I'm Thinking About Building A Home Server - I Need Help

[jammer2001]

I'm wondering what hardware I should get and what specs do I need? 

 

My planned uses:

• Nextcloud server
• Mincraft server
• file server
• Plex
• Maybe a Couple of VMs

[Haraikomono]

Its all about the size of the user base.

Depending on it, the hardware comes into play.

you could easily deploy all those things in a simple small server.

But if you are going for a medium to large size user base, then maybe you should opt in for an actual server.

Also the hardware whether it might be an rack or nor is depending on the usage of the server (ie in duration of uptime)

[Mihle]

How many users?

With Plex, how many devices at the time will use it and what kind of devices? Only locally or over the web? 1080p or UHD?

[Blue4130]

38 minutes ago, Haraikomono said:

.

Also the hardware whether it might be an rack or nor is depending on the usage of the server (ie in duration of uptime)

What? Uptime has zero bearing on if you should go rack mount or tower. What a rediculous statement. 

[Haraikomono]

17 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

What a rediculous statement. 

rack mounted pre built servers are made specifically for 24h use

[CerealExperimentsLain]

1 hour ago, Haraikomono said:

rack mounted pre built servers are made specifically for 24h use

You can definitely just run your desktop PC 24/7 for years until parts start failing.  There really is no such thing as PC parts made for 24/7 operation and those that are not.  If you have PC parts that can't just operate nonstop 24/7, you have a problem with your parts and should RMA them.

[NoahH]

3 hours ago, Haraikomono said:

Also the hardware whether it might be an rack or nor is depending on the usage of the server (ie in duration of uptime)

The orientation of the machine won't affect preformance

 

[jammer2001]

4 hours ago, Mihle said:

How many users?

With Plex, how many devices at the time will use it and what kind of devices? Only locally or over the web? 1080p or UHD?

About 10 devices and it would be used locally most of the time but occasionally via the web. Most of the content we own is 1080p.

[jammer2001]

5 hours ago, Haraikomono said:

Its all about the size of the user base.

Depending on it, the hardware comes into play.

you could easily deploy all those things in a simple small server.

But if you are going for a medium to large size user base, then maybe you should opt in for an actual server.

Also the hardware whether it might be an rack or nor is depending on the usage of the server (ie in duration of uptime)

Userbase meaning what? This server would be used at home. The Plex sever would be used by my entire family (5 people) but I have no baseline to estimate how often it would be used. I estimate that the minecraft server would have no more than 20 concurrent users (it's just for my brother and I to play with our friends) and maybe if possible a few VMs (one or two for me to just mess around with Linux on and 3 Windows VMs to act as my parents and my sister's desktop (like what Linus did).

Thinking about it a little more I guess the nextcloud instance probably negates the need for a local file server.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, jammer2001 said:

About 10 devices and it would be used locally most of the time but occasionally via the web. Most of the content we own is 1080p.

And how many of those 10 could be streaming plex at the same time? All of them?

[Blue4130]

6 hours ago, Haraikomono said:

rack mounted pre built servers are made specifically for 24h use

So are Consumer desktops. There is very little difference between server and consumer hardware. 

 

Also, pre-built servers are also made in tower form factor... Are they not built to the same standards as rack gear? 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

1 hour ago, Blue4130 said:

Also, pre-built servers are also made in tower form factor... Are they not built to the same standards as rack gear? 

Uhh that depends.  Some rack mount server stuff is very standard, somewhat standard, and some are super proprietary.  Depends on the kit.  But there's also consumer desktop PCs that are very proprietary too.  A lot of the very compact servers have unique hardware layouts to allow optimal cooling.

[Blue4130]

1 hour ago, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Uhh that depends.  Some rack mount server stuff is very standard, somewhat standard, and some are super proprietary.  Depends on the kit.  But there's also consumer desktop PCs that are very proprietary too.  A lot of the very compact servers have unique hardware layouts to allow optimal cooling.

I am not talking about proprietary vs iso standards aspects. I am talking build quality standards. And I stand my my comment that being rack form factor does not immediately equal better quality or uptime. A dell r720 is not built to a higher standard than a dell t320. (and neither is better than a similar spec gamer board - usually the gamer board has better power delivery) 

[jammer2001]

On 6/3/2021 at 4:29 PM, Mihle said:

And how many of those 10 could be streaming plex at the same time? All of them?

nonconcurrent, I don't know why I was so vague.

[jammer2001]

Hello, I still need help

[Dutch_Master]

What help do you want exactly? Parts picking, OS choices, configuration, any combination of these, maybe something else?

 

For parts: pick up a used workstation from Dell, HP, Intel or IBM, build post-2016 and make sure it has at least an SSD and 2 storage drives.

 

For the OS: Proxmox, Unraid and TrueNAS are the most commonly used. You can build on any Linux distro and theoretically also on Win-OS, but the latter is strongly discouraged (as it's quite complicated and requires server versions of the OS) whereas on Linux getting the various tools to interact can be a challenge (read: a royal PITA). So, neither option is recommended for novice users.

 

Configuration: use the SSD as the OS drive and both hard-drives in a RAID1. That's the easy part. Software config is a whole new can of worms and again, not particularly suitable for new users. At all.

