 2400, EVGA! 1080FTW, X399 Taichi, SilverStone StriderGold 1200W gold

Budget (including currency): Hopefully a bit cheaper than what it is right now. Country: Canada Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: I'm doing AI, NAS with FTP, VPN, Teamspeak 5, Jellyfin, light home automation, web hosting, and a lot of game servers. I also want some spare power if I add another service to it. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Right now I've made this online:

Budget (including currency): 2500-5000 NOK (~240-500 USD) (Not including HDD's), not sure how realistic the lower range is in Norway, cheaper would be better, but mainly looking for "bang for the buck". Country: Norway Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Home server / NAS, File Jellyfin, file storage, docker containers. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): I have a Fractal design Node 304 case laying around which I think would be nice to re-use. I also have various DDR3 RAM from old PC's that could be re-used. My gaming rig (AMD 3600, RTX 3070) has a Cooler Master G650M PSU which I could replace with something beefier (in case I decide to upgrade my GPU at some point) and have the current PSU re-used for the server / NAS instead. I could also rip an old 256GB m.2 SSD from and old laptop that doesn't get used, to have as a boot drive. I'm looking to set up a home serer / NAS without breaking the bank, mainly to setup Jellyfin as well as general file storage at first, and then maybe expand to add other services later (Pi-hole, and something to "acquire" movies / TV shows). Would apricate some hardware recommendations, and recommendations for hard-drives as well. I don't mind finding something used, but the used market here in Norway does not seem that great (or I am not that good at searching through it). Current build idea: Case: re-use Fractal design 304 - 0 NOK Motherboard: buy a cheap Mini ITX motherboard, such as ASRock A520M-ITX/ac - 1300 NOK CPU: buy a cheap CPU that fits the socket on the motherboard, maybe also a AMD 3600? - 1000 NOK (or could replace current main rig CPU with something beefier I guess, if AM4) RAM: buy some cheap compatible RAM: Crucial DDR4 2666MHz 4GB - 200-400 NOK (is 4GB enough?) PSU: Replace current gaming rig one: 1500-2000 NOK Boot drive: rip from old laptop - 0 NOK Total: 4000-4700 NOK (~380-450 USD). Not exactly a "cheap" build, considering I would need to get some drives as well.

Greetings! As the tittle suggest, I want you guys to give opinion about it for research purposes, especially doing experiment around building "almost all in one mini homelab server" and probably gonna mass produce it if thats viable. I also have some additional question regarding it, which is: If quad core with Hyperthreading (4C/8T), is enough, what kind of task you run on it? Do you prefer 6C/12T or even 8C/16T option with more steeper price? If the product is built like an mini PC (like those AliExpress multiport x86 router), what built in I/O your expect from it? Do you guys prefer more expansion option or more built in I/O with some price increases? For example, either more M.2/PCIe expansion or built in 10GBe/SFP+ Do you think video transcoding is a bonus or must have on this thing?? The performance is ranging from mobile Renoir (Zen2) to Cezanne (Zen3/3+) and its intel equivalent (15-35W TDP). Thank you in advance for your opinion!

Hello LMG Forum community. I come to you today to help me select parts for a server I intend for an additional k8s node on my homelab setup. My existing setup is straight up my old gaming PC with a few add in PCIe cards for SATA/networking needs. First off, the requirements: - budget wise, I'd like to keep it under $2,500 since it's already a consequential budget. - I need mostly CPU and RAM availability. - Storage is not a concern, since my main node has about 50TB raw already, most of which is available (maybe 6TB taken total, and I have like 6 empty drive bays for additional storage if need be). - GPU not needed, I already have a GTX 1060 in my main node that I use for transcoding. - case has to be rack mountable, I am waiting for my rack to arrive, but it's 12U. My main node is taking up 3U of that, I intend to add in a 1U networking plate, and a 1U shelf for my switch - speaking of networking, my LAN is in a mix of 10G, 2.5G and 1G. 10G in SFP for my main node, 2.5G for my desktop PC, 1G for the rest. I still have an SFP 10G port on my switch which I'd like to use for my worker node. - Power consumption is a concern since it's a server at home, hence I'd like to keep it under 500W This will be a worker node in a 2-node kubernetes cluster, managed by kubeadm, both machines will run debian 12 and containerd for the container runtime (and runc of course). With those constraints laid out, I picked out these parts on pcpartpicker : https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XHwXh3 It does include a Threadripper (high core count is desirable), lots of RAM, and the rest of the parts I chose to fill it in. Case is undecided yet, since I don't know good rack mounted ATX cases. The one I have for my main node works fine, but it's not great either. I mostly picked it for the ample amount of 3.5" bays. I also plan on migrating my transcoding GPU to that new node, so that I free up an extra 2 bays for drives in my main node. So if anybody can recommend cases I can look at (in the 3U to 4U range) or recommend things I have not thought of. Thanks in advance

