Home NAS and Server

[Lohita]

Hi Everyone,

 

First time posting here, but I've been a regular viewer of the channel for the last 4 years. Since being inspired by this video, I have always wanted to put together my own NAS and server at home, and have finally gotten around to doing it. Based on the details below, what are your recommendations?

 

Budget (including currency): AUD 1000 - 2000

Country: Australia (Melbourne specifically)

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

1. NAS for photo & video originals, and document backup (this is in addition to backup on google drive for photos and videos, and everything else on OneDrive)
2. Running a Windows VM with BlueIris as an NVR connected to 4K PoE IP cameras. I'll need a PoE switch for that, but that's later down the track and can be separate to this
3. Running a DeepQuestAI server (in docker container) for computer vision detection for the BlueIris NVR above
4. A server to run additional VMs to experiment with 

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 am looking to keep the price down, and want to buy used hardware where possible. I was thinking of a dual xeon server with 32 GB of RAM, running unRAID and 4 x 2 TB WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf drives, with 2 x 480 GB SSDs for cache. For BlueIris, I might also see if I can get a cheap Quadro/GeForce card as well.

 

As much as I would love to go out and get a proper server chassis for this, my concerns are that it will be very noisy (this is going in a cupboard under the stairs) and power draw being pretty high. However, if that isn't the case, I'd be happy to consider it, particularly since I will eventually want to have a server rack to put this, and a router/switch, etc. in the future, along with possible other servers, depending on how I go.

 

I should also mention that I am planning to set up Home Assisstant on a Raspberry Pi 4 soon, to start building out home automation, so this will be separate to that.

 

So everyone, what are your thoughts and recommendations? Any help is appreciated!

[Lohita]

After a bit more research I'm thinking of going for a Supermicro X9DRL-iF Dual Socket R LGA 2011 Server Motherboard, and 2 x Intel Xeon e5-2650 v2. This along with a suitable hot swap chassis and an LSI HBA and then the 4 x HDDs, and 2 SSDs should be fine I presume?

 

If I decide to go with these parts, can anyone clarify the following please?

• What PSU wattage should I go for?
• What coolers should I get for the CPUs?
• Would it make sense to get 2 nvme SSDs and mount them on a PCI to nvme adapter?

Thanks for the help!