Tips for running a server at home?

[KhakiHat]

Recently I decided to build a budget PC to host a server at home for games I have been playing, as I usually end up paying a host to host a server for my friends and I.

 

I went with lower end parts but stayed in the more consumer market as I'm not trying to dilly dally with an actual server rack.

 

SO, here is my plan.

I went with current generation parts for Intel, an example being a ASRock B560M micro ATX moba that has an LGA 1200 socket for instance. I paired it will an Intel Celeron CPU that is clocked @ 3.5GHz, 8GB of Patriot Viper 4 DDR4 RAM(running in dual channel I believe), a 120GB SSD as I am only storing the server files for a few games at a time, and finally a Corsair Fully Modular SF series 450w Gold Rated PSU. Hopefully, I will also run a no fluff linux distro to save on resources and storage space that I could use for the servers themselves being hosted.

 

My question is what may go wrong that I didn't account for?

Hosting on this scale is obviously just the tip of the iceberg but is there anything I should do even regarding IP protection that I may not know of?

Should I try and run a linux server distro or just a generic linux distro like Ubunto, or should I go into my bios and underclock the CPU and RAM to save on power costs? As the servers will likely be running 24/7?

 

I should also mention that I'm not very worried about bogging down my internet connection as it is only myself using the network mostly. I have unlimited data clocked at 1200MB/s down.

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts! I am very open to changing up the setup(keeping these parts but changing the BIOS, network, software, and OS configurations) to maximize speeds and efficiency within warranted reason.

 

EDIT: Build list https://newegg.io/1f755dc

[Electronics Wizardy]

What servers are you hosting? 

 

5 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

but is there anything I should do even regarding IP protection that I may not know of?

Has this been a issue for you before?

 

DDosing is always a risk here.

 

Only open ports needed, and keep things updated to keep security risks down.

 

6 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

Should I try and run a linux server distro or just a generic linux distro like Ubunto, or should I go into my bios and underclock the CPU and RAM to save on power costs? As the servers will likely be running 24/7?

Id run a hypervisor on the hardware like proxmox. Then put everything in a vm. This makes it much easier to backup and seperate services.

 

7 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

or should I go into my bios and underclock the CPU and RAM to save on power costs? As the servers will likely be running 24/7?

Underclocking won't help. The cpu will already turn almost off when at idle, and the cpu will only use a watt or two at idle.

 

7 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

I have unlimited data clocked at 1200MB/s down.

Just saying, this is probably a home connection that is shared, so you will probalby get much lower speeds.

 

Also whats your upload speeds, that matters much more here.

[KhakiHat]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What servers are you hosting? 

 

Has this been a issue for you before?

 

DDosing is always a risk here.

 

Only open ports needed, and keep things updated to keep security risks down.

 

Id run a hypervisor on the hardware like proxmox. Then put everything in a vm. This makes it much easier to backup and seperate services.

 

Underclocking won't help. The cpu will already turn almost off when at idle, and the cpu will only use a watt or two at idle.

 

Just saying, this is probably a home connection that is shared, so you will probalby get much lower speeds.

 

Also whats your upload speeds, that matters much more here.

As far as servers that will be hosted. Most likely just a few minecraft servers for my friends and I. I say a few because of vanilla and modded. So nothing too out of this world.

 

I haven't experienced any issues with needing IP protection, I was just curious if it is a precaution I should take just to be on top of things in general.

 

I can look into running a hypervisor like proxmox while running a VM. Would running a VM be necessary if it is at such a small scale? Or is just for the separation between PC resources and vulnerability?

 

And fair enough on wattage concern. You're probably not wrong, I think the Celeron's max wattage is 58W but you'd probably really have to push it even get that.

 

I planned on bottle-necking the server PC with around 200MB/s for down speeds just to keep other devices on my network running smoothly. My up speeds are around 39MB/s.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

I haven't experienced any issues with needing IP protection, I was just curious if it is a precaution I should take just to be on top of things in general.

Should be fine if its just your friends.

 

2 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

 

I can look into running a hypervisor like proxmox while running a VM. Would running a VM be necessary if it is at such a small scale? Or is just for the separation between PC resources and vulnerability?

