Home server NAS

[Failquail]

Currently, my setup is at this point a positively ancient Thecus N0503 NAS = maxes out at around 40mb/sec with 3x 3TB for 6TB storage (limited by it's single core 1.6ghz atom cpu i think)

The WAN side is okay, a Virgin Media superhub (in modem mode because it truely sucks at being a router) My old AMD E450 APU microPC + pfsense as the router (Fun fact, i bodged a second 1GB LAN card onto the mPCIe slot it's WiFi card used, then dremeled a hole for the cabling) lan is 3x1GB daisy-chained 8port switches scattered about the house.(Used to run an Ark+minecraft game server but no longer have sufficient hardware to support it)

It kinda works, but we're having a huge building extension done, and the wall 90% of the wiring is attached to is getting demolished.
So a good excuse to upgrade the whole lot in one go...

I'm thinking a small server cabinet containing:
A patch panel
A many port 1GB switch
A server

For the server, i'm thinking combo NAS and server via VM, xen/proxmox/vmware/give suggestions.

I have an old bulldozer PC i can test setups for said server on right now

[Failquail]

Would an old corporate server be a good idea?

Power usage and noise are issue though. It won't be in a bedroom, but fairly low noise would be good.

[Jarno.]

Hi @Failquail

 

Personally i would go for KVM, Proxmox or VMware depending if you want it easy to manage or lowest overhead. KVM is best performance wise but VMware might be easier to manage. While both do have a GUI VMware is more familiar to most people.

 

As far recommends go for a server. What is your budget? What kind of features are must have or good to have?  A search on Ebay for "Blade servers" might give you some good results.

 

Edit: if you want it to "just work" then go Proxmox or VMware if you don't mind that it can take a while to get it setup at first i would recommend a headless Linux server with KVM and LXD/LXE installed. The last option will give best performance as it takes less resources.

[Failquail]

14 minutes ago, Jarno. said:

What is your budget? What kind of features are must have or good to have?

Budget, £500-ish maybe?, not set
rewrite:

two roles:

-NAS

-(secondary: game server, likely just one game or one game plus minecraft)
(currently it'd be needed for modded minecraft and an ARK server)

[Jarno.]

5 minutes ago, Failquail said:

Ehh, this is where i'm unceratin.

Initial thought was for one of those server cases where it's essentially just an ATX chassis in a rack form factor, then building a lowish power ryzen build in it.
But after seeing some of the youtube builds of old corporates servers, i'm unsure.

The latter def has the edge on the NAS side

A simple ATX with Ryzen should do the job just fine for home use. But if you want some enterprise features then you can better go for a old server. For NAS use you might want to make sure that it does support ECC memory even more important when you end up using ZFS as filesystem. But i thought that Ryzen supports this (but not official so you might want to take attention to this)

[Salacious B Crum]

38 minutes ago, Failquail said:

Would an old corporate server be a good idea?

Power usage and noise are issue though. It won't be in a bedroom, but fairly low noise would be good.

I'm running 3 servers at present 1 is a 28TB home built off of an I7 pre-built rig and that has just been great no complaints and it runs as my HTPC with plex, radarr, sonarr, lidarr and jackett my second is a Dell poweredge R710 and that rig has been good all round the 3rd and most disappointing is a Dell poweredge R410 and that is loud any way you slice it but I use it for testing so its not a 24/7 rig so I get by the R710 is a well rounded server and serves me well and was relatively cheap my advice is stay away from any 1U server at least 2U has room so you can modify fans if needed the 1U fans are like jet engines