Your Old PC is Your New Server

[CPotter]

 

[The King of the Undead]

mine is now a hand me down but ok...

[SignatureSigner]

no

MY old pc is ˈɡärbij

[GuiltySpark_]

I thought this was standard practice for every new PC upgrade. I think i've done this every time. 

[samcool55]

Umm, how as a complete noob and home user am I suppose to use pulseway?

I don't have a business or anything and it's just a 14-day trial, maybe any alternatives that someone can suggest?

[AkIonSight]

ngl, using windows for a server, even for a home server is a controversial choice

[Helpful Tech Witch]

5 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Btw. Never use Windows for anything reassembling a server. Linux will be less work and more reliable in the long run.

 

5 minutes ago, AkIonSight said:

ngl, using windows for a server, even for a home server is a controversial choice

ive had mixed expirences with linux servers

My samba server was a mess, it just didnt run half the time, would lock up on files over 1gb and stopped working if a file transfer took over 2 minutes, and got terrible speeds

my minecraft server was great, its a 1.12.2 paper server with floodgate, viaversion, and geyser, i can have bedrock and java users at the same time, 

 

 

hell, some gamer server software is either only windows, or only runs the newest version on windows, with linux being several versions behind

[tkitch]

24 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Umm, how as a complete noob and home user am I suppose to use pulseway?

I don't have a business or anything and it's just a 14-day trial, maybe any alternatives that someone can suggest?

Splashtop is an easy to use alternative.

 

If you can do static IPs and proper configuration, RDP is an option as well.

 

[tkitch]

11 minutes ago, James Evens said:

Randomly buying any office PC can go wrong:

- SATA ports

- drive slots

- energy consumption

- SR-IOV support

- Invel vpro (remote desktop even in the bios)

- some PCs support shutdown and start as an easy to configure option in the bios to help with energy saving

 

Btw. Never use Windows for anything reassembling a server. Linux will be less work and more reliable in the long run.

 

....  Okay, so....

 

Any decent desktop case like the one shown in the video (or HP or Lenovo equivilant) will have 3-5 SATA ports on the motherboard.  They all come with 1 drive + optical, and at least 1 spare.  I've never seen a business desktop with less than 3, outside of the super-tiny cases.

 

Drive Bays:  Get creative, you can fake it.  Also, they all support at least 2x 3x5" drives.

 

Energy Consumption:  They're generally very low powered boxes, so the exact opposite.

 

Most business desktops support intel virtualization in the bios, I think from 4th or 5th gen on?  I've personally enabled it on 4th gen Lenovo towers.

 

as for "never use windows bullshit"?  As anthony said, no.  Windows is easier for people who use windows.  

[finest feck fips]

The GUI-centric, you-don't-have-to-learn-anything Windows focus for the server project kinda feels like an excuse to motivate the Pulseway dependency, since on a normal headless server, whether it's Linux or FreeBSD or Windows Server Core or anything else, you'd just set up SSH or PSRemoting yourself. In a home use case where you have such local remote access tools configured, Pulseway seems mostly redundant or unnecessary unless (1) accessing your server from outside the home is actually required, (2) the protocol you'd use to connect is too bandwidth-heavy or insecure for internet usage OOTB, and (3) configuring dynamic DNS and port forwarding is too hard for you to figure out (which doesn't really make sense for this kind of project).

Who is this video for? People who don't know that Windows File Sharing exists? It seems like it doesn't have anything to say to its target audience that they don't already know (except that Pulseway exists and they should buy it), even though it assumes its target audience knows almost nothing at all.

 

[AkIonSight]

Windows BSODed when my grandparents are literally just playing solitaire yesterday, wont trust it with a backup or a server

[JogerJ]

I wonder how much power it draws and how the costs add up yearly when it runs 24/7.

Also why stop at old PCs? I have these old android phones I got lying around, it might not be the most redundant/versatile but I had one running Nextcloud. Put a fresh install of lineageos, pop in a high capacity SD card and then setup isn't too complicated, here's a well documented guide. That's at least 50-100GB worth of cloud storage and I'm certain not everyone needs 12TB of storage anyways. Overall setup isn't exactly beginner friendly but it's worth trying out (you learn many things along the way).

Heck I even once ran a minecraft server on my OnePlus 2, a phone I had from 2015, not too shabby to have 5-10 people on at the same time. The phone would barely sell for 20$ used on eBay today. All this while drawing only 10W max when plugged in.

 

The only concern would be the phone battery, although it shouldn't be an issue if it's left on charging because it doesn't discharge (I probably should get a second opinion on this). Redundancy wise, a newer android phone might actually last longer than old PCs with who knows how long the capacitors on the motherboard will last.

[finest feck fips]

7 minutes ago, AkIonSight said:

Windows BSODed when my grandparents are literally just playing solitaire yesterday, wont trust it with a backup or a server

Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to use an old Windows box for redundant storage, either, because Windows doesn't support decent filesystems unless you pay big $$$$ for workstation or server licenses, and absent a filesystem with good software RAID, you can't get good RAID without an expensive hardware RAID controller. By the time you're buying $800 worth of additional drives in pairs for the sake of redundancy, it doesn't make sense to stay on Windows anymore.

