OLD PC to NAS/router/server for software possible?

[raveninja]

Hi & good day everyone!

 

Just looking for suggestions actually. I've upgraded my pc so i'm left with old hardware & I plan to use it as a home server. Thought it might be nice but to be honest I have no idea what to use it for lol.

 

So there's my question, is it possible to turn it into both a router & a nas at the same time? Might be a pretty noob question but as you can tell I'm not really an expert here. haha.

 

If I can turn it into a router, what can it be good for? I mean asides from the obvious use of a normal router. I've been looking around online & seen it do some sort of added security stuff. as well as QoS (this is where I'm interested in). Though if I'll turn it into a NAS will it still work as a router? I wouldn't mind getting a capable network card for it if that were the case. devices that'd connect to it would be a pc, ps4, laptops, & smartphones. most llikely 4 lan devices at most.

 

Here's the hardware I have for it:
 - i3 3210

 - some crucial 8gb ddr3 ram

 - asrock z68 pro3 (http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z68 Pro3/index.asp)

 - 8 wd green hdds (yeah i have too much) i'll just take 4 or 5 of these actually unless there's some way for me to maximize these hdds

 - ocz 120gb ssd - this is old but it works fine though i'm a little concerned about drive failure so perhaps making it do regular backups to a dedicated green drive can be nice

 - corsair 650vs psu

 

also gonna get a case for this later on. might consider a lower psu (like 350-400w maybe) if i have spare budget for it since, well, as you can see with the hardware... yeah 650w is too much lol. i know my hdds aren't red & i'm actually curious about any possible issues if this is a server i'll be turning off everytime i leave the house. maybe i can leave it on at times too for, perhaps, i can use my smartphone & laptop to access its files remotely? that can be heck of a lot useful for me too.

 

lastly, if i were to put a gpu here as well, what use can it have? hahaha thought i might throw this in as well since i'll upgrade my gpu later on this year as well. its just a palit gtx 750 so it's not really a hardcore gpu either. but i'm curious as to what it can do for this kind of setup.

Anyway, thanks in advance.

 

P.S. edit

after considering my understanding & the need i'm trying to create for myself, here's what i want it to do:

 - function as a nas (is there a way for me to use 8 hdds in here? like perhaps a way to take advantage of a pci express lane to put in some hdds there?)

 - run as a router (i'd like to take advantage of a pci slot for a suitable network card)

 - as a nas, perhaps if it's possible, i'd like for it to have certain programs that can open some files in here (i.e. pdf, word documents, excel sheets, media files, those sorta basic stuff), an example use case scenario would be, let's say, a pc that doesn't have a pdf reader. if it were to access a pdf file in this server, i'd like this server to have a pdf reader ready for it just in case. i guess a more common scenario would be with with microsoft office files. not everyone uses them. (i even use openoffice--bec it's free lol)

 

i've been eyeing freenas for a while but, perhaps i won't be able to run a router os/software along with that?

Edited May 15, 2017 by raveninja

[mpsparrow]

That is a great pc for basically anything you can think of. Put some VM software on it and use it for a few things.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id install proxmox then you can run the router in a vm, and manage storage with zfs.

 

The only big disadvantage is that if you want to reboot that system, you lose the whole network. I personally have my router on my  main server.

[raveninja]

mm... wait what you guys said mostly flew over my head.

from my understanding, i'm gonna have a server os setup & run a vm in it? kinda like the os or software for the router runs separately from the storage server? is that like 2 sandboxes inside one os? sorry if i didn't quite get that right. i'm new to this server stuff. halp me understand... T_T

[raveninja]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id install proxmox then you can run the router in a vm, and manage storage with zfs.

 

The only big disadvantage is that if you want to reboot that system, you lose the whole network. I personally have my router on my  main server.

let's see, so proxmox is like the server os, then perhaps i'd have a vm inside it for the router & then zfs will be a software for the storage. how does it's system resources work? is that configurable with a fixed amount or are they like sharing the resources & just using what they need?

as for the disadvantage of the whole network shutting down, i don't mind it since it's not gonna handle anything very critical. & i'll most likely have it turned off when i'm not home unless i'd need the files in it.