 

HTH!

[jammer2001]

On 6/12/2021 at 3:04 PM, Dutch_Master said:

What help do you want exactly? Parts picking, OS choices, configuration, any combination of these, maybe something else?

Picking parts (or at least determining what specs I need) and choosing OS. 

[Dutch_Master]

• On the cheap: see above, used workstation+SSD & pair of HDD's
• Budget, efficient & reasonably future proof: AMD Ryzen 5 or 7 on B550 mainboard, 32GB RAM, aforementioned SSD&2xHDD combo. Network: 1Gbit suffices.
• Investment for the future: AMD Ryzen 9 or Threadripper, 64GB RAM, NMVe for the OS and 4xHDD in RAID6 for storage. Network: 2.5 or 5 Gbit would be beneficial.
• Money no object; AMD EPYC 7742, 256GB ECC RAM (minimum!), SATADOM for booting, NVMe for cache, 2x RAID6 (4xHDD) in RAID1. Network: upgrade to a 40Gbit fibre optic backbone at the premises, with various machines sporting a 10Gbit network connection.

 

As for the OS, as a novice, I'd recommend Proxmox. It's based on Debian, thus extremely stable and, due to the enormous package repository Debian has, easily expandable.

[Pixel5]

since you want plex and i assume transcoding will be a thing you may want in the future i would recommend a simple i3 10100 its plenty fast for your use case and has an iGPU that can be used for hardware transcoding.

 

You dont really need as much ram as the guy above suggested, 32GB is plenty of ram for anything you may need.

 

I would recommend unraid as the OS.

[jammer2001]

On 6/15/2021 at 12:02 PM, Pixel5 said:

since you want plex and i assume transcoding will be a thing you may want in the future i would recommend a simple i3 10100 its plenty fast for your use case and has an iGPU that can be used for hardware transcoding.

 

You dont really need as much ram as the guy above suggested, 32GB is plenty of ram for anything you may need.

 

I would recommend unraid as the OS.

I also want to run Nextcloud and a Minecraft server on it. 

[Pixel5]

nextcloud doesnt really need much resources and minecraft benefits a ton from single core performance the  10100 would still be a solid choice for that.

[Marco2G]

I mean what the hell is your budget :D???

I built my homeserver from an old storage appliance. This is a 24  3.5" slot chassis. I ripped out the original storage card and added one that would NOT hide the disks behind a RAID.

 

I ripped out the original powersupply because it was server room grade and thus loud as a mofo. Cut a hole in the lid and laid a corsair 1200 on top of it. Looks stupid but worked flawlessly for years now.

 

Cut another hole in the lid for 140mil fans so I could remove the small tubrines that are datacenter fans. Also loud like mofos.

Bought a second CPU for the dual socket board and additional ram.

 

 

What I'm doing is running the VMs off of a consumer SSD, no redundancy. I have backups though. I have ESXi isntalled. Works like a charm. Doing a passthrough of the storage HBA and a USB addin card to a FreeNAS VM that then uses the 3.5" WD RED disks in a ZFS and holds my mediacenter files. I'm running Jellyfish off of another VM. Networking is handeled by an Untangle VM. I believe I'm running like 8 VMs in total.

 

The whole setup only cost a few hundred and the chassis is a 4E rackmountable one, if I wanted. The specs are 64GB RAM, 2 times Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 v2 @ 2.80GHz 10 cores each.

 

The questions we need answered are: How much do you look to spend? How do you want to solve the storage question? External NAS or internally managed storage? How much storage? RAID level? Backup solution?

 

Becayuse I'm thinking I could probably easily run my setup on a Ryzen 5800X and have resources to spare. So can you, probably.

 

Do you want new hardware with warranty? Or do you like the idea of scrounging old enterprise grade hardware off of eBay and tinkering?

 

And not to forget, depending on your level of expertise/your willingness to learn, we can determine what level of frankensteining will be appropriate. That setup of mine is hella frankensteined and it took some work to get it running and I would NOT recommend it to a layman because working with ZFS and making backups off it in my setup isn't as straight forward as if I had installed Freenas directly or a proxmox or something like that. I am a professional storage and virtualization engineer. While that is not necessary for my setup just keep this in mind, okay?

Oh, also don't forget the UPS for your server... so once again, what is your budget?

[jammer2001]

On 6/24/2021 at 3:31 AM, Marco2G said:

I mean what the hell is your budget :D???

I'm trying to see if the college I go to is getting rid of any gear so I know that what I'm getting works and is from a trusted source. I'm still trying to figure out who to talk to. I posted this question so I could know what to ask for. 

 

[Blue4130]

5 hours ago, jammer2001 said:

I'm trying to see if the college I go to is getting rid of any gear so I know that what I'm getting works and is from a trusted source. I'm still trying to figure out who to talk to. I posted this question so I could know what to ask for. 

 

Do you have an old desktop? Use that and see where it falls short.

[jammer2001]

4 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

Do you have an old desktop? Use that and see where it falls short.

My point is that I know very little about server hardware and am wondering what I need so I know what to ask for.