Customer build, is this possible?

[Atom_Alchemist]

I know I can make a router from a older PC, I know I can make a NAS from one as well, is it possible to use middle tier componants (such as 4770k and lots more ram) to make a custom machine that pulls double duty? A mutl drive NAS AND LAN routing capabilities?

[mahyar]

yes i made a nas with pentium e5200 and 1GB of ram! so yeah you can 

[jaslion]

Totally possible. You may wanna run a hypervisor that runs 2 vms for each task for security reasons. Other than that go for it. A 4770k is far overkill for this task too.

[Nick7]

Yes, you can.

For home-use I use Q1900-ITX (based on J1900 CPU).

I have Linux running as NAS (using ZFS + Samba + torrent stuff), and virtual machine running pfSense. Works great!

[Atom_Alchemist]

On 8/12/2020 at 3:55 AM, Nick7 said:

Yes, you can.

For home-use I use Q1900-ITX (based on J1900 CPU).

I have Linux running as NAS (using ZFS + Samba + torrent stuff), and virtual machine running pfSense. Works great!

I don't know enough about linux to even try putting that on my plate, But it sounds like I should be able to handle this though hardware vitualisation. Anyone have any good links on how to setup both pfsense in one VM, while setting up freenas in another VM preferably using windows 10 as the  primary OS? Any good tuttorials on how to setup VM and provision out the specific hardware to each VM?

[Nick7]

Why Windows?

Do you plan to use it as a desktop computer too?

Easiest way would be to put Vmware ESXi. Free license is good enough for all that you may need.

Also, question is - how many drives you intend to use? HW RAID controller?

There are many questions, and depending on them, different approaches exist.

[Atom_Alchemist]

19 hours ago, Nick7 said:

Why Windows?

Do you plan to use it as a desktop computer too?

Easiest way would be to put Vmware ESXi. Free license is good enough for all that you may need.

Also, question is - how many drives you intend to use? HW RAID controller?

There are many questions, and depending on them, different approaches exist.

Windows just because it's the only OS I actually know what i'm doing half the time, and licenses are easy to come by. I do NOT plan to use computer as a normal desktop. It will trickly be the home network hub and nas. 

 

So far I thinking of using a Z270 GAMING M6 AC with a 6700k, since i already have that mobo, cpu, and a compatible power supply/case. I only need ram, the ssd/hdd drives, and of course the lan switch card/s and possibly a WIFI solution. 

 

I was thinking a 120gb ssd for the OS in a m.2, with 3-5 hard drives, I haven't yet decided on the exact makeup of the raid, and this would be my first time building up a raid array as well. (but i'm thinkin raid 1, raid 10, or raid 5, as I am not to concerned with write performance, but more worried about read performance, as the nas portion of this build will be for storing a huge library of games, as well as movie and video files which will have multiple users reading the data at once, but NOT writing data.)

 

I was also thinking between 32gb of ram, with 24gb for the NAS, and 8 for the router. Other than the hardware, i also need to learn how to setup and asign out the hardware for both mochines in VM.

[Electronics Wizardy]

45 minutes ago, Atom_Alchemist said:

Windows just because it's the only OS I actually know what i'm doing half the time, and licenses are easy to come by. I do NOT plan to use computer as a normal desktop. It will trickly be the home network hub and nas. 

 

So far I thinking of using a Z270 GAMING M6 AC with a 6700k, since i already have that mobo, cpu, and a compatible power supply/case. I only need ram, the ssd/hdd drives, and of course the lan switch card/s and possibly a WIFI solution. 

 

I was thinking a 120gb ssd for the OS in a m.2, with 3-5 hard drives, I haven't yet decided on the exact makeup of the raid, and this would be my first time building up a raid array as well. (but i'm thinkin raid 1, raid 10, or raid 5, as I am not to concerned with write performance, but more worried about read performance, as the nas portion of this build will be for storing a huge library of games, as well as movie and video files which will have multiple users reading the data at once, but NOT writing data.)

 

I was also thinking between 32gb of ram, with 24gb for the NAS, and 8 for the router. Other than the hardware, i also need to learn how to setup and asign out the hardware for both mochines in VM.

then you really don't want  windows, get something like proxmox for vms. Then setup zfs for storage, and make a vm for the router

 

How many tb do you need. Normally get big drives.

 

If you have newer done things, make the router and nas separate hardware, vitalized routers can be a pain to work with, and something like a edgerouter is sub 100 usd and will work fine for a home network.

[Atom_Alchemist]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

then you really don't want  windows, get something like proxmox for vms. Then setup zfs for storage, and make a vm for the router

 

How many tb do you need. Normally get big drives.

 

If you have newer done things, make the router and nas separate hardware, vitalized routers can be a pain to work with, and something like a edgerouter is sub 100 usd and will work fine for a home network.

looking at around 18 tb of data currently (I have 2 10 tb external hdd almost full, along with numerous hdd basiacly lying around with terabytes of not so useful data that haven't been accessed) Additionally, between me and my brothers computers, we likely have around 2 tb of games downloaded so far, but i want to future proof this for games where loading times aren't important. I also plan to get into content creation soon^tm so i want a server to store my video content that isn't taking up valuable nvme sssd space, or requiring me to install multiple internal hdd's in my main machine.

 

The router was sorta of a bonus as our current router is OLD, and if I could get this 6700k to handle the routing responsiblities with our current router just being a wireless ap, I would like to do so.

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, Atom_Alchemist said:

looking at around 18 tb of data currently (I have 2 10 tb external hdd almost full, along with numerous hdd basiacly lying around with terabytes of not so useful data that haven't been accessed) Additionally, between me and my brothers computers, we likely have around 2 tb of games downloaded so far, but i want to future proof this for games where loading times aren't important. I also plan to get into content creation soon^tm so i want a server to store my video content that isn't taking up valuable nvme sssd space, or requiring me to install multiple internal hdd's in my main machine.

 

The router was sorta of a bonus as our current router is OLD, and if I could get this 6700k to handle the routing responsiblities with our current router just being a wireless ap, I would like to do so.

You cn use it as a router, but its gonn be a pain, if you haven't worked with vms muchs.

 

Id go with something like 4x16tb hdds or simmilar then, get big hdds. 

 

Do you plan on using lancache for game downloads? You can do that pretty easily in anoutehr vm

[Nick7]

What @Electronics Wizardy said. You want something Linux based, and Proxmox fits that nicely.

Using ZFS for storage, and for example pfSense as router (that's what I use, and it's awsome!).

 

However, you may even create 2 VM's - one for NAS share and even use something like Xpenology (port of Synology) for NAS, and again pfSense as router.

 

I would suggest first to test this in a VM's (Vmware player or similar) before doing proper build, as you don't have experience with those.

 

With setup that you have, you can make really great stuff.