Budget (including currency): 400-700$ (no storage) Country: USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: A low power NAS/DAS machine capable of doing 1-5 jellyfin streams + handle all the -aar software and some other services. I might in the future host some web applications, being a software dev, some docker containers, some nginx php servers for personal self-hosting. At which point maybe the low power is a hard no. Other details:I have an old 7200U 8Gb 256gb SSD laptop that's been doing all of this in one machine, suffice to say it was good enough to tinker but not properly work. I could do 1-2 streams tops but no encoding. 3 gaming pcs (one for me, one for sim racing and one being my old gaming pc) I've started by looking at crazy stuff like flash only nas (asustor) or diy through jonsbo but all of them use very small CPUs. Perhaps this should be 2 separate machines and have the nas/das in addition to a separate machine to do the jellyfin, suite of other services, etc. How would the storage performance go though if they are separate machines? I just figured it would've been simpler overall to have it all in one.

Budget (including currency): <~250 (looking for used stuff and would like cheap but if I find a good deal willing to spend higher) Country: U.S.A. Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Proxmox, TrueNas Scale, Ubuntu Other details: I'm looking at building a server and I need to get a motherboard and CPU but I'm having trouble finding something for a good deal. I'm looking for a server board with IPMI. That way I can practice using it. And then I also need a CPU that has good efficiency for its power. I'm thinking of getting a LGA 1151 motherboard but I don't know what to get. This is going to be for my main proxmox server that will run truenas, a game server and whatever else I put on it. I could go with a consumer board but I don't know of any that has IPMI. I also need full ATX as I plan on adding a couple different PCIE devices (GPU, networking, storage). Does anyone have any good advice on what to get? Or maybe they have bought something themselves that they could recommend? power mobo+CPU with IPMI

Budget (including currency): something along the lines of 1000-1500$ (i might be able to salvage some parts from another PC) Country: Bulgaria Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: It will be mainly used for storage of my photos. As a photographer I tend to have 20-30 GB of data to store after a shoot. In my current setup I am using a RPI 3 with an external HDD, but it is getting very limiting. I am also using it for a Plex Server and organize a few movies and shows. With a proper machine I plan to use it sometimes to run a VM or two. Maybe setup a Pi Hole server or some project like that. I need some kind of redundancy which would prevent me from loosing all my photos (I don't really care about the tv shows or movies). I also read that RAID arrays are not very good for SSDs, initially I was planning on using SSDs as the prices have become very affordable and the read longevity is better than a HDD. I would really appreciate some suggestions on which way to go, any problems which might be a deal breaker or something probably not many people know.

