server Building a All-in-One Server-Nas-Plex-Gamingstation-router/WiFi-router

[JohnsonDK]

Hey fellow hardware-lovers. 

I am very much intrigued by Linus 7gamers 1 cpu setup like most of you probally are. Since i first discovdered his video, I have been wanting to create a complete setup for my home for quite some time now. I hope you guys could give me a hand pointing out some of the do's and don'ts, and maybe even more important the correct hardware to buy. 

 

My Hopes for this setup:

 

It should behave as my home-internet router, both cabled and wirelessly, furthermore it is supposed to be a fast and a multi-user NAS/Plex-server atleast supporting 10users simultaneously, it should be able to play games with a monitor directly inserted into the case, and if it is possible i would very much like to have the possibility to use the pci-slots wired with thunderbolt 3 cable to my laptop, and then work as an External Gpu. 

 

Hopes for specifications:

 

- 30tb HDD storage

- 64 gb Ram

- 2 x cpu (preferably xeon) 

- A motherboard with several pci slots. 2 cpu slots and hopefully the     possibility to pass pci slots to my laptop(as an egpu) 

   I'd like a case where it is possible to hotplug storage drives without     too much effort. 

- Some really effective antennas (preferably with both monitor and injektion mode, in 2 & 5ghz)

 

All suggestion, critiques and help is appreciate! 

 

 

[Windows7ge]

Right off the bat I very much discourage combining your router into a VM server. You will need to take the server offline periodically for repair & maintenance. When you do your whole site will lose internet. Dedicated box for the router but you can virtualize just about everything else if you desire. Don't know about the eGPU working or not though. Haven't heard of an eGPU set up that way.

[Taswell]

So many questions 

Just build a dedicated router to simplify this thing because it sounds like a ClusterFuk

you want a plex VM with only 30GB of storage? That can server 10 simultaneous users?

Why do you want the screen in the case? This sounds more like a rack mount kind of build.

Seriously why only 30GB? for what?

You cant use a eGPU that is already plugged in to another system as a eGPU that is just not that works.

I would say this setup is complicated at best and an overbuilt unreliable disaster at worst. 

 

Linus still barely got his most recent attempt at this to work in a somewhat normal manner. I would stick with this thing being just a NAS/Plex Box and that is it. Make them separate VMs if you want ESXI is free for like 10 VMs. Take the GPU from this and get a separate dock for it and use that on your laptop instead

 

 

 

[JohnsonDK]

I mean 30tb lol, sorry

[Catsrules]

2 minutes ago, Taswell said:

So many questions 

Just build a dedicated router to simplify this thing because it sounds like a ClusterFuk

you want a plex VM with only 30GB of storage? That can server 10 simultaneous users?

Why do you want the screen in the case? This sounds more like a rack mount kind of build.

Seriously why only 30GB? for what?

You cant use a eGPU that is already plugged in to another system as a eGPU that is just not that works.

I would say this setup is complicated at best and an overbuilt unreliable disaster at worst. 

 

 

 

My guess 30GB is a typo, I think it is 30TB.

 

 

[JohnsonDK]

27 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

Right off the bat I very much discourage combining your router into a VM server. You will need to take the server offline periodically for repair & maintenance. When you do your whole site will lose internet. Dedicated box for the router but you can virtualize just about everything else if you desire. Don't know about the eGPU working or not though. Haven't heard of an eGPU set up that way.

 I appreciate your help!!

If i set my Current router in bridged mode, and when maintaining my server id just set it into router mode again, would that work

[JohnsonDK]

18 minutes ago, Taswell said:

So many questions 

Just build a dedicated router to simplify this thing because it sounds like a ClusterFuk

you want a plex VM with only 30GB of storage? That can server 10 simultaneous users?

Why do you want the screen in the case? This sounds more like a rack mount kind of build.

Seriously why only 30GB? for what?

You cant use a eGPU that is already plugged in to another system as a eGPU that is just not that works.

I would say this setup is complicated at best and an overbuilt unreliable disaster at worst. 

 

Linus still barely got his most recent attempt at this to work in a somewhat normal manner. I would stick with this thing being just a NAS/Plex Box and that is it. Make them separate VMs if you want ESXI is free for like 10 VMs. Take the GPU from this and get a separate dock for it and use that on your laptop instead

 

 

 

 

 

18 minutes ago, Taswell said:

 

 

Thank you for your response! I suppose i could atleast use my nas/plex-server as a gaming station as well, especially if i run the p)lex/nas virtually, so that i could dedicated hardware to the Current system for gaming requirements. 

