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Home Server Advice Wanted

CognizantPotato
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Hi all! I am a third-year software engineering student that has been itching to get into a project, specifically a home server of some kind. I live with my family and proposed to them the idea of a NAS type file storage system for all of our photos, videos, documents, etc. I was also thinking that I could use the server as sort of an in-house Remote Desktop so that each member of my family (4 total) could access their own profile, like they each have their own little cloud PC, just over our network. The problem is, even though I am a software engineering student I feel like I know next to nothing about how to go about doing this XD. Does anyone have any software/build advice for this project? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

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basic idea is get a server, put a hypervisor on it, then make a vpn for the services you want.

 

Probably want a vpn for remote access, rdp over wan is a bad idea.

 

How many tb you thinking?

 

Normally either go used server like a dell r720 or get a new pc with something like ryzen, depends on your needs.

 

How much storage you thinking you need?

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4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

basic idea is get a server, put a hypervisor on it, then make a vpn for the services you want.

 

Probably want a vpn for remote access, rdp over wan is a bad idea.

 

How many tb you thinking?

 

Normally either go used server like a dell r720 or get a new pc with something like ryzen, depends on your needs.

 

How much storage you thinking you need?

Thank you for that advice. That’s very helpful :)

 

As for the amount of storage, it kind of depends on how much the build is, but I was thinking about just going overkill and maybe getting around 12-16 TB. I think that would be more than enough for several years of use from me/them.

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right now 6tb seagate ironwolf nas drives are 160$ each, I'd grab 4 which would give you 18tb -overhead in a raid 5 or 12tb in a raid 10.

most people wouldn't go below 4tb now for NAS drives as 8tb x300 seem to be the sweet spot.

 

software engineering isn't going to teach you this, it is an IT/comp sci class

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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8 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

right now 6tb seagate ironwolf nas drives are 160$ each, I'd grab 4 which would give you 18tb -overhead in a raid 5 or 12tb in a raid 10.

most people wouldn't go below 4tb now for NAS drives as 8tb x300 seem to be the sweet spot.

 

software engineering isn't going to teach you this, it is an IT/comp sci class

I’ll probably grab 4 of those then. I’m still not too sure about which raid to run as I’ve heard a few bad stories about raid 5, but that’ll probably end up being the one I choose. Thanks for the suggestions and the reply :).

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11 minutes ago, CognizantPotato said:

I’ll probably grab 4 of those then. I’m still not too sure about which raid to run as I’ve heard a few bad stories about raid 5, but that’ll probably end up being the one I choose. Thanks for the suggestions and the reply :).

raid 5 I wouldn't use on larger than 8 or 10tb drives and groups above 8. large arrays take too long to build and with raid 5 you got no safety when rebuilding.

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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Maybe you should read and look in to JBOD with parity and decide if you want that or RAID.

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. 
It matters that you don't just give up.”

-Stephen Hawking

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Build a regular PC out of commodity components that fit your requirements and gives you the possibility to replace or upgrade the hardware as soon as you need it. This way you can probably get anything you need off eBay or the nearest local computer store. Install any hypervisor you like more - Hyper-V, ESXi or KVM/Proxmox. All of them are free. With this setup, you can practically install any other operating system inside a virtual machine side-by-side be it a NAS (FreeNAS, TrueNAS, OpenMediaVault, XPenology) or server application (Plex, Zenyal, 3CX, whatsoever). Such a kind of approach gives you maximum freedom on changing/upgrading/testing things and is the best way to go. There are numerous guides over the internet on how to create a fully-fledged home lab using the latest IT technologies like this one:

https://www.vmwareblog.org/build-home-lab-using-pc-part-1-esxi-6-7-u1/

Needless to say that if you mention you have a home lab running whatever environment at home this will give you a decent amount of positive points during the IT-related job interview in the future since that means you have good practical experience with the tools.

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Okay so I’m thinking 64 gb ram, ryzen 5 3600, 850w power supply and maybe an rx 550 or gt 710. Probably going to go with either 20 or 24 TB (5 or 6 four TB drives at $100 a piece) using JBOD with parity (Still not completely sure on this but this seems to fit my situation well). Does this seem like a good set of hardware to go with? Thanks again for help, I cannot stress how helpful this has been.

