Homeserver with multiple uses

[roundturtle]

Hi,

I want to build a home server that would function as:

1. a VPN gateway for some devices on the network

2. a NAS

3. a music server that I would like to set up to be able to stream to different RPi's that would be hooked up around the house to different audio setups.
   All this with multiple users wanting to stream to different devices at the same time.

Finding information on the different individual parts, is simpleish. But putting the mall together makes it a tad more difficult.

I need help in every aspect more or less.

1. Hardware: I currently have an old i7980x with 12gb of ram that I was planning to use for this, but I am having troubles getting it to boot. It needs a legacy BIOS GPU which I dont have currently.

2. OS and software: I have no idea what OS I should go with. On the software side I need OpenVPN and Plex, but im not sure. I also dont know how great plex is for music.

3. Setup: Yeah no clue, again looking for solutions for the parts is doable, though alltogether I am a bit overwhelmed.

So my questions are:

Is the hardware I have on hand usable, if not where should I be looking?
What kind of OS should I go with?
I really need some recommendations for the software for the music server with multiple users side of things.
And any places I can look for help with the server setup?

 

Thanks for taking the time, and for any input.

[wall03]

1 minute ago, roundturtle said:

Is the hardware I have on hand usable, if not where should I be looking?

ifyou want all of these you need newer equipment.

 

1 minute ago, roundturtle said:

What kind of OS should I go with?

Linux, maybe Ubuntu?

[roundturtle]

5 minutes ago, wall03 said:

ifyou want all of these you need newer equipment.

Because I need more cores and ram or why exactly?

[wall03]

3 minutes ago, roundturtle said:

Because I need more cores and ram or why exactly?

because it's going to have a high usage with all it's purposes at once

[Electronics Wizardy]

13 minutes ago, roundturtle said:

Hardware: I currently have an old i7980x with 12gb of ram that I was planning to use for this, but I am having troubles getting it to boot. It needs a legacy BIOS GPU which I dont have currently.

Id get that gpu, something liek a 5450 would work well and is cheap

 

11 minutes ago, wall03 said:

ifyou want all of these you need newer equipment.

 

this still will all work fine on a normal desktop, no need for server grade stuff here.

 

14 minutes ago, roundturtle said:

OS and software: I have no idea what OS I should go with. On the software side I need OpenVPN and Plex, but im not sure. I also dont know how great plex is for music.

How simple do you want it to be to use. Id probably go with unraid for easy of use and storage expansion.

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, wall03 said:

because it's going to have a high usage with all it's purposes at once

None of those uses need much cpu power at all, tat old i7 is plenty. 

[Applefreak]

18 minutes ago, roundturtle said:

Hi,

I want to build a home server that would function as:

1. a VPN gateway for some devices on the network

2. a NAS

3. a music server that I would like to set up to be able to stream to different RPi's that would be hooked up around the house to different audio setups.
   All this with multiple users wanting to stream to different devices at the same time.

Finding information on the different individual parts, is simpleish. But putting the mall together makes it a tad more difficult.

I need help in every aspect more or less.

1. Hardware: I currently have an old i7980x with 12gb of ram that I was planning to use for this, but I am having troubles getting it to boot. It needs a legacy BIOS GPU which I dont have currently.

2. OS and software: I have no idea what OS I should go with. On the software side I need OpenVPN and Plex, but im not sure. I also dont know how great plex is for music.

3. Setup: Yeah no clue, again looking for solutions for the parts is doable, though alltogether I am a bit overwhelmed.

So my questions are:

Is the hardware I have on hand usable, if not where should I be looking?
What kind of OS should I go with?
I really need some recommendations for the software for the music server with multiple users side of things.
And any places I can look for help with the server setup?

 

Thanks for taking the time, and for any input.

Not sure what you mean by legacy BIOS GPU, any PCI-e or PCI (if your board has it) GPU will work. Get a used GT 610 or something similar. nVidia cards work great with linux. Maybe look for something passively cooled on ebay. You only need it to boot, it doesn't do anything else unless you are doing encoding jobs in plex as well. In which case you want to get something with nvenc support and more decent performance like a GT 1030 or a GTX 950. CPU horsepower is plenty for what you have in mind. You may want to add some modern hard drives because newer drives (past 2016) have gotten significantly faster in read speeds and access time, not a must have though. I usually avoid plex, altough it does a really good job, because of the many background task it is running that cannot be turned off that easily. I am currently using a thing called Emby. Very similar but less fancy interface but you can use it in a similar way and it does allow you to control database update schedules easily. It is also much lighter on resources and it does come with a mobile app as well. I am using a distro called openmediavault as base (it is based on ubuntu / debian) for my NAS.