 

though i'm thinking, if it's gonna function as a storage, there's this thing like with let's say pdf files, if i were to access it with a pc that doesn't have a pdf reader, can i have something like that installed on the server so certain files can be accessed even without the software required to read those files be available on the device that accesses these files?

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, raveninja said:

how does it's system resources work?

cpu is given out when needed

 

ram is configured as a max, but you have blaooning so it only uses what it needs.

 

Storages is you only use what you need

 

7 minutes ago, raveninja said:

though i'm thinking, if it's gonna function as a storage, there's this thing like with let's say pdf files, if i were to access it with a pc that doesn't have a pdf reader, can i have something like that installed on the server so certain files can be accessed even without the software required to read those files be available on the device that accesses these files?

Depends on the exact program. Most of the time it just appears as anouther drive on your system. You can have it work as a web interface if you want aswell with something like owncloud.

[raveninja]

this server thing seems really too complex for me... i guess i'll go with the freenas for now. i'll touch on this topic again once i become a bit more familiar with vms & routers. i'm just pretty much really interested in tweaking QoS settings hehe

[newgeneral10]

7 hours ago, raveninja said:

this server thing seems really too complex for me... i guess i'll go with the freenas for now. i'll touch on this topic again once i become a bit more familiar with vms & routers. i'm just pretty much really interested in tweaking QoS settings hehe

Freenas corral has a pfsense template in the VM section. You could have Freenas store the data and have the virtual pfsense be the router.  You can also have other VMs on there, like I have Ubuntu as a webserver on a VM but all the actually HTML and CSS is stored on the Freenas, not on the VM (it is mounted through a share)

[domandric034]

On 15. 05. 2017. at 0:30 AM, raveninja said:

Hi & good day everyone!

 

Just looking for suggestions actually. I've upgraded my pc so i'm left with old hardware & I plan to use it as a home server. Thought it might be nice but to be honest I have no idea what to use it for lol.

 

So there's my question, is it possible to turn it into both a router & a nas at the same time? Might be a pretty noob question but as you can tell I'm not really an expert here. haha.

 

If I can turn it into a router, what can it be good for? I mean asides from the obvious use of a normal router. I've been looking around online & seen it do some sort of added security stuff. as well as QoS (this is where I'm interested in). Though if I'll turn it into a NAS will it still work as a router? I wouldn't mind getting a capable network card for it if that were the case. devices that'd connect to it would be a pc, ps4, laptops, & smartphones. most llikely 4 lan devices at most.

 

Here's the hardware I have for it:
 - i3 3210

 - some crucial 8gb ddr3 ram

 - asrock z68 pro3 (http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z68 Pro3/index.asp)

 - 8 wd green hdds (yeah i have too much) i'll just take 4 or 5 of these actually unless there's some way for me to maximize these hdds

 - ocz 120gb ssd - this is old but it works fine though i'm a little concerned about drive failure so perhaps making it do regular backups to a dedicated green drive can be nice

 - corsair 650vs psu

 

also gonna get a case for this later on. might consider a lower psu (like 350-400w maybe) if i have spare budget for it since, well, as you can see with the hardware... yeah 650w is too much lol. i know my hdds aren't red & i'm actually curious about any possible issues if this is a server i'll be turning off everytime i leave the house. maybe i can leave it on at times too for, perhaps, i can use my smartphone & laptop to access its files remotely? that can be heck of a lot useful for me too.

 

lastly, if i were to put a gpu here as well, what use can it have? hahaha thought i might throw this in as well since i'll upgrade my gpu later on this year as well. its just a palit gtx 750 so it's not really a hardcore gpu either. but i'm curious as to what it can do for this kind of setup.

Anyway, thanks in advance.