Hi, in recent months I have been thinking about having my first small home lab, since lately I have been using my PC to host Jelyfin with various films, I wanted to have a home lab both for this and for various hosting and for VMs because I am studying systems microcomputers and networks and a little practice wouldn't hurt me, but let's say that in hardware to contain the various trascodings etc.. I don't know much yet, and so for the moment I have these 2 builds that I was thinking of: Build 1: Motherboard: ASRock H310M-ITX/AC CPU: Intel Core i3-9100F CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i RAM: Corsair VANGEANCE LPX 2x8GB SSD: Intenso 3832450 M.2 SATA III 512GB Power Supply: Corsair RM550x (550 W, full modular) Build 2: Motherboard: ASRock B460M-ITX/AC S1200 CPU: Intel Core i3-10100F CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S RAM: Corsair VANGEANCE LPX 2x8GB SSD: Intenso M.2 SSD Top Power Supply: Tecnoware Modular 650W Obviously I know they can be bad builds so I would like to hear the opinions of someone with more experience

I have a home lab which I use to test software, host websites, docker containers, and serve media files using Jellyfin. It's an old gaming rig with the following specs: CPU: Core i7 6800K Motherboard: MSI X99A Godlike Gaming RAM: 16 GB DDR4 2666 MHz (2* 8) GPU: GT 710 PSU: Thermaltake TR2 S Series 550W I am running Ubuntu server OS. During the summer season, I am facing some extended power outages every few days in the week. I want to make sure that my server automatically turns on after power is restored. I was thinking of building an electrical module with a relay switch and connecting it to the power supply and the power switch pin in the motherboard. But I am not an electric engineer, so I am not sure if this will work. I am asking if anyone has a solution using off-the-shelf components first. If not I would love to get some directions on how to build the module. N.B.: I do have an 2000VA offline UPS, it can't provide enough backup.

Looking for an OS to run my home NAS, ideally that is free. Will be used to store files that won't be used very often So I can be slow Hardware: CPU: Xeon E5-2680 V4 Cooler: Silverstone Krypton KR02 Motherboard: AliExpress X99 LGA 2011-3 Motherboard Ram: 32GB DDR4 2133Mhz ECC AliExpress ram Boot: Dual Western Digital Green 480GB NVME M.2 SSD Mass Storage: 4x Seagate Barracuda Compute 8TB (Used), 2x Western Digital Blue 8TB (New), 3x Seagate IronWolf NAS (12TB) Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB Dx9.0c Graphics card (An old GPU I got a long time ago, will be used just to display out) Case: Fractal Design XL R2 ATX Case (Used) Power Supply: Corsair CV650W Others: Molex to 5x Sata Power x2 4x 3.5" Hard Drive Cage

Hi, first time poster, long time viewer coming for advice. Backstory: I have decided to make myself a fully virtual Windows Server 2022 lab with HA, Clustering, Backups, File Server, and all that, maybe even use it as a NAS of sorts (yea, I know, Linux is probably better suited for servers but I'm one of those people that get to work in full Windows environments at work and having a lab with a similar setup to learn some more or test things out would be great). Issues: My constraint is physical space - I can't dedicate any more space for another PC, but I already have an HTPC in the house. The problem list / requirements: I want to run a bare metal hypervisor (preferrably Hyper-V, but I could tolerate VMware if what I'm looking for is not possible on Hyper-V) On that hypervisor I want to run one VM for the WinSrv lab and one VM for the HTPC Win10/11 I want the HTPC system to be easily accessible through the connected keyboard, mouse, and display in such a way, that if my girlfriend were to go watch Netflix in the living room, she wouldn't even notice that she's doing that on a VM. I want the whole setup to be as minimal in maintenance as possible. I've got enough administrative overhead in my life, and I really don't need the whole HTPC/LAB thing to become a "pool water-cooling project" or "living room audio project" of my house if possible The question: How do I even do that? I was wondering if it was possible to give the HTPC VM a dedicated physical HDMI port and USB ports so the physical computer will just output to the TV by default. Is that possible? Do any of you have experience with running that kind of setup? Is a dedicated GPU required then, or can I get by using an iGPU on a Ryzen 5700G? Is there something obvious I'm not taking into account here, or maybe a better, faster and easier solution? All help would be greatly appreciated

hi.... i spent 6hr working till about 11pm trying to stop my wifi drivers from being active within proxmox. It caused a cascade of issues for me. It began to register on my network as two separate devices since the mac addresses were different. Yet, the IP addresses were the same and I didn't realize that before trying to assign a static IP with in my router to what I thought was the ethernet "version" of the device. And then when errors cropped up and an unstable connection I began to trouble shoot. And soon came to find what I had done. Disabling the wifi drivers didn't work -_- nor did a reboot, then I got a VGA ERROR??? WTH??? Somehow, the wifi driver remains active and now the ethernet driver is all screwed over -__- No progress was made and it feels I have made the situation worse as somehow my router is not responding to the changes made from the mobile management app. Any help is appreciated and thank you for your time!