I am already doing this from my laptop

[BrinkGG]

4 minutes ago, JohnsonDK said:

Hey fellow hardware-lovers. 

-blurb-

First off, welcome to the forum! 

Second of all, I want to warn you that this can quickly become a time/money pit because of how much you can do. 

Now with that aside, I'll start to address your questions in a categorical fashion: 

HARDWARE: 

Hard drives: I'm assuming you meant 30TB instead of GB so I'll run with that; is this including redundant storage or will you only want to have a single copy of every file? If you want redundancy, do you want Old-fashioned RAID 1,5 or similar, or would you rather use ZFS or BTRFS with parity drives? 

Memory: Yeah seems like enough. Just know that DDR4 ECC is still VERY expensive and 64GB of ddr3 would be much more cost effective as long as your motherboard and CPU support it.

CPU(s): Honestly, I would recommend getting a dual socket board and ONE powerful CPU to start with, then add a second CPU when your load demands need it. 

Motherboard: As far as I know, there is no easy way to have a motherboard pass through a GPU to a laptop as an eGPU. You're better off with an external enclosure for the laptop. 

Case: Most disk shelves have anywhere between 9 and 30 disk bays on the front of the case. They are usually designed for rack mounting though. 

 

Overall, if you want something that is a tower, not server rack, the Dell T7910 towers are a good base to build off of as they already have a few hard drive enclosures built into the front of the case. They use Xeon E5 v3 cpus and can be had on eBay fairly inexpensively. 

 

SOFTWARE:

First off, you CAN use a VM as a router/firewall, but it's not recommended as your internet will go down if you have to restart the server at all, and no devices will be given IP addresses so initial networking will be a nightmare. Buy a cheap SFF desktop off ebay and load it up with PFSense or something similar (I think Untangle is the one ppl are recommending atm)

HyperVisor: This is the "OS" that will manage all of your VMs and Jails. Popular free ones include: FreeNas, FreeNas Corral, and Nas4Free. Paid software is often better for this solution though: ESXi, UnRAID, and ProxMox are the ones I remember. 

Guest OS/Plugins: You already said you want Plex and a Windows 10 VM that can game, so both FreeNas versions are out as they do not support Bare metal access (BMA) for Graphics cards on Guest OSes. Since Linus has covered this a lot using unRAID, that's what I'd recommend going with. 

 

Let me know if you have any more questions. I'd be happy to help.

[Catsrules]

32 minutes ago, JohnsonDK said:

Hey fellow hardware-lovers. 

I am very much intrigued by Linus 7gamers 1 cpu setup like most of you probally are. Since i first discovdered his video, I have been wanting to create a complete setup for my home for quite some time now. I hope you guys could give me a hand pointing out some of the do's and don'ts, and maybe even more important the correct hardware to buy. 

 

My Hopes for this setup:

 

It should behave as my home-internet router, both cabled and wirelessly, furthermore it is supposed to be a fast and a multi-user NAS/Plex-server atleast supporting 10users simultaneously, it should be able to play games with a monitor directly inserted into the case, and if it is possible i would very much like to have the possibility to use the pci-slots wired with thunderbolt 3 cable to my laptop, and then work as an External Gpu. 

 

Hopes for specifications:

 

- 30gb HDD storage

- 64 gb Ram

- 2 x cpu (preferably xeon) 

- A motherboard with several pci slots. 2 cpu slots and hopefully the     possibility to pass pci slots to my laptop(as an egpu) 

   I'd like a case where it is possible to hotplug storage drives without     too much effort. 

- Some really effective antennas (preferably with both monitor and injektion mode, in 2 & 5ghz)

 

All suggestion, critiques and help is appreciate! 

 

 

Dos,

 

Gaming computer and NAS together can be done. Although it is debatable why you want to combine them. 

 

Don't

Router - Speaking as someone who ran their router in a VM for years. You want this separate, it is so much nicer to have this separated if I need to reboot or have any issues the internet and network stay up. It was a night and day difference when I switch over to a dedicated router box.

WiFI - I have looked into it before, you can do it but it sucks and it limits you a lot. You are much better off just buying an AP.

eGPU - Not possible. 

 

 

As for the other things.

