Need some guidance

[Ninjur]

Hey guys,

 

I'm new to home servers, and I'm currently running Ubuntu server Lts on an old MacBook pro, with a docker container spun up for Adguard (this is what got me started)

 

I'm inheriting a Dell PowerEdge r210ii with 12GB DDR3 and 4x500GB HDD

 

Other potential useful information: 

I have bell Aliant fibe 1Gb and a R7000 — Nighthawk AC1900 Smart WiFi Dual Band Gigabit Router, 

 

What I would like to do maybe not even all at once, is the following (in priority):

 

-Secure my network

 

-Have baby monitoring cameras not accessible to the outside world (just my wife's and my phones/PC/tablet)

 

-have security cameras that we can monitor and record but not pay a cloud fee, and is secure (separate VLAN?)

 

-home automation that doesn't touch the outside world but can still use Alexa to control (preferably no monthly fees)

 

-set up my own cloud storage

 

-have a media server

 

I'm not necessarily looking for a step by step guide, but am just a little overwhelmed by everything that is out there and need a little push in the right direction, especially to just get started.

 

Any input/video tutorials/articles would be greatly appreciated!

 

Ill be happy to provide additional information as needed too:)

[jaslion]

Do you have a room with some cooling (or is very big and has enough of a heatsink/passive airflow) and that is NOISE BLOCKING?

 

Because this thing is EXTREMELY LOUD. Like louder than a vacuum cleaner loud easy to hear through doors loud.

 

Its also quite old so the drives are basically trash as they are well beyond life expectancy. Else that thing is basically a second gen core system so quite weak these days.

 

All you wanna do is a bit much for this thing and I'd honestly just not get this box as you can get a normal way faster desktop for 100$ that will sorta do all of this. This is excluding drives.

 

 

 

 

[Ninjur]

 

Just now, jaslion said:

Do you have a room with some cooling (or is very big and has enough of a heatsink/passive airflow) and that is NOISE BLOCKING?

 

Because this thing is EXTREMELY LOUD. Like louder than a vacuum cleaner loud easy to hear through doors loud.

 

Its also quite old so the drives are basically trash as they are well beyond life expectancy. Else that thing is basically a second gen core system so quite weak these days.

 

All you wanna do is a bit much for this thing and I'd honestly just not get this box as you can get a normal way faster desktop for 100$ that will sorta do all of this. This is excluding drives.

 

 

 

 

Putting hardware aside, I'm looking on how to implement what I want to do. 

[jaslion]

1 minute ago, Ninjur said:

 

Putting hardware aside, I'm looking on how to implement what I want to do. 

Basically as a core for your home automation and baby monitors you can have a look at Home assistant. Its made to have a offline smart home whilst still having access to google ha, homekit, alexa,... but also be able to run versions of that offline and such.

 

For the baby monitor all you'll need is a mic and camera. It can be anything including actually just having baby monitors that people have "hacked" to work with HA (home assistant) exactlt for the same security concerns you seem to have. Multiple options so have a research for what works for you.

 

Home assistant also supports security camera's over ip. However you may want to run a linux instal with proxmox to have a HA vm and a security cam vm as there are entire operating systems focuses on doing this task VERY WELL. Frigate is a good option for this as well. Can easily own vlan this as long as you get a switch for it to do that or physically split the network. Basically making a Physical seperate lan only having the server being the meeting component.

 

Security cameras can also funnily be something like a laptop webcam over a long powered usb 2.0 cord. It's like 5$ for a laptop webcam, 2$ for a usb 2.0 cable with a non terminated end and the  for some 10-15m powered usb cables it can be as low as 10$. Gives a pretty decent result.

 

Media server is as simple as share a folder on the network. Boom media server.

 

Cloud storage. You can have a vpn running and then when connected to vpn you have access to your local network drive. This is free to do btw. A personal vpn us free to set up unlike what many people say using professional applications to connect to it. Id say have a reddit google for that as theres too many options and I just use the old cisco stuff for that rn.

 

 

Now hardware wise that server is unlikely to do this no matter the cpu in there also it wont be efficient. But like a modern i3 is strong enough really or a ryzen 5600g or something is WAY enough. Mostly because that server wont have any gpu acceleration for the video streaming tasks and that really wrecks perfromance.