Suggestions on how to install multi purpose server

[kladzen]

Hey peeps!

 

Now i know there is a very similar topic from another guy but i don't want to hijack his thread so here is my own...

 

I needs some suggestions as to what would be the best solution to my new multi purpose server...

 

I have a few requirements...

1. Needs to run plex
2. Needs to some kind of NVR solution... for 3-7 cams 
3. Some kind of raid solution/NAS solution (storage for plex content, NVR storage and so on..)
4. maybe run a few vm's ( hackingtosh, steam cache server (maybe))

 

Hardware i have the following..

Cpu: Ryzen 1700
Ram: 16GB - maybe upgrade to 32gb if needed
SDD: 1x 120GB SSD
HDD: 5x 8TB HDD for some kind of raid configuration... 

 

pssst (no raid/hba card installed)

 

Now... should i install some baremetal debian/windows and then raid the 5 HDDS? and do as much as possible on baremetal and then a hyperviser on top to fix remaining issues?
or should i go hyperviser from the start such proxmox, esxi? and then VM each task from my needs?

 

How should i handle the NAS/raid solution?? I just installed proxmox working with a working xpenology vm on top.. is this ideal way to handle the disk situation and then make other VM's that just dumps data to that?.. and what about the hot topics/debated solutions like freeNAS & unraid...

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id probably run a hypervisor like proxmox on the hardware, then run everything in vms.

 

Id use zfs for the raid here, boot from the ssd.

 

Id just use a basic debian container for file sharing, no need for xpenology.

 

 

[APasz]

Plex can use Intel's Quick Sync so an Intel chip with an iGPU is preferable.
General rule of thumb for CPU power for Plex software transcoding is a passmark score of 2-4k for 1080 or 8-10k (or even 20k for particularly high quality) for 4k/hdr per stream.

[kladzen]

14 minutes ago, APasz said:

Plex can use Intel's Quick Sync so an Intel chip with an iGPU is preferable.
General rule of thumb for CPU power for Plex software transcoding is a passmark score of 2-4k for 1080 or 8-10k (or even 20k for particularly high quality) for 4k/hdr per stream.

Thanks - however I'm aware of that already.. but i have a AMD cpu so...  - however i don't need to transcode any of my things.. my TV accepts everything i throw at it... so i direct play it.. and sometimes i direct stream it... very very rare that i transcode..

[kladzen]

4 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id probably run a hypervisor like proxmox on the hardware, then run everything in vms.

 

Id use zfs for the raid here, boot from the ssd.

 

Id just use a basic debian container for file sharing, no need for xpenology.

 

 

so passthrough the 5 disks into a debian container and then make zfs in that and share it to the rest?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, kladzen said:

so passthrough the 5 disks into a debian container and then make zfs in that and share it to the rest?

no, proxmox supports zfs, so just run zfs on the host.

[kladzen]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

no, proxmox supports zfs, so just run zfs on the host.

Okay - so ZFS the disks on proxmox, pass that on to vm debian container and share it ?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, kladzen said:

Okay - so ZFS the disks on proxmox, pass that on to vm debian container and share it ?

yea. Or you can just run samba/nfs on the host aswell.

 

Then have other vms for other tasks.

[kladzen]

20 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

yea. Or you can just run samba/nfs on the host aswell.

 

Then have other vms for other tasks.

now that i come to think of it... ZFS just requires a shit ton of RAM (1gb) for each TB... i understand that its a popular these days to use ZFS and it's very feature rich filesystem for business use or at least for some certain requirements... i just think for general home use it's a bit overkill... i just need some kind of basic raid5/6 use... in case of a disc dies i can recovery from it with rebuilding my data...

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, kladzen said:

now that i come to think of it... ZFS just requires a shit ton of RAM (1gb) for each TB... i understand that its a popular these days to use ZFS and it's very feature rich filesystem for business use or at least for some certain requirements... i just think for general home use it's a bit overkill... i just need some kind of basic raid5/6 use... in case of a disc dies i can recovery from it with rebuilding my data...

the 1gb per tb is bs, you can run with much less ram, the ram is just used as a read cache, like on every other modern os. 

 

ZFS is great for your use here, don't worry about it.

[Jarsky]

You only need that RAM if you want to do advanced stuff like ARC cache and DeDupe or for ZIL/SLOG, etc...

For a basic parity raid with scrubbing, you can easily get by on ~4GB for ZFS

 

As @Electronics Wizardy suggested, I would run Proxmox with ZFS. 

Create your ZFS Pool and datasets on Proxmox

Then us a VM to run Samba with your favorite distro, or even easier, you could use a Turnkey LXC Container: https://www.turnkeylinux.org/fileserver

[kladzen]

@Jarsky @Electronics Wizardy - Thanks for the help so far, i've created a raidz2 - however i'm thinking of doing raidz instead or even striped setup.... or is that too insane? 

 

if going striped, i would supply with something like backblaze for off-site backup.. so in case of disk failure and everything dies due to the striped setup, i could fix the pool with a new disk and then just resync all data that was lost... instead of rebuilding/resilvering the pool..

 

is that too insane or ??

 

goal is to have as much possible data usable.. but still some kind of "backup" solution in case a disk dies... offsite like backblaze/g suite og raidz solution... (i know raid is not a backup solution)

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, kladzen said:

Thanks for the help so far, i've created a raidz2 - however i'm thinking of doing raidz instead or even striped setup.... or is that too insane? 

 

Not really, drivtes dont' fail that often, and if you don'tt need max uptime and have backups yoru fine.

[Jarsky]

7 hours ago, kladzen said:

if going striped, i would supply with something like backblaze for off-site backup.. so in case of disk failure and everything dies due to the striped setup, i could fix the pool with a new disk and then just resync all data that was lost... instead of rebuilding/resilvering the pool..

You just have to decide if the downtime of resyncing back down from the cloud 40TB's of data is worth less than an additional drive.

Personally even though I can have gigabit, I have 100Mbit for cost savings...would take me 40 days assuming I could run my connection @ 100% 24/7.

I prefer to have the redundancy to avoid that situation. 

[Dudedawg.net]

Hi, I am running CENTOS 7 on my server Dell R610, install plex on it, working great, working on getting more storage for my videos collection, dang they take up a lot of room lol

 

 

[kladzen]

23 hours ago, Jarsky said:

You just have to decide if the downtime of resyncing back down from the cloud 40TB's of data is worth less than an additional drive.

Personally even though I can have gigabit, I have 100Mbit for cost savings...would take me 40 days assuming I could run my connection @ 100% 24/7.

I prefer to have the redundancy to avoid that situation. 

yea... true... what are you running raid or raidz2? and how are your zfs pool setup?

[Jarsky]

6 hours ago, kladzen said:

yea... true... what are you running raid or raidz2? and how are your zfs pool setup?

 

My main raid is a 12 x 3TB in RAID6 and 5 x 8TB in RAID5 on a hardware LSI 9271-8i with BBU and a Intel RES2SV240 SAS Expander. 

My new one im moving to is still waiting on a few parts which is 10 x 8TB which ill be configuring in a RAIDZ2 w Corsair MP600 but this isn't up and running yet.