Plex 10 users. depends a lot on what those 10 users are doing. Are they direct streaming? Are they Transcoding if so what is the source file resolution. Are they remote users? Do you have enought internet upload speed to handle that? 

 

 

 

[Windows7ge]

25 minutes ago, JohnsonDK said:

 I appreciate your help!!

If i set my Current router in bridged mode, and when maintaining my server id just set it into router mode again, would that work

I wouldn't recommend that but it should. It won't me seamless for the clients. Everyone will get disconnected and have to reconnect.

[JohnsonDK]

36 minutes ago, Brink2Three said:

First off, welcome to the forum! 

Second of all, I want to warn you that this can quickly become a time/money pit because of how much you can do. 

Now with that aside, I'll start to address your questions in a categorical fashion: 

HARDWARE: 

Hard drives: I'm assuming you meant 30TB instead of GB so I'll run with that; is this including redundant storage or will you only want to have a single copy of every file? If you want redundancy, do you want Old-fashioned RAID 1,5 or similar, or would you rather use ZFS or BTRFS with parity drives? 

Memory: Yeah seems like enough. Just know that DDR4 ECC is still VERY expensive and 64GB of ddr3 would be much more cost effective as long as your motherboard and CPU support it.

CPU(s): Honestly, I would recommend getting a dual socket board and ONE powerful CPU to start with, then add a second CPU when your load demands need it. 

Motherboard: As far as I know, there is no easy way to have a motherboard pass through a GPU to a laptop as an eGPU. You're better off with an external enclosure for the laptop. 

Case: Most disk shelves have anywhere between 9 and 30 disk bays on the front of the case. They are usually designed for rack mounting though. 

 

Overall, if you want something that is a tower, not server rack, the Dell T7910 towers are a good base to build off of as they already have a few hard drive enclosures built into the front of the case. They use Xeon E5 v3 cpus and can be had on eBay fairly inexpensively. 

 

SOFTWARE:

First off, you CAN use a VM as a router/firewall, but it's not recommended as your internet will go down if you have to restart the server at all, and no devices will be given IP addresses so initial networking will be a nightmare. Buy a cheap SFF desktop off ebay and load it up with PFSense or something similar (I think Untangle is the one ppl are recommending atm)

HyperVisor: This is the "OS" that will manage all of your VMs and Jails. Popular free ones include: FreeNas, FreeNas Corral, and Nas4Free. Paid software is often better for this solution though: ESXi, UnRAID, and ProxMox are the ones I remember. 

Guest OS/Plugins: You already said you want Plex and a Windows 10 VM that can game, so both FreeNas versions are out as they do not support Bare metal access (BMA) for Graphics cards on Guest OSes. Since Linus has covered this a lot using unRAID, that's what I'd recommend going with. 

 

Let me know if you have any more questions. I'd be happy to help.

Thanks for your thorough response, it is really nice of you! 

 

Hardware wise -> im going with 30tb, 10 tb dedicated for raid, supposedly. I have to learn more about the different filesystems to ensure that my choice is the correct one, but I am guessing id learn alot along the path aswell, btw i am considering arch as my host OS, as ive become quite comfortable with this distribution, and after some time using the KVM, vfio and gpu passthough with this distribution, i am confident that i can atleast make one working virtual windows 10, setup up and running for gaming. 

 

I am not currently thinking of using any GUI for the virtualization proces, even tho ive been quite impressed by unraid, in terms of ease. 

 

Now that i already got a feeling that most of you guys think its a bad idea to use my main server as a router, i am slowly going away from this idea. Now im considering to either host a dedicated Linux server as router or maybe find a router that supports OpenWrt with impressive specs. 

 

Dual-socket motherboard is exactly what i am looking for. Just  now ive done alittle research on which CPU's to chose, and i am quite divided. which Manufacturer would you recommend? because AMD-ryzen threadripper seems promising with the many cores, and i already have some experience using xeon processors, and therefore know what to expect. 

 

Thanks alot

 

 

[Windows7ge]

42 minutes ago, Brink2Three said:

HyperVisor: This is the "OS" that will manage all of your VMs and Jails. Popular free ones include: FreeNas, FreeNas Corral, and Nas4Free. Paid software is often better for this solution though: ESXi, UnRAID, and ProxMox are the ones I remember. 

FreeNAS VM software (Bhyve) is pretty trash. Do not recommend.