[tkitch]

15 minutes ago, AkIonSight said:

Windows BSODed when my grandparents are literally just playing solitaire yesterday, wont trust it with a backup or a server

then there's something else wrong with the PC, and you should figure it out.

 

Windows works fine as a server, according to hundreds of thousands of businesses that run windows as a server.  

[iLikeBananas]

How much would a setup like this cost in electricity? I have a old pc lying around, i5 6600 + no gpu and a 500 watt power supply. If I turned that thing into a server to host files, and had it running 24/7, would it absolutely destroy my electricity bill?

 

1 hour ago, James Evens said:

Btw. Never use Windows for anything reassembling a server. Linux will be less work and more reliable in the long run.

 

 

I have no experience with servers at all. What makes linux better and why is windows so bad?

[ColinLTT]

45 minutes ago, JogerJ said:

I wonder how much power it draws and how the costs add up yearly when it runs 24/7.

Also why stop at old PCs? I have these old android phones I got lying around, it might not be the most redundant/versatile but I had one running Nextcloud. Put a fresh install of lineageos, pop in a high capacity SD card and then setup isn't too complicated, here's a well documented guide. That's at least 50-100GB worth of cloud storage and I'm certain not everyone needs 12TB of storage anyways. Overall setup isn't exactly beginner friendly but it's worth trying out (you learn many things along the way).

Heck I even once ran a minecraft server on my OnePlus 2, a phone I had from 2015, not too shabby to have 5-10 people on at the same time. The phone would barely sell for 20$ used on eBay today. All this while drawing only 10W max when plugged in.

 

The only concern would be the phone battery, although it shouldn't be an issue if it's left on charging because it doesn't discharge (I probably should get a second opinion on this). Redundancy wise, a newer android phone might actually last longer than old PCs with who knows how long the capacitors on the motherboard will last.

I actually did the math here, from my YT comment: 

 

There is certainly a cost involved - here in BC we are blessed with abundant (relatively) cheap hydroelectric power (yay rain). The Dell we used here does only have a 250 watt power supply, so it would be similar to three 80W incandescent lightbulbs at full tilt, which it wont run at often. I did the math with BC Hydro's power calculator and running at full tilt (250W) this PC would cost ~$20.51/month CAD. I just checked with a Kill-A-Watt and at idle the machine uses 25W, meaning the cost is much closer to $2.51 CAD ($1.96USD) per month. -CW

[tkitch]

7 minutes ago, iLikeBananas said:

How much would a setup like this cost in electricity? I have a old pc lying around, i5 6600 + no gpu and a 500 watt power supply. If I turned that thing into a server to host files, and had it running 24/7, would it absolutely destroy my electricity bill?

 

I have no experience with servers at all. What makes linux better and why is windows so bad?

That PC's draw?  Low.

The Wattage of the PSU only says what the limit it can provide to hardware is, NOT what it will draw.

 

An i5 6600?  At idle will probably be 15-30 watts, and unless you're doing something to seriously push the CPU?  It'll be waaaay under 100W.    (It's a 65W TDP CPU, so...  not a lot.)

A couple harddrives take ~10-20W each to spin up, and then sip a couple watts once running.

 

Colin just listed this box as using 25W on idle, and I doubt yours would be too much different.  

 

What makes linux better?  Well...  Mostly ego of Linux users.  </snark>

Linux is free, has less overhead, and has a lot of open-source options to use.  Many of which are as good, or possibly slightly better, than the windows countnerparts.

 

But the downside, which you've seen in the Linux Challenge they did, it's not all fun and games if you're not used to using it.  

 

Linux people, however, will decry Windows as a server OS from now until the end of days.  Millions of companies, and tens of milllions of servers worldwide are running windows.  It's not a terrible OS for a server.  It works fine.  Win10 is damned stable out of the box, and works great for purposes such as this.  

[MultiGamerClub]

This sounds like a good idea for our old family pc running vista.. But oh boy.. Connecting it to the web? Errrrrrrrrrrrrr.....

[MultiGamerClub]

1 hour ago, James Evens said:

Randomly buying any office PC can go wrong:

- SATA ports

- drive slots

- energy consumption

- SR-IOV support

- Invel vpro (remote desktop even in the bios)

- some PCs support shutdown and start as an easy to configure option in the bios to help with energy saving

 

Btw. Never use Windows for anything reassembling a server. Linux will be less work and more reliable in the long run.

 

I would have used linux for the server im setting up now, if it wasnt for how hard it seems to be to set up.

 

Its only going to be a rust/minecraft server so its not like its that much big of a deal, but just seeing linus struggle with linux.. I dont expect my deadly self to handle linux better.

[Jessmaster6]

Would it not be a better idea to set up the second drive as a incremental backup location rather than raid the drives?

[Talamakara]

I turned a computer I built in 2003 with only 4 gigs of ram into a PFSense firewall. It even had dual ethernet ports.

[TheGingerSnapKid]

I just turned my old fx 8350 computer into a home server with unraid which Linus seems to shill (I get why, I was skeptical at first and tried proxmox but moved to unRAID and love it) for all but his most recent NAS setup with the high speed SSDs.