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1 hour ago, CognizantPotato said:

Okay so I’m thinking 64 gb ram, ryzen 5 3600, 850w power supply and maybe an rx 550 or gt 710. Probably going to go with either 20 or 24 TB (5 or 6 four TB drives at $100 a piece) using JBOD with parity (Still not completely sure on this but this seems to fit my situation well). Does this seem like a good set of hardware to go with? Thanks again for help, I cannot stress how helpful this has been.

Have you looked at unRAID it will prolly be the cheapest part of your build and is a great NAS os

My daily driver: The Wrath of Red: OS Windows 10 home edition / CPU Ryzen TR4 1950x 3.85GHz / Cooler Master MasterAir MA621P Twin-Tower RGB CPU Air Cooler / PSU Thermaltake Toughpower 750watt / ASRock x399 Taichi / Gskill Flare X 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz / HP 10GB Single Port Mellanox Connectx-2 PCI-E 10GBe NIC / Samsung 512GB 970 pro M.2 / ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 STRIX 8GB / Acer - H236HLbid 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor x3

 

My technology Rig: The wizard: OS Windows 10 home edition / CPU Ryzen R7 1800x 3.95MHz / Corsair H110i / PSU Thermaltake Toughpower 750watt / ASUS CH 6 / Gskill Flare X 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz / HP 10GB Single Port Mellanox Connectx-2 PCI-E 10GBe NIC / 512GB 960 pro M.2 / ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 STRIX 8GB / Acer - H236HLbid 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor HP Monitor

 

My I don't use Rig: OS Windows 10 home edition / CPU Ryzen 1600x 3.85GHz / Cooler Master MasterAir MA620P Twin-Tower RGB CPU Air Cooler / PSU Thermaltake Toughpower 750watt / MSI x370 Gaming Pro Carbon / Gskill Flare X 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz / Samsung PM961 256GB M.2 PCIe Internal SSD / EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti SSC GAMING / Acer - H236HLbid 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor

 

My NAS: The storage miser: OS unRAID v. 6.9.0-beta25 / CPU Intel i7 6700 / Cooler Master MasterWatt Lite 500 Watt 80 Plus / ASUS Maximus viii Hero / 32GB Gskill RipJaw DDR4 3200Mhz / HP Mellanox ConnectX-2 10 GbE PCI-e G2 Dual SFP+ Ported Ethernet HCA NIC / 9 Drives total 29TB - 1 4TB seagate parity - 7 4TB WD Red data - 1 1TB laptop drive data - and 2 240GB Sandisk SSD's cache / Headless

 

Why did I buy this server: OS unRAID v. 6.9.0-beta25 / Dell R710 enterprise server with dual xeon E5530 / 48GB ecc ddr3 / Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA w/ LSI 9211-8i P20 IT / 4 450GB sas drives / headless

 

Just another server: OS Proxmox VE / Dell poweredge R410

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1 hour ago, CognizantPotato said:

Okay so I’m thinking 64 gb ram, ryzen 5 3600, 850w power supply and maybe an rx 550 or gt 710. Probably going to go with either 20 or 24 TB (5 or 6 four TB drives at $100 a piece) using JBOD with parity (Still not completely sure on this but this seems to fit my situation well). Does this seem like a good set of hardware to go with? Thanks again for help, I cannot stress how helpful this has been.

go with less ram, 6-8tb drives.

get a good PSU

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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Just now, mrbilky said:

Have you looked at unRAID it will prolly be the cheapest part of your build and is a great NAS os

no freeNAS does plenty well and costs 0.

you could also go with any linux distro designed for server so it has a web ui.

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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3 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

no freeNAS does plenty well and costs 0.

you could also go with any linux distro designed for server so it has a web ui.

