All in one server solution

[New-Identity]

Hello all!

 

I'm going through some research issues and I'm hoping you can assist. 

 

I'm wanting to upgrade my home network with the following:

 

Wireless controller

4 APs

Radius/ ldap for bandwidth limited user accounts

NAS

1-2 vms for added user network testing

Potentially a security camera solution

 

 

It looks like the convenient route would be:

ubiquiti dream machine pro to cover the access point control and security,  synology would be an easy nas and radius solution and I could run an ldap server on a raspberry pi.

 

If I wanted to scrap that and go with a server for as much of that as I can,  how would you all go about it? 

 

Thank you in advance!

[Electronics Wizardy]

How diy do you want to go?

 

Id probably just setup a system with proxmox, and use it for all the vms. Id probably get a firewall with something like pfsense/untangel as I like it more than unifi's firewalls

 

If you just want the radius users to have lower speeds, you can do that all in unifi with the guest ssids.

 

If you want simple, just get a synology nas.

[New-Identity]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How diy do you want to go?

 

Id probably just setup a system with proxmox, and use it for all the vms. Id probably get a firewall with something like pfsense/untangel as I like it more than unifi's firewalls

 

If you just want the radius users to have lower speeds, you can do that all in unifi with the guest ssids.

 

If you want simple, just get a synology nas.

I'm in it for the long haul so I can be as diy as needed. 

 

I'm an IT guy by profession and love tinkering but truly suck at designing. I'm sure I can figure it out but would like to save my wallet from avoidable mishaps as much as possible. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, New-Identity said:

I'm in it for the long haul so I can be as diy as needed. 

 

I'm an IT guy by profession and love tinkering but truly suck at designing. I'm sure I can figure it out but would like to save my wallet from avoidable mishaps as much as possible. 

Do you have a budget in mind?

 

How much storage do you need from the nas?

 

Id be tempted to get a small desktop, small a cute and should run those tasks fine.

 

Or get a midrange desktop, add some drives, and you have a reasonable nas.

[New-Identity]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you have a budget in mind?

 

How much storage do you need from the nas?

 

Id be tempted to get a small desktop, small a cute and should run those tasks fine.

 

Or get a midrange desktop, add some drives, and you have a reasonable nas.

4tb of data,  so 20tb total to cover nas redundancy and security along with OS installs for vm.

 

Should have mentioned this earlier but I would like to replicate the logical side of an enterprise network as much as I can to immerse myself within common problems and troubleshooting scenarios. 

 

Overall budget I would like to stay within would be around 5k total. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, New-Identity said:

4tb of data,  so 20tb total to cover nas redundancy and security along with OS installs for vm.

 

Should have mentioned this earlier but I would like to replicate the logical side of an enterprise network as much as I can to immerse myself within common problems and troubleshooting scenarios. 

 

Overall budget I would like to stay within would be around 5k total. 

5k is more than plenty here. 

 

Id probably just get or build a smaller desktop, get something like a ryzen 3600, 32/64gb of ram. I like the asrock rack boards, but any board would work. Id get a 1-2tb ssd or two for vms. and get a 12tb pair of hdds for data.

 

Id use proxmox as a hypervisor, then you can setup virtual networks, but anyhypervisor should work for this.

[MattJenko]

^^ That's good advice. I run an Asrock Rack X470D4U with a 3900x for my main server, it, uh, rocks. Remote management, dual Gb nic's, can get a version with 10Gb copper ports if you want, or the X570 version, and support for ECC and Ryzen 5xxx.

 

Personally, if you like the idea of the Ubiquiti wireless stuff, this is what I'd do: get yourself a UDM Pro and the AC's to handle that side of things (might need a secondary small PoE switch for the AC's), build a Ryzen based server on the Asrock Rack mobo with more or less cores and RAM depending on your needs, add disks in your case of choice (mine has 8 sata ports on the board), add a 10Gb SFP+ card from eBay and connect that to the UDM Pro for sweet, sweet bandwidth. Smash another 10Gb card in your desktop and go go go

 

With that type of server, you could replace quite a bit of the functionality of the UDM Pro with things like Zoneminder or pfSense, but having some overlap isn't bad, especially if you want to take things down for maintenance that your household relies on. You could add another small PC like those tiny corporate desktops as a failover solution, run Proxmox on both and be able to move essential services around if you want to, though considering your main storage will be on the server there will be limits.

[New-Identity]

Thank you for all the great advice.

 

Went with the UDMpro and a couple AP's. Pretty straight forward install and will keep the family from murdering me if I goof while tinkering

 

Now I'm going to get that Asrock setup going.