 

I guess I understand why they chose windows, especially given pulseway sponsoring, but man, unraid is perfect for a home setup like this. The expandability is what sold me. I'm just dipping my toes in so I only have 2 NAS drives, single parity, but when one fills up, I can just pop in another and keep on chuggin along. Plus the simplicity yet robustness of the docker integration is great. I've set up plex, a pihole, and makeMKV and handbrake containers on it for ripping old DVD's (ouch anthony, hating on that old physical media). I was super happy with the simplicity of the workflow for different things.

[iLikeBananas]

41 minutes ago, tkitch said:

Colin just listed this box as using 25W on idle, and I doubt yours would be too much different.  

 

I threw the numbers into a calculator, and if my computer needed 30 Watts, 24/7 it would cost me 65,75€ per year. That sounds like a fair price when compared to cloud services. Also I already own the hardware so buying new stuff won't be a issue either.

[finest feck fips]

1 hour ago, tkitch said:

What makes linux better?  Well...  Mostly ego of Linux users.  </snark>

Linux is free, has less overhead, and has a lot of open-source options to use.  Many of which are as good, or possibly slightly better, than the windows countnerparts.

 

[...]

 

Linux people, however, will decry Windows as a server OS from now until the end of days.  Millions of companies, and tens of milllions of servers worldwide are running windows.  It's not a terrible OS for a server.  It works fine.  Win10 is damned stable out of the box, and works great for purposes such as this.  

The strategy for Windows Server has never really centered on competing with Unix-likes on traditional server OS virtues like reliability, efficiency, security, simplicity, or ease of automation. The main driver (flowing from Microsoft's monopolies on desktop operating systems and office software) has always been highly integrated turnkey solutions for enterprise networks of desktop computers, especially directory services and email. The other big advantage for Microsoft customers is that point-and-click sysadmins are cheaper and easier to find than Unix sysadmins, because they don't have to know how to write read or write code and the expectation for problem solving is more troubleshooting (reboot or reinstall) than debugging (root cause analysis). This is an especially good fit for small businesses where manual processes are adequate.

None of Windows' market strengths really make it a good server OS qua server OS, and most of them don't apply to the home server use case, either.

If Windows Server were actually a good server OS, Unix-likes wouldn't comprise a supermajority of servers on Microsoft's own cloud services. Windows is not a good server OS. It's a passable server OS that gets carried forward by integrations with turnkey solutions for common office use cases. But it's always lagged on server functionality like filesystems, automation, virtualization, clustering, control over updates and software deployments, uptime, etc. Where Windows does offer something reasonably powerful in one of those areas, you're not gonna get access to it with Windows 10 Home anyway. (PowerShell is cool though, and it's nice that Windows finally has an SSH server, though.)
 

[tkitch]

11 minutes ago, James Evens said:

3 to 5 makes the difference between useful as NAS and might need to swap everything down the road.

Wtih 3 you run:

1. boot SSD

2+3 storage

 

with 5 you can do:

1+2 boot

3+4 storage

5 cache

or

1 boot

2-5 storage

 

With drive slots it the same. The one to two more can make it easier down the road.

15-30W not much?

With more then $0.30/kWH (I know. Germany sucks) these 15W make a sizable difference when it runs none stop for years.

 

18W and still looking to reduce it by 5-10W for reasonable cost.

7W difference are 20€ per year.

 

Wait for the windows update bricking the system. To make it worse a lot of the software is build around Linux so good luck. With windows file share you probably setup a SMB share. Good luck making your security camera or scanner/printer talk via SMB and a lot of android apps are build around FTP and not SMB.

Another benefit of Proxmox you can easily transfer it to a new machine or add another VM if needed (e.g. pfsense). Also keep in mind Microsoft's Windows 10 EOL in 2025. Not unusual that you want to use this setup for more then 3 years.

 

You probably mean the virtualization option you tick to run VMs. SR-IOV is something entirely different/unrelated so not everybody includes it into the bios and I doubt Windows 10 home supports it.

Yes, 5 SATA is better for a storage box than 3, obviously.  If you /really/ need extra, a low profile SATA card is stupid cheap.  Or for a few bucks get one with proper RAID support.

 

This video isn't targeting people who'd be after 4+ drives in a box for drive space.  (And if you're buying 4+ drives, that's way over 1000$ in drives, it's probably not unreasonable to say you should probably spend more than this pricetag on a better box for it.)

 

20 Euro a year?  That's about 1.5 a month, maybe 2USD?  That's pretty damned low.  If you have a pair of wall warts plugged in somewhere, they're probably eating at least that much in idle draw even when the device is off.

 

Also in the video, they specified disabling windows update.  So following this, WU Svc couldn't brick it.  

 

(That being said, I've rarely seen windows update /actually/ tank that many basic applications like they're talking about here.  But it's not an impossible situation.)

 

That being said, they've covered UNRAID and other solutions that would work perfectly, but probably not within the sponsored video that they did for this.  (What was the OS used for Linus' home server at the new house?  I forget, that seemed fairly simple to configure.)