 

P.S. edit

after considering my understanding & the need i'm trying to create for myself, here's what i want it to do:

 - function as a nas (is there a way for me to use 8 hdds in here? like perhaps a way to take advantage of a pci express lane to put in some hdds there?)

 - run as a router (i'd like to take advantage of a pci slot for a suitable network card)

 - as a nas, perhaps if it's possible, i'd like for it to have certain programs that can open some files in here (i.e. pdf, word documents, excel sheets, media files, those sorta basic stuff), an example use case scenario would be, let's say, a pc that doesn't have a pdf reader. if it were to access a pdf file in this server, i'd like this server to have a pdf reader ready for it just in case. i guess a more common scenario would be with with microsoft office files. not everyone uses them. (i even use openoffice--bec it's free lol)

 

i've been eyeing freenas for a while but, perhaps i won't be able to run a router os/software along with that?

Try Windows Server 2016 Datacenter and use it as NAS and if you have 8 hdds throw in HBA card

[l0ckd0wn]

17 hours ago, domandric034 said:

Try Windows Server 2016 Datacenter and use it as NAS and if you have 8 hdds throw in HBA card

$600 license is a little steep for just trying to utilize old hardware.

 

With your setup I'd go with either what @newgeneral10 said if you are set on FreeNAS, run an open source OS like Ubuntu, Fedora, FreeBSD or run an OS you already have a license for (say an old Win7 if you have one),  then use a vm solution (VMware Workstation/Player, Oracle VirtualBox, QEMU, KVM etc.) and host the pfsense session from there; if you don't have a large network with lots of devices constantly opening new connections, it would be fine as a small lightweight VM.  I'd also get a separate NIC, disable it in Windows and then offload it to the VM.  A dual headed NIC would be best if you planned on using pfSense as a firewall and not just a router.

 

You asked about what other services you can run on your server:

• Plex
• Game servers (assuming you have the bandwidth)
• Dynamic DNS client
• DNS server for home network
• V/Blog (hosting your own site)
• Network Security VM/Applicane
• Crypto Currency miner (this is where the video card would actually be used effectively)
• Torrent Downloader - and you can script and automate processes via scheduled tasks in Windows or CRON in *nix
• Private IRC server
• moar game servers...

If you are going to add the GPU to the server build, I would not get a smaller power supply considering the number of drives you have.  You may also want to look at Unraid if you have a lot of random drives lying around and would like to utilize them with pooling.

 

PS

Your old hardware problem is the exact reason I ended up with a dozen computers in my house...

[raveninja]

mm... based on your suggestions, then perhaps might it be good to set it up like this then?

i'll have an hba card & attach drives there for storage only. then some drives i'll attach to the motherboard would be the 120gb ssd for being the os drive. then have another one for backing up the ssd contents, i mean who knows when it can crash this ssd is nearly 5 years old now haha.

 

is there a difference or added functionality if i use  an hba card instead of just the normal sata port on the mobo? i mean i have 8 drives so is it gonna be better if i plug all of the in an hba card or is it the same thing if i just plug in there only the extra drives. i haven't checked around prices online but i'm thinking hba cards with more slots would normally cost more too...

 

then there's the network card perhaps one with 2 (or maybe 4 if i can afford it haha) ethernet ports then another network card that can do wifi would be good? how can i go about with this?

 

so perhaps i'm looking at 3 pci cards at this point... can i fit that into the motherboard... now i'm kinda worried about that too. the motherboard i'm using is an asrock z68 pro3. it'd be nice if i can just stick with freenas. it seems like the simplest solution as well. i'd rather not go too complex. but being able to serve private servers is really nice. i can make stuff like demo stuff accessible to clients. that'd really help me a lot with my work. i'll look into that bit later on. but for now i guess getting it to work as a nas & router is my first step hehe.

 

so far i've been getting lotsa good tips from you guys. man thanks a lot. i wouldn't have gotten this far with just google alone. lol