 

If ind its just easier to manage. You can make snapshots and roll back. And you won't have conflicts as each server is in its own vm.

 

3 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

 

And fair enough on wattage concern. You're probably not wrong, I think the Celeron's max wattage is 58W but you'd probably really have to push it even get that.

Its idle is much lower, without many drives this system will easily idle at sub 20w from the wall

 

4 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

 

I planned on bottle-necking the server PC with around 200MB/s for down speeds just to keep other devices on my network running smoothly. My up speeds are around 39MB/s.

Those upspeeds should be fine here.

 

I think your getting bytes and bits confused. Your network cards is a gigabit, so the fastest file copies you can get are about 120mB/s

[KhakiHat]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Should be fine if its just your friends.

 

If ind its just easier to manage. You can make snapshots and roll back. And you won't have conflicts as each server is in its own vm.

 

Its idle is much lower, without many drives this system will easily idle at sub 20w from the wall

 

Those upspeeds should be fine here.

 

I think your getting bytes and bits confused. Your network cards is a gigabit, so the fastest file copies you can get are about 120mB/s

I see on the VM part now, I can see how that would make things way easier.

 

I was definitely mixing up bytes and bits but alright!

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If ind its just easier to manage. You can make snapshots and roll back. And you won't have conflicts as each server is in its own vm.

Won't it be impossible to run multiple VMs with just a dual core Celeron?

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Won't it be impossible to run multiple VMs with just a dual core Celeron?

Nope you can do that just fine. Your limited by the cpu speed, but not really much more than if 

 

Id try to get a i3 here if you can(or really a i5, for the rocket lake advantages

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Nope you can do that just fine.

So you don't have to assign specific cores to specific VMs?

[Electronics Wizardy]

14 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

So you don't have to assign specific cores to specific VMs?

Nope, you can over provision cores, so vms share cores on the host like any other program would. The kernel will pick what physical cores to run the vms one. This is very common in servers as the cpu are often running near idle and need to burst up for things like updates and heavy load times.

[Domrockt]

Uff so much contra Here.

OK i can tell from my perspective. 

 

I do have an Unraid ---> Steamcache ---> cs:go ----> Valheim -----> Minecraft Game Server running at once.

 

My Hardware for that is an Dell Optiplex 3040micro I3 6100T 12gig DDR3 

 

 

It has not enough RAM for now and the CPU is to weak for a good Steamcache Speed.

when my friends are split up between a few servers its not enough to keep up and the I3 runs in the 80% range all the time.

 

Next week i Upgrade to an ryzen 5700g and an ASRock deskmini x300 and 24gigs of DDR4 

 

That will suffice for a while and uses very less Power.

 

edit the picture

 

[KhakiHat]

On 8/28/2021 at 10:06 AM, Domrockt said:

Uff so much contra Here.

OK i can tell from my perspective. 

 

I do have an Unraid ---> Steamcache ---> cs:go ----> Valheim -----> Minecraft Game Server running at once.

 

My Hardware for that is an Dell Optiplex 3040micro I3 6100T 12gig DDR3 

 

 

It has not enough RAM for now and the CPU is to weak for a good Steamcache Speed.

when my friends are split up between a few servers its not enough to keep up and the I3 runs in the 80% range all the time.

 

Next week i Upgrade to an ryzen 5700g and an ASRock deskmini x300 and 24gigs of DDR4 

 

That will suffice for a while and uses very less Power.

 

edit the picture

 

That UI interface actually looks super sleek.

 

The Intel Celeron that I ordered is a dual-core with 4 threads, but being that mine will be using DDR4, it'll probably compare to that build ngl.

Assuming I can configure it properly.

 

I'm assuming that there are guides on using Unraid, I'm not familiar with that though. Is that image the main face of the software/OS? Or is that just a window you can open?

[Domrockt]

Yes its the Interface there is a cut off "taskbar" for Tabs.

 

there are a lot of good youtube Videos for beginners, its like with everything at the beginning its a bit much to overwiev.

 

my tipp for you is Ask yourselfe what you want to do.

 

first things first how to Install Unraid?

how do i create a VM?

how do I passtrough hardware?

 

etc

 

and watch the youtube tutorial for that. Its easy to get the hang of it.