Server/NAS for Home

[Karokiyu]

So, I'm currently parting out a ~$3,000 Server/NAS for my home. I'm going to run ESXi on it, as I will be setting up a Windows sandbox, a VPN server, as well as the NAS.

 

PCPP: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Karokiyu/saved/dBJ6hM

 

I've decided to go with a  Xeon E5-2630 V3. It's 8 cores, which I think is enough. I may want to go with a 10 or 12 core CPU. Not sure yet.

 

For storage, I'm going with 8x 4TB WD Red drives. I will buy 9, so I have a spare lying around, incase of a failure. The 8 drives will be in raid 6.

 

Now, I just need to decide what kind of RAID card to use. I'm for sure using a RAID 6, and definately want to use a SAS connection. So, I will want a dual port SAS raid card That i can plug all 8 of the drives into. However, this card needs to be compatable with windows server 2012, and maybe 2016.

 

This is my first server I've built from scratch, so please tell me things I should change, if any.

 

Thanks!

[ChalkChalkson]

This is a pretty high end setup for a home server, what are you planning to do with it?

[Oxydoreduction]

Just a few points:

 

First, if you're wanting to have a NAS, juste use an HBA, you'll be using a NAS os and they require bare metal access to the drives so they usually don't like much RAID cards. Even if they run in a VM, you might have to assign it the whole card so all the drives connected to the card will be assigned to your NAS os only. You'll then need some drives for the VMs themselves, connected to the integrated controller of your motherboard or another SAS card.

 

Second, if you want SAS connections, you have to use SAS drives, SATA drives are compatible with SAS but you won't get the extra functionalities of SAS.

 

Third, you selected ECC memory on a motherboard that doesn't look supporting it. I'd suggest to change your motherboard choice with a Tyan, Supermicro, ASrock or Asrock Rack board to get ECC functionality.

 

EDIT: the CPU will mostly depend on how many VM's you plan to run on it and the number of cores you'd like to assign them.

[Beskamir]

Personally I'd rather split my file server and vpn up into physically separate systems. It'd just make me feel more secure (Note this may not actually make things more secure)

[Mikensan]

Processor is fine, but you'll want more RAM as 32gb will run out pretty quickly. I'd either use Proxmox/KVM or buy a esxi license pack from VMUG and increase that ram. Also you may want a single SSD or a pool of 3+ SSDs for your VMs if you are going to store multiple VMs on it. Otherwise you could put those WD Reds into a raid 10, but a single SSD would crush that. With thin provisioning vms don't really eat up much disk space.

 

Oh if you've never setup ESXi before it doesn't have to be online, there is no activation process so the key just works ;-).

[dalekphalm]

On 08/07/2017 at 1:01 PM, Karokiyu said:

So, I'm currently parting out a ~$3,000 Server/NAS for my home. I'm going to run ESXi on it, as I will be setting up a Windows sandbox, a VPN server, as well as the NAS.

 

PCPP: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Karokiyu/saved/dBJ6hM

 

I've decided to go with a  Xeon E5-2630 V3. It's 8 cores, which I think is enough. I may want to go with a 10 or 12 core CPU. Not sure yet.

 

For storage, I'm going with 8x 4TB WD Red drives. I will buy 9, so I have a spare lying around, incase of a failure. The 8 drives will be in raid 6.

 

Now, I just need to decide what kind of RAID card to use. I'm for sure using a RAID 6, and definately want to use a SAS connection. So, I will want a dual port SAS raid card That i can plug all 8 of the drives into. However, this card needs to be compatable with windows server 2012, and maybe 2016.

 

This is my first server I've built from scratch, so please tell me things I should change, if any.

 

Thanks!

Most of your hardware seems fine. I have a few questions:

 

1. Why are you wasting $150 on a GTX 1050 Ti? Don't, unless you're specifically running an application that will use CUDA/OpenCL acceleration. If you just need GPU Output, then literally go buy the cheapest PCIe GPU you can find - something like a Radeon HD 5450 or a GTX 710, etc. You can often find that kind of card, brand new, for $40 or so - sometimes even less.

 

2. Where are you going to host your VM's? Where are you going to install ESXi?

If your plan is to use Hardware RAID6, then present that entire array to ESXi to install on, then use the leftover space as a Datastore... just don't. You're adding too much complexity by running everything off the RAID array.

 

I would suggest: Adding a small SSD - say, 64GB - connect it directly to a SATA Port on the motherboard, then install ESXi onto this.

 

3. Then to store the ESXi VM's, you should have a second drive (Ideally, I would do a RAID1 of 2x drives - whether they're SSD or HDD is up to you), and use this drive array for your VM's. Make sure it's big enough to hold the VM's you're likely to need. Most motherboards can create a single RAID1 volume without much issue.

 

4. Alternative to 3. Rather than getting specific drives for the VM's (As long as you have a drive for ESXi), what you can do instead, is get a smaller pair of drives or just use the leftover space from the ESXi OS drive (By default, it'll add the OS drive in as a Datastore for the empty space).

 

Then, use something like FreeNAS virtualized on that leftover ESXi SSD datastore (FreeNAS only needs like 8GB of storage space). Use PCI Passthrough to hand off an HBA (with your 8x 4TB drives) directly to FreeNAS, then create your ZFS RAIDZ2 pool, then add an iSCSI volume, and pass that volume directly back to ESXi as a datastore.

 

The iSCSI volume can be however big you want - say, 1TB - if that would be big enough for all your VM's.

 

5. Then you can use FreeNAS to create any actual network shares.

 

6. Alternative to 5. You can create a second iSCSI volume (much larger) and pass it to that Windows Server VM you mentioned in your OP, and use Windows to create the network shares instead if you're more comfortable doing it that way (Or want full proper AD Integration, etc).

 

HBA Recommendation: Anything with a SAS2008 chipset is highly compatible with FreeNAS. Something like an LSI 9207-8i (I have the 9207-8e) works great. You can also get branded ones, like an IBM M1015, and cross flash it into IT mode.

 

You want to avoid getting an actual RAID Card, unless you know for certain that it can be cross flashed into IT mode (basically turning it into an HBA and shutting off RAID features).

[Mdgtman91]

As cool as it is to build a server (I always love the idea) have you considered buying a refurbished server for pretty cheap? You can get dual xeon servers (4-8 core HT) with boat loads of RAM for under $1000 then that leaves money for all them SAS drives that are going to eat up the money.

You can get much more machine for the money. A butt load of hotswap bays (believe me, they are worth it when you have that many drives and can easily identify a failure and replace it) They all *usually* come with a raid controller with SAS support and the ability to connect soooooo many drives. Like previously mentioned though, avoid hardware raid as most any storage focused OS wants to see them drives for all their glory, the card is simply there as a means to plug in all the drives at that point.

 

Now if you really like the idea of cheaper refurbished servers then let me throw another one at you. Get 2, one with all the processing and RAM for VM goodness, and the second can be storage. Go lighter on the processor and a decent amount of RAM but use it to create an ISCSI volume that will be mounted to the VM server for storage. From there you can VM everything and take storage as needed.