 

Proxmox is free but you can pay for their subscription which gives you access to their repository. The free version is just fine you have full control over everything local.

[BrinkGG]

2 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

FreeNAS VM software (Bhyve) is pretty trash. Do not recommend.

 

Proxmox is free but you can pay for their subscription which gives you access to their repository. The free version is just fine you have full control over everything local.

Good to know! 

I know Bhyve is terrible. I'm currently working on getting my server ready to migrate over to ProxMox from FreeNas Because of this. 

[JohnsonDK]

1 hour ago, Catsrules said:

Dos,

 

Gaming computer and NAS together can be done. Although it is debatable why you want to combine them. 

 

Don't

Router - Speaking as someone who ran their router in a VM for years. You want this separate, it is so much nicer to have this separated if I need to reboot or have any issues the internet and network stay up. It was a night and day difference when I switch over to a dedicated router box.

WiFI - I have looked into it before, you can do it but it sucks and it limits you a lot. You are much better off just buying an AP.

eGPU - Not possible. 

 

 

As for the other things.

Plex 10 users. depends a lot on what those 10 users are doing. Are they direct streaming? Are they Transcoding if so what is the source file resolution. Are they remote users? Do you have enought internet upload speed to handle that? 

Thanks mate! 

Fast and easy to understand your response, i like that . 

Transcoding should be able from the server for all 10 simultaneous remote clients. 

 

I am quite sad to acknowledge that the eGPU functionality isnt there yet, especially considering the simplicity the different eGPU boxes contains hardware wise.  Especially now that google and nvidia both have announced their over ethernet gaming with dedicated gpu power. 

In my opinion it should be possible to do that what consumer electronics, but what do I know

 

 

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, Brink2Three said:

Good to know! 

I know Bhyve is terrible. I'm currently working on getting my server ready to migrate over to ProxMox from FreeNas Because of this. 

The free version has an annoying popup that tells you to get the subscription but there's a command to disable it. I'll post it later if you want.

[JohnsonDK]

Is Transcoding possible using the Gpu, maybe using Cuda software? 

I am of that understanding that such calculative tasks would be much faster using a High-end Gpu compared to CPU

[Chris192]

1 hour ago, JohnsonDK said:

Transcoding should be able from the server for all 10 simultaneous remote clients.  

 

 

You can look at the recommended Plex CPU requirements here, multiply by 10 and compare to the multithreaded passmark score for whatever processor you're thinking of using.

There is a "gotcha" though if you're planning on using MKV files to store the videos in the plex media server library (A lot of people do this and I would recommend it as it's better quality but it's much larger file sizes). Some blu-ray films use the VC-1 codec (I believe only the 1080p resolution, not 4K (could be wrong)) which isn't multithreaded on the plex media server so any processor you look at should have at least a single thread score of 2000 (on passmark) to be sure that you will be able to transcode all films without random buffering.

 

This will have a bit of an impact when you start looking at servers. A lot of Xeon processors are low clocked with lots of cores. You'll find that a lot of them will have a <2000 singe thread score. 

 

You're really asking a lot to transcode 10 films at once. This is easily the most expensive requirement. Even so perhaps a Dell T640 with one or two Xeon® Gold 5122 processors would work?

 

If you're happy to transcode some films into MP4 you won't need the single thread performance and you might be able to find a cheap server on ebay with the multithreaded performance you need if you don't mind buying used hardware. Server prices drop like you wouldn't believe after they fall out of warranty. (Like 2-3 years)

 

I would recommend ESXI as a hypervisor. You can get a free license if it's for non-commercial applications (the hard part will be navigating the website to find the free license).

[Catsrules]

3 hours ago, JohnsonDK said:

Is Transcoding possible using the Gpu, maybe using Cuda software? 

I am of that understanding that such calculative tasks would be much faster using a High-end Gpu compared to CPU

I think Plex has hardware acceleration if you get the Plex Pass, but I think that is only for the built in Intel GPUs. I could the wrong as I haven't personally set that up before.

[Pixel5]

as others have already pointed out many of the things you want are either not possible or dont make sense to combine.

 

the end result after taking the impossible and not sense full stuff away is a gaming PC that also works as a NAS which is also exactly what you dont want to have as for a NAS you want to be power efficient and reliable while a gaming capable setup is simply power full while power consumption doesnt matter.

 

i would recommend separating the systems and building each of them exactly for their specific purpose