Building Homeserverenviroment. Discussion

[MatzeXp]

Good Evening together, 

I'd like to build a Serverenviroment at Home for my own use.
And I'm now in front of some difficult questions, I'd like some opinions on.

First of all do I need multiple Severs?  I'd like to run a Fileserver to accsess my Files localy and some Vms and Dockercontainer for VPN, SQL Databases, Nextcloud, Streaming sevice etc.. Now do i put all my applications on one Server or use multiple ones. And how can I decide which OS to use? There are way too many optinons in my opinion: Fedora Sever, Ubuntu Sever, Windwos Sever, FreeNas, UnRaid or OpenMediaVault. Every OS has their advantages in filesystem or virtualisation.

The next question is my local network speed and the type of disks to use:
Do I need 10 Gbit network(SFP or RJ45)? Isn't 1 Gbit too slow? I'd like to use  > 1 Gbit since 100 Mb/s readspeed is too slow in my opinion, but is that true? I planing to use some ssd and hdds to get good performance and nice read/write speeds. Or is that realy necessary? deliver HDDS in raid enougth performance to feel any difference to SSD? SAS OR SATA?

My last Question is if I should by old/used sever gear or build a server with new parts of consumer computer parts?

I'd like to hear your opinions on that
If there are any unanswered questions please point them out.

[Mayaa]

One server with multiple VMs is definitely the way to go, if you go with the VM route you'd want to use some kind of VM OS, like unraid, proxmox etc.

 

If you need more network speed depends on what you do, if you do a lot of big file transfers or high res video editing you could probably use more, 10gbit can be expensive though. SSDs are probably too expensive to hold all your data, so HDDs for mass storage is probably better, although 1 SSD for things that needs the extra speed is nice to have.

 

Buying a used server like R710 or somthing seems pretty popular around here, other than that if you have old desktop parts that works as well, as long as its not too ancient. 

 

[Salacious B Crum]

unRAID for me was turn key some minor setup in the web UI and up and running also unRAID provides the options for all of the plans you listed you can start there for free with all options unlocked to see if you like it 10Gbe is not a requirement for a NAS its nice to have as I do but not required most hardware is still 1Gbe reliant. As far as multiple servers I have 3, two enterprise Dell R series and a home built unRAID sever which happens to be my primary server running duplicati, plex, sonarr, radarr, lidarr, jacket and deluge I like having the one R710 as I call it the test server I do all my testing and implementations on it first then put it in to production when satisfied it won't bork my main system but by no means is it a requirement to have the full functionality of a home server environment

[MatzeXp]

@Mayaa: But if I use multiple VMs for my doesn't my hostsystem get too messy with all the portwiring and mounting of shares?
10gbit is expensive... especially the switches and networkcards. I shoot a lot of Photos (RAW) and statring video. So longterm storage on HDDs and working on SSDs seems like a good Idea to me. But do i need SSDs in Raid?

@mrbilky: unRAID seems pretty sraight forward. I should give it a try. But do you think Fedora or Ubuntu Server are way too much effort to configure? So 10GBE is for the future if 1Gbe is a limiting factor for speed. Do you have all your Applications as Docker Container, in VMs or direcly installed on unRaid? yeah multiple server seems like a good option for me since i'm bad at deploying stuff for production a test server seems like a good idea.

[Jarsky]

On 8/20/2019 at 8:58 AM, MatzeXp said:

First of all do I need multiple Severs?  I'd like to run a Fileserver to accsess my Files localy and some Vms and Dockercontainer for VPN, SQL Databases, Nextcloud, Streaming sevice etc..

Using one physical server and mounting to the VM's means you're effectively getting 10Gbit over the virtual switch/nic interfaces. 

It can also be cheaper if youre wanting to do new, since you only require one case, mobo, cpu, psu, etc..., and lower power costs. 

On 8/20/2019 at 8:58 AM, MatzeXp said:

Now do i put all my applications on one Server or use multiple ones. And how can I decide which OS to use? There are way too many optinons in my opinion: Fedora Sever, Ubuntu Sever, Windwos Sever, FreeNas, UnRaid or OpenMediaVault. Every OS has their advantages in filesystem or virtualisation.

Windows Server is a great all rounder, easy to configure and Storage Spaces is fairly decent these days. 

FreeNAS is excellent for storage, and pretty good for some VM's or Docker if you want a fairly OOTB solution. 

Proxmox has ZFS so can be excellent for storage as well, but as its a hypervisor its more advanced in VM/Docker support with KVM & OpenVZ

UnRAID is basic but does limit you to the speed of a single disk, which is why it typically needs a SSD Write Cache for heavier application. Keep in mind that it has no Read Cache either so isn't really suitable for more than 1Gbit networks if you need fast read speed. It does have decent VM support with KVM as well. 

Ubuntu would be your most configurable but also the hardest to setup and maintain, you should probably only go this route if you're fairly experienced with *nix

 

On 8/20/2019 at 8:58 AM, MatzeXp said:

The next question is my local network speed and the type of disks to use:
Do I need 10 Gbit network(SFP or RJ45)? Isn't 1 Gbit too slow? I'd like to use  > 1 Gbit since 100 Mb/s readspeed is too slow in my opinion, but is that true?

Do you really need to be able to move more than ~110MB/s constantly? Arent most RAW format images around ~20-50MB?

Don't know much about working with footage so not sure if this is an issue...I would have imagined its more of a constraint when working with video which are GB's in size?

Perhaps try 1Gbit at first, and if its to slow then consider investing in 10Gbit nic's and network gear?

 

On 8/20/2019 at 8:58 AM, MatzeXp said:

I planing to use some ssd and hdds to get good performance and nice read/write speeds. Or is that realy necessary? deliver HDDS in raid enougth performance to feel any difference to SSD? SAS OR SATA?

HDD's in RAID can be enough if you have 4-5 disks you'd be looking at an easy 500MB/s in sequential performance. 

One of my RAID's is 12 x 3TB disks and is about 1200MB/s. For editing though SSD caching may be better due to the low latency they provide. If you run ZFS then the ARC/L2ARC on that is pretty intelligent. 

[Salacious B Crum]

15 hours ago, MatzeXp said:

@mrbilky: unRAID seems pretty straight forward. I should give it a try. But do you think Fedora or Ubuntu Server are way too much effort to configure? So 10GBE is for the future if 1Gbe is a limiting factor for speed. Do you have all your Applications as Docker Container, in VMs or direcly installed on unRaid? yeah multiple server seems like a good option for me since i'm bad at deploying stuff for production a test server seems like a good idea.

Can't really comment on linux systems as that is not my area of knowledge all of my apps run as docker containers only running 1 VM for testing purposes (Debian) to learn more about linux but I will say it is correct that unRAID is a bit on the slow side but that really doesn't affect its use case for a NAS and has not caused me any issues running plex 24/7 Dell poweredge servers are pretty cheap these days for getting into server grade hardware you will just have to eat the fact that they can be power hungry and a bit loud for some for me it is a fortunate situation I have lost much of my hearing due to working with heavy equipment over the years so that part does not affect me all that much