Ok that was for the OP but ok

My daily driver: The Wrath of Red: OS Windows 10 home edition / CPU Ryzen TR4 1950x 3.85GHz / Cooler Master MasterAir MA621P Twin-Tower RGB CPU Air Cooler / PSU Thermaltake Toughpower 750watt / ASRock x399 Taichi / Gskill Flare X 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz / HP 10GB Single Port Mellanox Connectx-2 PCI-E 10GBe NIC / Samsung 512GB 970 pro M.2 / ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 STRIX 8GB / Acer - H236HLbid 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor x3

 

My technology Rig: The wizard: OS Windows 10 home edition / CPU Ryzen R7 1800x 3.95MHz / Corsair H110i / PSU Thermaltake Toughpower 750watt / ASUS CH 6 / Gskill Flare X 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz / HP 10GB Single Port Mellanox Connectx-2 PCI-E 10GBe NIC / 512GB 960 pro M.2 / ASUS GeForce GTX 1080 STRIX 8GB / Acer - H236HLbid 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor HP Monitor

 

My I don't use Rig: OS Windows 10 home edition / CPU Ryzen 1600x 3.85GHz / Cooler Master MasterAir MA620P Twin-Tower RGB CPU Air Cooler / PSU Thermaltake Toughpower 750watt / MSI x370 Gaming Pro Carbon / Gskill Flare X 32GB DDR4 3200Mhz / Samsung PM961 256GB M.2 PCIe Internal SSD / EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti SSC GAMING / Acer - H236HLbid 23.0" 1920x1080 60Hz Monitor

 

My NAS: The storage miser: OS unRAID v. 6.9.0-beta25 / CPU Intel i7 6700 / Cooler Master MasterWatt Lite 500 Watt 80 Plus / ASUS Maximus viii Hero / 32GB Gskill RipJaw DDR4 3200Mhz / HP Mellanox ConnectX-2 10 GbE PCI-e G2 Dual SFP+ Ported Ethernet HCA NIC / 9 Drives total 29TB - 1 4TB seagate parity - 7 4TB WD Red data - 1 1TB laptop drive data - and 2 240GB Sandisk SSD's cache / Headless

 

Why did I buy this server: OS unRAID v. 6.9.0-beta25 / Dell R710 enterprise server with dual xeon E5530 / 48GB ecc ddr3 / Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA w/ LSI 9211-8i P20 IT / 4 450GB sas drives / headless

 

Just another server: OS Proxmox VE / Dell poweredge R410

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3 minutes ago, mrbilky said:

Ok that was for the OP but ok

I know, I'm disagreeing it is the best OS for a NAS.

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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42 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

go with less ram, 6-8tb drives.

get a good PSU

Sure thing! I'll grab four 6tb drives and lower the amount of ram. I always get good PSUs for my builds so I'll continue that practice.

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46 minutes ago, mrbilky said:

Have you looked at unRAID it will prolly be the cheapest part of your build and is a great NAS os

I have looked into unRAID, but I think I'll probably end up going with freeNAS. Thanks for the input though!

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Just now, CognizantPotato said:

Sure thing! I'll grab four 6tb drives and lower the amount of ram. I always get good PSUs for my builds so I'll continue that practice.

4tb drives just tend to eat sata ports and drive bays like crazy for small capacities.

Good luck, Have fun, Build PC, and have a last gen console for use once a year. I should answer most of the time between 9 to 3 PST

NightHawk 3.0: R7 5700x @, B550A vision D, H105, 2x32gb Oloy 3600, Sapphire RX 6700XT  Nitro+, Corsair RM750X, 500 gb 850 evo, 2tb rocket and 5tb Toshiba x300, 2x 6TB WD Black W10 all in a 750D airflow.
GF PC: (nighthawk 2.0): R7 2700x, B450m vision D, 4x8gb Geli 2933, Strix GTX970, CX650M RGB, Obsidian 350D

Skunkworks: R5 3500U, 16gb, 500gb Adata XPG 6000 lite, Vega 8. HP probook G455R G6 Ubuntu 20. LTS

Condor (MC server): 6600K, z170m plus, 16gb corsair vengeance LPX, samsung 750 evo, EVGA BR 450.

Spirt  (NAS) ASUS Z9PR-D12, 2x E5 2620V2, 8x4gb, 24 3tb HDD. F80 800gb cache, trueNAS, 2x12disk raid Z3 stripped

PSU Tier List      Motherboard Tier List     SSD Tier List     How to get PC parts cheap    HP probook 445R G6 review

 

"Stupidity is like trying to find a limit of a constant. You are never truly smart in something, just less stupid."

Camera Gear: X-S10, 16-80 F4, 60D, 24-105 F4, 50mm F1.4, Helios44-m, 2 Cos-11D lavs

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