Budget All in one Server help.

[DaemonGenius]

Yoyo,

 

I have never built a home server before nor do I have experience in setting up one or what to look for. But I realized that I'm in need of one and need help to figure out how to go about deciding how build it.

 

My requirements:

• File server -> workstations -> mostly development
• Private Cloud -> want to replace one drive with a more secure one.
• Application Server -> Running multiple production like web apps on the internet that interacts with my Hyperledger Fabric blockchain.
• Hyperledger fabric -> Running private blockchain with "fake orgs" which runs different nodes through docker containers.
• Hyperledger fabric Setup ->Multi orgs - {n} Nodes - Multi channel Setup - 3 orderer Node
• Home assistant -> Home automation
• NAS -> Cloud/Plex
• Plex server with 4k support
• Home server needs to support the RTX 4090 for Ethureum Mining. Until its paid off then I can play games.
• Limited Budget -> Secondhand parts where I can.
• One Cabinet/case/tower

 

Not sure if I should go with 1 server or 2. Split the Home and public away from each other for more security.

 

Any ideas would be helpful. 

[LIGISTX]

14 minutes ago, DaemonGenius said:

Yoyo,

 

I have never built a home server before nor do I have experience in setting up one or what to look for. But I realized that I'm in need of one and need help to figure out how to go about deciding how build it.

 

My requirements:

• File server -> workstations -> mostly development
• Private Cloud -> want to replace one drive with a more secure one.
• Application Server -> Running multiple production like web apps on the internet that interacts with my Hyperledger Fabric blockchain.
• Hyperledger fabric -> Running private blockchain with "fake orgs" which runs different nodes through docker containers.
• Hyperledger fabric Setup ->Multi orgs - {n} Nodes - Multi channel Setup - 3 orderer Node
• Home assistant -> Home automation
• NAS -> Cloud/Plex
• Plex server with 4k support
• Home server needs to support the RTX 4090 for Ethureum Mining. Until its paid off then I can play games.
• Limited Budget -> Secondhand parts where I can.
• One Cabinet/case/tower

 

Not sure if I should go with 1 server or 2. Split the Home and public away from each other for more security.

 

Any ideas would be helpful. 

I’d look at virtualization. Proxmox is a great option, I am very happy with it after moving away from ESXi recently.

 

I can’t help much beyond Plex and truenas. I have ram truenas for years and love it, and I can say Plex is easy to run unless your trying to transcode 4k… first 4 rules of 4k are don’t try and transcode 4k. Direct play takes literally no power, on my old homelab which was a core i3 6100, I gave the Ubuntu sever VM with Plex on it 2 threads and 3 GB of RAM and it did 4k Dolby vision/atmos direct play at ~5% CPU usage, and did a couple of 1080p to 720p transcodes at once…. Doesn’t take much as I said. 
 

Truenas you will want to throw RAM at, 16 GB is more or less the minimum, I currently give my truenas vm 20, previously I gave it 16, and it does fine for my needs. 

[DaemonGenius]

16 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Plex is easy to run unless your trying to transcode 4k

 

Thank you for the insight, Why is transcoding needed exactly. I'm currently running plex on 1 of my old workstation laptops and I can stream 4k movies to my fine most of the time. Sometimes they buffer but I think that's just my network because TV is on wifi. Could that be transcoding issues then? Laptop is an old Asus i7 6/7th gen GTX 1060

[LIGISTX]

6 hours ago, DaemonGenius said:

 

Thank you for the insight, Why is transcoding needed exactly. I'm currently running plex on 1 of my old workstation laptops and I can stream 4k movies to my fine most of the time. Sometimes they buffer but I think that's just my network because TV is on wifi. Could that be transcoding issues then? Laptop is an old Asus i7 6/7th gen GTX 1060

If it’s on the network and the device playing the content can support the native codec and resolution and features, it’s directly play, which means no transcoding needed. This is the ideal situation.

 

But if your watching remotely on your phone or laptop and it has to go out over your internet, typically it will need to transcode as peoples upload speeds can’t support full quality streams. But when your local, it should be direct play. 
 

There is a program called tautulli that I use that helps monitor such things. It provides great stats and info and keeps logs so you can see how much you watch, and it will show what content is being transcoded. I run it in a docker container next to Plex, but you can just instal it on a linux machine as well, and might be a windows version if your current laptop Plex machine is running windows, although I’m not sure. 
 

But the TLDR, if the use case is only direct play, you basically don’t need to consider Plex as part of the equation for hardware considerations. Just need enough storage to store your library, then point Plex at it and it’ll do it’s thing with next to 0 performances requirements.. unless your transcoding.