Budget Storage Server Build

[panzersharkcat]

Budget (including currency): $400 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Storage server for a team of life insurance agents.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Already have the FireCuda, the PM961, the case, and the GPU. Reusing those to save money. Subtracting all that, it comes out to about $347. I have considered using a Ryzen 5 3400G since that GPU is super old. On the other hand, I'm not doing anything particularly graphically-intensive.

I'm thinking of using FreeNAS or Ubuntu Server and NextCloud but I'm not sure. Still in the learning phase when it comes to setting up this sort of thing.

[LIGISTX]

4 minutes ago, panzersharkcat said:

Budget (including currency): $400 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Storage server for a team of life insurance agents.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Already have the FireCuda, the PM961, the case, and the GPU. Reusing those to save money. Subtracting all that, it comes out to about $347. I have considered using a Ryzen 5 3400G since that GPU is super old. On the other hand, I'm not doing anything particularly graphically-intensive.

I'm thinking of using FreeNAS or Ubuntu Server and NextCloud but I'm not sure. Still in the learning phase when it comes to setting up this sort of thing.

In this use case, what is the point of building this PC instead of using a pre-built solution like a synology unit? I run a freenas server, so I fully understand its appeal. But for something like this I think a pre-built solution would make more sense. Spending 600 bucks for only a single 1 TB drive makes no sense... And using something like freenas for that is a strange choice. But, I suppose thats part of the trying to gather information phase.

[panzersharkcat]

38 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

In this use case, what is the point of building this PC instead of using a pre-built solution like a synology unit? I run a freenas server, so I fully understand its appeal. But for something like this I think a pre-built solution would make more sense. Spending 600 bucks for only a single 1 TB drive makes no sense... And using something like freenas for that is a strange choice. But, I suppose thats part of the trying to gather information phase.

It comes out to $347 since I already have a lot of the parts from old builds. The only new things I'd be buying are the PSU, the CPU, the RAM, and the motherboard. What solution would you recommend? I'm planning to have a portion for agents to grab forms, brochures, and applications and another section reserved for each of them to store client information in. I figure I can add actual NAS drives down the line as we get more clients.

[LIGISTX]

38 minutes ago, panzersharkcat said:

It comes out to $347 since I already have a lot of the parts from old builds. The only new things I'd be buying are the PSU, the CPU, the RAM, and the motherboard. What solution would you recommend? I'm planning to have a portion for agents to grab forms, brochures, and applications and another section reserved for each of them to store client information in. I figure I can add actual NAS drives down the line as we get more clients.

Depending on the amount of storage you need, cloud solutions like google drive or dropbox may be a better way of going about it.

 

Freenas isn't "easy" to upgrade storage in. If you set up ZFS RAID, you can't just "add more drives" later. You can if your only using a single drive, since your not going to have any RAID set up.... but its just not the intended use case.There is a lot of possible explaining to be done here which is why I am not sure where to start... I would suggest googling up on freenas if you actually plan to go that route.

[panzersharkcat]

1 hour ago, LIGISTX said:

Depending on the amount of storage you need, cloud solutions like google drive or dropbox may be a better way of going about it.

 

Freenas isn't "easy" to upgrade storage in. If you set up ZFS RAID, you can't just "add more drives" later. You can if your only using a single drive, since your not going to have any RAID set up.... but its just not the intended use case.There is a lot of possible explaining to be done here which is why I am not sure where to start... I would suggest googling up on freenas if you actually plan to go that route.

I'm almost out of storage with DropBox. I try to minimize the amount of Google stuff I use. I also don't want agents being able to see the client files of other agents. Would Ubuntu Server and NextCloud be better?

[LIGISTX]

1 minute ago, panzersharkcat said:

I'm almost out of storage with DropBox. I try to minimize the amount of Google stuff I use. I also don't want agents being able to see the client files of other agents. Would Ubuntu Server and NextCloud be better?

Pay for a higher capacity on dropbox? And use their built in user access settings that the business account has (I think they do? I have never used dropbox for business of gsuite, but they HAVE to have this).

 

Ubuntu server can be used as well, but again, all of this is much more complicated than something like dropbox, and its also less secure. You would need online backup for the server anyways.... Also, trying to do your own "security" with freenas or ubuntu is not really "super simple". You can make different SMB accounts for each user, or use ACL's, and make sure you actually set your filesystem up in a way for this to all work, but again this is much more complex and more prone to issue than just using a provider like dropbox who handles all the backend work for you.

[LIGISTX]

14 minutes ago, panzersharkcat said:

I'm almost out of storage with DropBox. I try to minimize the amount of Google stuff I use. I also don't want agents being able to see the client files of other agents. Would Ubuntu Server and NextCloud be better?

And trust me, I enjoy building my own servers and such for fun. I have a homelab.... with virtualized freenas. But, with that said, if I was doing this for my business, this is NOT what I would deploy.... I enjoy it, and I like messing with it and fixing it when it stops working. But those are things you DON'T WANT to deal with in a professional work environment. You just need things to work.

[panzersharkcat]

29 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

And trust me, I enjoy building my own servers and such for fun. I have a homelab.... with virtualized freenas. But, with that said, if I was doing this for my business, this is NOT what I would deploy.... I enjoy it, and I like messing with it and fixing it when it stops working. But those are things you DON'T WANT to deal with in a professional work environment. You just need things to work.

Yeah, as much as I want to learn how to set this sort of thing up, you're right. It'll be less headache with DropBox.