[roundturtle]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How simple do you want it to be to use. Id probably go with unraid for easy of use and storage expansion.

Im willing to learn and tinker. I have seen Proxmox mentioned a lot, but ill add Unraid to my list.

15 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get that gpu, something liek a 5450 would work well and is cheap

Yes im looking in to the hd series currently.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, roundturtle said:

Im willing to learn and tinker. I have seen Proxmox mentioned a lot, but ill add Unraid to my list.

Yes im looking in to the hd series currently.

I use proxmox and it works well. How many tb do you want, what drive setup are you planning to get?

 

 

[roundturtle]

7 minutes ago, Applefreak said:

CPU horsepower is plenty for what you have in mind. You may want to add some modern hard drives because newer drives (past 2016) have gotten significantly faster in read speeds and access time, not a must have though. I usually avoid plex, altough it does a really good job, because of the many background task it is running that cannot be turned off that easily. I am currently using a thing called Emby. Very similar but less fancy interface but you can use it in a similar way and it does allow you to control database update schedules easily. It is also much lighter on resources and it does come with a mobile app as well. I am using a distro called openmediavault as base (it is based on ubuntu / debian) for my NAS.

I only have the mobo CPU and Ram so drives iwill need to get anyways. The music software is whats causing me the most headaches atm. Because I want to have multiple users streaming different music to differnt outputs at the same time. And most solutions are for 1 person as far as I can see.

[roundturtle]

6 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I use proxmox and it works well. How many tb do you want, what drive setup are you planning to get?

 

 

I dont need all that much space tbh. All I have is a few hundred albums +-200GB atm, and photos less than 1Tb atm. 2tb should be good and then I can always upgrade later. I am even considering only going with ssds since I dont have all that much stuff. But it is more expensive. Havent really thought about backups and such yet tbh.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, roundturtle said:

I dont need all that much space tbh. All I have is a few hundred albums +-200GB atm, and photos less than 1Tb atm. 2tb should be good and then I can always upgrade later. I am even considering only going with ssds since I dont have all that much stuff. But it is more expensive. Havent really thought about backups and such yet tbh.

Id probably get a 4tb hdd if it was me so there is more space to expand to if you need, or just get a 2tb ssd and be happy with the speed.

 

For that size its probably ok to backup to external hdds and move them to other locations. Or cloud backup if you don't want to be moving hdds.

[roundturtle]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Or cloud backup if you don't want to be moving hdds.

 

I have cloud backups atm. So yeah I think ssd is the way to go for the speed and noise  I have amassed this amount of stuff over years so, its not growing very fast.

[Salacious B Crum]

2 hours ago, roundturtle said:

Im willing to learn and tinker. I have seen Proxmox mentioned a lot, but ill add Unraid to my list.

Yes im looking in to the hd series currently.

If you look at my signature you will see I built my unRAID sever from a pre-built and it is rock solid you should be fine although depending on if you go with say freeNAS/trueNAS they seem to be ram dependant but you should be fine

[roundturtle]

Well then it looks like either unraid or Proxmox so far. But ive also seen docker containers mentioned and something else, any opinion on that route?

The nas part should be the easiest.

The vpn part should be doable, have been doing some research on it.

Now the music part is where things get dicey tbh. I know building a server for yourself isnt very difficult as far as I have seen. But I havent come across anything that would give multiple users the ability to stream different files to different desired outputs at the same time.(basically your own minispotify)

 

 

[Salacious B Crum]

18 hours ago, roundturtle said:

Well then it looks like either unraid or Proxmox so far. But ive also seen docker containers mentioned and something else, any opinion on that route?

The nas part should be the easiest.

The vpn part should be doable, have been doing some research on it.

Now the music part is where things get dicey tbh. I know building a server for yourself isnt very difficult as far as I have seen. But I havent come across anything that would give multiple users the ability to stream different files to different desired outputs at the same time.(basically your own minispotify)

 

 

Just setup your server os of choice and put a plex media server on it. I'm running plex, sonarr, radarr lidarr, homeassistant, and around a dozen dockers and I'm running about 50% of my cpu still has gas in the tank you should be fine a long as your os of choice has the options described

[Ballardian]

For music server I use Serviio. I believe it has mac, Linux, and windows versions. Works great with music and will do videos too. There is a free version or paid. I can't remember most of the differences receipt with the paid version you get a web player option too.