Home Server upgrade

[redblood]

I have a scrap server that I use for cloud storage and as a plex media server mainly. It also serves as a pihole router, some web apps, and similar things.

I have currently a kubernetes cluster running on it, and it starts to struggle a bit lately, so I'm thinking of upgrading it. I got a good offer for a 5800X and will buy ram when I find a good deal, but my main worry is storage. Currently I have 2 old drives that are working well, albeit very slow. I use restic for backups (I know, not ideal but didn't have both drives from the get go and didn't have a spare drive to configure a RAID). Which drives should I use instead? And at what RAID configuration?
I need around 4Tb of storage (at least for the next 5 years).

To recap:

• Old conf:

B450M gaming fatality itx/ac

amd wraith stock cooler

ryzen 1300X

8Gb RAM

2 old 1Tb 2.5" laptop drives

• New Conf:

B450M gaming fatality itx/ac

amd wraith stock cooler (tell me if this should change)

ryzen 5800X

32Gb RAM (3200Mhz CL16 corsair vengeance LPX)

Drives you guys would recommend.

 

Around 10 people are going to use this for cloud/media and some static apps. I will be the only one using it around 2/3 times a week for some light workloads (data processing/encryption/etc).

 

Extra points for the smallest possible case where I can put this server (2 3.5" drives of course). My current one is a phanteks evo something, don't remember the name but it's not the smallest, nor the biggest case you can find.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Does the board support the 5800x yet? I think the bios updates aren't out for the b450 boards yet.

 

Can you use 3.5in hdds? Id get 2 8tb drives raid 1 them, and a ssd for boot + vms  and programs. You can get 5tb 2.5in hdds, but there smr and not great drives.

 

 

[redblood]

- yes the bios update P4.20 supports zen3 I checked so I'll have to update it.

- I am planning to use 3.5" drives of course, also what do you mean by : booting the vms? Like the container images location?

- I don't know which drives to get, maybe something like ironwolf nas? or wd red plus/pro (since the normal variant is SMR).

- Also I'd like to get a smaller case.

[ascendings]

It looks that they meant to use an SSD for your main OS and any VM/container storage - that will just make the experience of those services to be a lot snappier.

 

Since you're looking for a small mini-ITX case, you can snag something like this Thermaltake case: https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Computer-Chassis-Interchangeable-CA-1B8-00S1WN-00/dp/B00M2UKGSM which should looks like it should support a couple 3.5" drives and an SSD or two.

 

You'll definitely want to go with a NAS drive since those are rated for 24/7 use, like the Seagate Ironwolf or WD Red Plus drives you meantioned - I've personally used the Seagate Ironwolf for the last few years and they've held up well for me, but any drive can be finnicky so just keep an eye out for a drive failure.

 

With two drives you're stuck with using a RAID 1 for redundancy which mirrors the two drives, and should protect you in the event of a drive failure.

[redblood]

Thank you very much, the image storage shouldn't be too big. Which ssds should I get for 24/7 use? Also does the core V1 support 2 3.5" and a 2.5"?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

17 hours ago, redblood said:

- yes the bios update P4.20 supports zen3 I checked so I'll have to update it.

- I am planning to use 3.5" drives of course, also what do you mean by : booting the vms? Like the container images location?

- I don't know which drives to get, maybe something like ironwolf nas? or wd red plus/pro (since the normal variant is SMR).

- Also I'd like to get a smaller case.

Yea id have a ssd for boot/ vms(put your game servers web apps, pi hot and other tasks in containers or vms. And you want those on a ssd.)

 

Id get the cheapest of the nas rated drives, there all about the same. Or shuck external hdds if you want to save a buck.

 

1 hour ago, redblood said:

Thank you very much, the image storage shouldn't be too big. Which ssds should I get for 24/7 use? Also does the core V1 support 2 3.5" and a 2.5"?

 

Any ssds should work fine, id probably get a m.2 drive here are there about the same price, and save space in the case. 

 

Id probably stay away from the core v1 here personally, but it seems to support 2 2.5 and 2 3.5

[Dutch_Master]

If I'm not mistaken, your mainboard has an NVMe M.2 slot, correct? If so, use that for the OS drive. I'd suggest a 1 TB NVMe SSD and a pair of 4TB HDDs. Partition the SSD with 128GB for the OS itself, another 128GB for general data (more if you need to) and the remainder as cache for the 4TB RAID1 which comprises both HDDs. For the SSD I'd suggest the Mushkin Pilot-E series MKNSSDPE1TB-D8, which comes in at about 110 USD (+shipping) on Amazon and for the HDDs a WD Red and Seagate Skyhawk, each about 100 USD. Get both, to reduce the chance you get a faulty series drive from either one manufacturer. Alternatively, the Seagate Ironwolf drives are a little dearer, but still affordable.

[redblood]

yeah I only got containers, since everything runs from inside my kubernetes cluster. and yes I do have an M.2 slot although I'm not sure it supports NVMe annd 1Tb is too much, my container image layers would never exceed 10Gb anyway, since the biggest thing I have is the nextcloud image, most of the rest is just go binaries. How much cache do the other 4Tb raid 1 drives need?

 

[Dutch_Master]

Actually, 1 TB is an excellent value, as smaller drives can only offer lower speeds (2GB/s on Kingston drives vs 3.5GB/s on the Mushkin I suggested) due to the way those NVMe drives are organised. Your mainboard supports PCIe gen 3 at least, so the Mushkin drive fits in perfectly.

 

In fact, if you're really convinced your containers take up so little space, forego the HDDs, run everything from the NVMe drive and get a SATA SSD as backup for the NVMe drive. Must be at least 1 GB too. Should you decide to keep the HDDs, dedicate at least 512GB of the NVMe drive as cache. It means most of your data, if not all of it, will remain in the fast cache and your system will react significantly quicker to requests compared to searches on the slow HDDs.

[redblood]

Couldn't find that SSD, I'm in France, ordered a crucial P5 that was on sale from crucial's website, it's also rated as 3.5Gb/s and is on sale for 100€. Also what's wrong with the core V1 @Electronics Wizardy ? It looks perfect for my use case, I have at least 2 3.5" drives and my gpu is only there for some graphical output (GT 420) I run linux without a DE. so unless my ssh is broke, or for bios, I don't even need a gpu.

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, redblood said:

Couldn't find that SSD, I'm in France, ordered a crucial P5 that was on sale from crucial's website, it's also rated as 3.5Gb/s and is on sale for 100€. Also what's wrong with the core V1 @Electronics Wizardy ? It looks perfect for my use case, I have at least 2 3.5" drives and my gpu is only there for some graphical output (GT 420) I run linux without a DE. so unless my ssh is broke, or for bios, I don't even need a gpu.

 

 

Some boards won't post without a gpu, so check if your board will.

 

Id go node 304 or one of the cases with more drive bays so you can add more drives later, but the core v1 will work fine.

[redblood]

My board does post without a gpu, I have a spare GT 420 that I removed since I installed ssh, and my served worked just fine without it.

Why is the node 304 better? it's 90€ compared to 60€ for core v1, what justifies this 50% price increase?