Howdy, I hope you're doing well! I recently spun up a minecraft server on Ubuntu 24 LTS and it runs great! But I'm curious if there is a service I can run in a container that would allow me to view the resource usage and see what kind of available resources I have. I plan to run a light vpn server which will only have one or two clients concurrently but I'd like to be able to monitor it as I want to make sure I'm not overloading it.

Hi Guys, I'm after some advice on 2U rack cases that can hold up to 12 3.5" drives (must be SATA backplanes and hot swappable to a certain extent - I know SATA is not but would like the ability to pull drives when needed without opening the chassis) So here is the down low, I have an older NAS which is also a VMWare ESXi server running many VMs. Whilst the VM part is no longer important with moving to a much bigger rack setup, I wanted to reuse that for extra storage for CCTV. Old setup; Silverstone Mini-ITX DS380 case 5x 2.5" (with 2.5 to 3.5 convertors) (4Tb each) Crucial MX500 (Data) 1 x 2.5" 500Gb Crucial MX500 (VMWare ESXi 8 OS only) Asrock Rack C2550D4I Motherboard / Intel Atom CPU combo - https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2550D4I#Specifications 64Gb Crucial DDR3 RAM New setup; 2 Dell Poweredge R730XD servers (2x Xeon E5-2670v3 CPUs - 12 cores each, 512Gb DDR4 RAM each) - each with ESXi running on Raid 1 iirc (Mirroring) using 2 separate 256Gb 2.5" drives 1 Dell Equalogic SAN 96Tb raw of SAS drives in RAID 5 So as you can tell no rush to transfer the old setup across But it would be nice to reuse that machine as it still works perfectly fine and would be a good fit for CCTV NVR style storage but I would prefer to transfer it in to the rack instead of the Mini-ITX case I am also in the process of rebuilding my home lab, any suggestions on if to continue with ESXi as I have done for many years, or would XCP-NG/Proxmox/Xencenter be a better option? Any suggestions? Love the channel, been catching up on bent CPU pins just tonight, unfortunately damaged an LGA2011-v3 socket earlier on that needs repairing, so will be attempting that tomorrow. Many Thanks M

Hello, I want to build a homelab, but it can only consume 40W. It must be a tower server and it must have at least 6 SATA ports and 2 PCIe ports. I host docker (vaultwarden, pihole, reverse proxy, openvpn, duckdns), some websites, TrueNAS and game servers (Minecraft & GTA5). It can consume more than 40W but only when loaded, like when I start a game server. But I want it to consume no more than 40W while there is only Docker, TrueNAS and some sites Web that works. I have a budget of €1500 (~$1600). What do you recommend to me?

Hello, I'm thinking about building a homelab however I am not sure about VLANs and some other stuff. Please note that I haven't bought any ubiquity gear, nor a rack, the only thing I own from this image is the unraid desktop machine (i3-10100, 16GB ram, 20TB), my gaming PC and my work laptop (with the ts3 plus dock for the laptop). Would love some guidance on how to do this, given the following diagram: The setup itself is basically an idea, when I get a new place to have everything properly setup. The 2 intel nucs would be 64GB i7 machines running a proxmox cluster for tinkering and testing, while the unraid machine, while having a few docker containers running (10) to only have plex exposed to the world. Raspberry PI is there to monitor everything else, every service and every machine and to send notifications if something is wrong/down. I am hesitant on buying Power Backup and/or Power Distribution Professional to monitor the power usage as well as to have an UPS, however the power supply from ubiquiti seems to only power their own devices, not other devices such as the intel NUCs. Overall, I need to find a case to transplant the storage from the unraid fractal design case to a rack and to move the PC to the rack if possible. The idea is to have unraid in a rack as well as the PC, while the PC being in the rack is a plus I still need to figure out if having a PC in the rack is something I am willing to invest in. The questions I have: - Should I cut back on some VLANs? - The only service I have exposed to the world is a plex server running in a docker container on Unraid - Should I add IoT devices on their own network, including the Apple TV 4k? My concern is if I am able to airplay/cast to the device - I've read that VLANs by default have access to other VLANs in ubiquity software, should this be disabled? I want to make sure I plan this appropriately as this hobby can get expensive real quick.

