Basic server build

Nick Raskel · January 17, 2023

Budget (including currency): Unknown, but for arguments sake £500.

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Basic file server and also 1 VM (maybe, more details below)

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc):

So my company has been left in the lurch by our old IT guy (sub contracted) who has seemingly disappeared, phone number doesn't work, email doesn't work, no social media, nada.

We have a linux 'server' (read converted old PC) that currently hosts various files and 1 W7 VM which only hosts a copy of Sage50 accounts (apparently it's one of the few ways Sage allows data to be stored and accessed by multiple machines) The hardware is easily 10+ years old, linux boots and runs from a USB drive, from it has a 256gb SK Hynix SSD which hosts the VM, and two 1tb WD Black 3.5" HDD's.

I don't know the username or password for this server, as I said the guy has thrown a smoke bomb and disappeared.

I have a spare machine which has a AMD 1600, ASRock B450M-HDV, 16GB RAM, and a Sabrent Rocket 256GB M.2 with windows 10 installed, the m/b has 4 on board SATA3 ports.

I am thinking about repurposing this machine to replace the current linux server.

My questions are:

1, What OS should I use? I am thinking either unraid or truenas, I have a little experience with truenas but not a lot, and no experience of unraid - but not afraid to experiment.

2, What drives I should use to populate the server, and in what config? I'm thinking like Linus and just want that speeeeeed, but happy to be brought back to reality

I recently re-watched the LTT JONSBO N1 NAS build video and it got my juices flowing to try something similar.