Budget (including currency): $500-700 Country: USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Main Priority is a simple NAS + Homelab & Automation Management, Secondary Priority is a 1080p gaming PC (with VR in mind) or via Steam Link from other main gaming PC. Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Intended Parts List (so far): - AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (owned) - bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 (owned) - MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 MoBo (to buy unless suggested otherwise) - RX 580 8GB (owned, open to upgrade) - ADATA XPG Gammix D20 64GB (4x8GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 (owned) - Crucial P5 Plus 1TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 (to buy unless suggested otherwise) - Fractal Design Define R5 ATX Mid Tower Case (to buy due to 8-10 3.5" HDD bays) - 2x WD Red Plus 14TB (intending to buy more) - EVGA SuperNOVA 750 GT 80+ Gold (owned) No OS selected. Have used Windows 10 extensively and very basic Ubuntu 16.04, 20.04, 22.04. Open to suggestions Hi all! I'd like to repurpose my old 5800X and RAM into a hardwired, simple NAS for backup and remote access, similar to what I'm currently doing with OneDrive. I looked into dedicated NAS' but think this will suit my needs more and for a similar price. I'd use this computer as the central storage for my Plex Media Files, so my 11th Gen Intel NUC (Beelink SEI11) can pull them over the network for ez transcoding and distribution to myself and my few dozen users. Currently have those 2 WD drives connected in a 2-bay USB 3.0 drive to great success. Additionally, I'd like to have some of that storage dedicated for myself and my family's personal files. Likely only needing 10TB for that, for now. I'd like to get more drives, potentially filling out all 10 bays with 14-20TB drives over time. I have a basic understanding of RAID, but my main goal would be to ensure all personal files and media files are backed up. Unless compelling, I don't see a need to speed up past regular HDD speeds. Among that, I'd like to experiment with Homelab stuff, but am only experienced in using Google's and TP Link's IoT ecosystem. I can look up guides for that separately. Lastly and lowest priority, I'd like to have this computer hooked up via HDMI to my living room TV for occasional games, VR to my Quest 2 via wireless (my tried and true router is in room and ready) and/or Steam Link from my personal gaming rig (hardwired to gigabit network, 7800x3D w/ 3080 10GB). I'm curious if I should explore virtualization for this, or if I could pull all this off with W10, Windows Server, a Steam friendly Linux kernel, or whatever you may think. I watched LTT's Gaming Rig & NAS video and it inspired me that this could be possible, though I may need another GPU if going the virtualization route. What do you guys think? I'm open to exploring many avenues and alternatives. I appreciate all your help!

So I've got three new drives on the way to upgrade my server. The old ones are going to get repurposed or sold. My home server is running headless Debian that I've set up and configured the way I like and what I've been doing is: mdadm (RAID 5) -> LUKS encrypted container -> EXT4 filesystem This has worked great. I even converted it from RAID 1 to RAID 5 a few years back while the filesystem was still live and in use, and even forgot and rebooted it during that operation and it just picked back up where it left off. When I had a drive die the process of degrading the array and replacing the dead drive was simple and went without a hitch. The server has two primary jobs, Plex and Nextcloud. The Nextcloud data directory and my Plex media folder both live on the array. It's only ever accessed by a handful of people at once and my home network is just gigabit, so performance isn't the be all end all, but I would like to retain the ability to saturate gigabit networking when transferring large files. However, I'm considering using ZFS when the new drives arrive for the following reasons. - A lot of the features I'm getting through the use of multiple, layered solutions are all available directly thru ZFS itself. Instead of using mdadm for RAID, LUKS for encryption and then ext4 for the filesystem, ZFS would tick all those boxes all by itself. - The one time I did have a drive die while using mdadm, the array was unresponsive until I physically removed the drive. I don't know if this was because of the nature of the failure, or because mdadm wasn't willing to automatically mark the drive as bad and keep going. The failure was of the arm that runs the read write head where you could hear it knocking and almost bouncing inside the drive. Once I removed the drive and marked the array as degraded it worked fine on two drives until the replacement arrived in the mail, but I'm wondering if ZFS would have handled this more gracefully. I do have some concerns though with using ZFS. - I know the "1GB per TB of data" is not a hard and fast rule, rather it's just a rule of thumb for people that enable de-duplication. But I've got 24TB of data right now and will have 36TB of available space, but the system only has 16GB of RAM and can't be upgraded as that's all the motherboard supports. It's an old AM3 socket motherboard from Alvorix that's about 10 years old. Would this be a problem for a system that will be managing the storage AND hosting Plex and Nextcloud at the same time? It's working fine now, but I'm not sure if ZFS would cause issues. - How much of a hit on performance is the compression? Can it be turned off when creating the zpool? The CPU is an old 6 core Phenom II and it works fine now with mdadm and LUKS, but I worry that adding compression to the RAID striping calculations and the encryption might incur a noticeable performance hit. I'm just totally new to ZFS. I've known about it for a while, but have never implemented it myself so I'm trying to decide whether to pull the trigger. Since I'll be creating an entirely new array and migrating the data, if I'm going to make the switch, now is the time. Also, what about BTRFS? Would it be a better solution? I know it supports snapshots, checksums and such, but it doesn't support encryption (yet), which I want, so if I went with it I'd have to layer it beneath LUKS like I'm doing now with EXT4. Would that have any effect on its ability to do checksums or snapshots? I'm basically just looking for some knowledge and advice. I appreciated anything y'all call educate me on.

Hello! I'm trying to run my gaming/daily driver pc in my server room and run cables though my walls for display/peripherals. I'm planning on having an electrician come out to fish the cables. I'd like to ideally have 3 monitors and one TV hooked up as well as mouse, keyboard and and additional usb port for misc. equipment. I'd guesstimate its about a 10ft run but would like 15ft of cable to be safe ( through one wall and slightly off-center). I'm interested in the DisplayPort over fiber optic solution but I know that can be pricey, I also have concerns about the physical size of running that much cable though the walls. If anyone has any tips or experience with this anything would be apricated! Mother board: GIGABYTE Z790 AORUS ELITE AX GPU: MSI RTX 4070 Ti Gaming X Trio --- DisplayPort x 3 (v1.4a) & HDMI™ x 1(v2.1a)

I'm sure by this point most of us have had to worry about the stupid ISP 1TB/m data cap at least a few times. Is there any sort of software solution to just kill your router when you get to like, within a gig or so? I can live without wifi for a little bit, but I can't live with Comcast charging me like $40 per megabyte or whatever it is once you go over. I've considered paying the extra $30/m for unlimited, but this is an infrequent enough problem for that to be an infeasible solution for me personally. I have pretty standard stuff in my home (Phone, laptop, Apple TV, PC), but I also just finally set up Sonarr on my Plex server and that has really been chewing through some data. The server itself is running Windows, so setting a data cap using the built in tool would be easy enough, but then I'm leaving money on the table, right? If I set a 500gig cap for the server, but only use 300 on everything else, then that's 400gigs I paid Comcast for but didn't use! And I don't wanna set the cap to the hard limit of 1200, because then I'd inevitably go over with my other devices. I'm not a complete noob when it comes to networking, but I'm not nearly good enough to be able to parse a lot of the old Reddit threads I find when I look at stuff like this. Any help is appreciated