Recommend some server hardware? Transcoding/ rendering/ home network

[biotoxin]

I built a small NAS a couple months ago and it's just not cutting it. So I'm looking at going all out from my current setup to something like a small office.

I've got 20TB of storage with another 30TB on the way, mostly in 4TB drive sizes. I figure now's the time to get serious and setup an actual server.

 

Right now my routine is that when I'm not using my computer I put it to work transcoding videos across formats and bitrates so that's what I intend this server to do with most of if not all of its time, the rest of the time it might be used as a game server, maybe not 64 players on battlefield but probably more than simple minecraft. beyond that I might use it for media streaming occasionally but I don't see that ever being it's main use as I have other hardware I can set up for that.

 

before I get to budget it might be worth mentioning what I have to work with already.

I have my main computer, fx8350 w/ 32gb ddr3, 2x r9 270's, sabertooth 990fx mobo, and peripherals

I have a phenom 2 940 w/6gb ddr2, dfi lanparty m2r 790fx, and peripherals

an exceptionally old 2u rackmount unit with a single core opteron 250?

a cisco catalyst 2960 switch

and the rackmount server tower itself, all the old units were gutted from it before I got it for the low price of "if you'll come pick it up you can have it"

and probably  a dozen or so empty tower cases

 

I also have access to welding and fabrication tools I know how to use if need be.

 

as to my budget I'm trying to keep it under 600$ USD

I was considering avoton c2750 and ram, which I almost picked up when I was looking at building my NAS

However given some of the ebay listings I've seen for 16 core 1u and 2u rackmounts I've been considering repopulating the old rack

when I can realistically get 2 units and have 32 cores and more than enough ram for the same price I just can't bring myself to buy new without some kind of reasoning

 

I know many of you laugh at the budget but that's part of the fun

I'm looking more for an idea of what I should be shopping around for and looking at than a particular build

and I also have no idea what kind of software I might be using on a server for my transcodes or if FFMPeg will still work?

an then there's getting every system in the house to access this bugger and allowing outside access for remote use when I'm out of state for the week or two at a time

would it be worth it to turn my phenom system into a pfsense router? or is cicso switch still useful if I attach to my wifi ac router?

 

it's a lot to ask so any contribution to my education is appreciated.

[biotoxin]

forgot I have a couple raspberry pi's not that they'd be very useful for this...

[Streetguru]

I built a small NAS a couple months ago and it's just not cutting it. So I'm looking at going all out from my current setup to something like a small office.

You'll probably want a Xeon 1231v3 with ECC memory for that job

[brandishwar]

Okay let's tackle this a little at a time, starting with this:

 

would it be worth it to turn my phenom system into a pfsense router? or is cicso switch still useful if I attach to my wifi ac router?

 

Whether having a PFSense router would be worth it is a little difficult to answer, but I'm going to lean toward No. If your existing router isn't up to the task of what you want to do, you'd likely be better off upgrading your router instead of trying to use something like PFSense. Just try to find a good router that does what you need instead of trying to overcomplicate things with PFSense.

 

So yeah, the Cisco switch should suffice for what you're planning, provided it's one of the models in the 2960 series that supports Gigabit Ethernet. If it doesn't, then I'd say to get a new rack switch. Unless you really need the managed features as well, you should be able to use an unmanaged switch without a problem, again provided the Cisco one doesn't already support Gigabit.

 

as to my budget I'm trying to keep it under 600$ USD

However given some of the ebay listings I've seen for 16 core 1u and 2u rackmounts I've been considering repopulating the old rack

when I can realistically get 2 units and have 32 cores and more than enough ram for the same price I just can't bring myself to buy new without some kind of reasoning

 

I'd agree with this sentiment. That will also provide you with significantly more power overall for doing your transcoding and such. The question, which brings me to the next part, is one of scaling. You're going to want transcoding software that will scale with what you're trying to do.

 

Since you're talking about a gaming server, the Phenom II might come in handy there. I have an Athlon X2 that worked well as a Team Fortress 2 server and could run vanilla Minecraft server without a problem, so the Phenom II should work for that as well.

 

I'm looking more for an idea of what I should be shopping around for and looking at than a particular build

and I also have no idea what kind of software I might be using on a server for my transcodes or if FFMPeg will still work?

 

And what makes you think FFMpeg (or mencoder) won't work, out of curiosity? FFMPeg and Mencoder both should be capable of multi-threaded encoding/decoding, so it should hopefully scale to whatever core count you have. You'd really just need to use the version that comes with whatever Linux distro you select. Then it's just a matter of figuring out how to automate things if need be.

 

an then there's getting every system in the house to access this bugger and allowing outside access for remote use when I'm out of state for the week or two at a time

 

That's not difficult, but the configuration will vary based on the Linux configuration you select. For example, OpenSUSE can allow you to set a network adapter as "Internal", meaning all ports are open. This is useful on your LAN, and so long as it's not exposed to the Internet directly, it's perfectly fine as well. Then to expose it to the world, you would use the port forwarding feature on your router.

[biotoxin]

 

Okay let's tackle this a little at a time, starting with this:

 

I believe the cisco is a gigabit model, though I'll have to confirm that, it's a 24 port with 2 line in, exact model ws-c2960-24TT-L

 

a lot of this I'll be addressing on setup once I have the hardware to work with

 

using the phenom as a game server makes sense especially if my cisco works out and I don't need it as a PFsense

as to scalable software that's why I was pointing out I don't know if FFMPEG would work on a server as I hadn't done it that way as of yet and wasn't sure if there were any differences beyond multi-core/threading I needed to consider

or if there might be better options

 

chances are I'll try to setup an ARCH system, get tired of the endless customization and wind up on CentOS or some other redhat distro I've setup before, unless there's some really attractive option on windows server I don't know about?

[brandishwar]

I believe the cisco is a gigabit model, though I'll have to confirm that, it's a 24 port with 2 line in, exact model ws-c2960-24TT-L

From what I'm seeing on Cisco's website, it's Fast Ethernet (10/100) only, not Gigabit. Going on what I said previously, unless you really have a need for the bells and whistles that come with managed switches, just get a simple unmanaged switch and call it a day. One I use is a TrendNet 16-port Gigabit switch (rack mountable) that I was able to pick up for only $80 if I remember correctly.

 

as to scalable software that's why I was pointing out I don't know if FFMPEG would work on a server as I hadn't done it that way as of yet and wasn't sure if there were any differences beyond multi-core/threading I needed to consider

or if there might be better options

How would you be trying to set things up? I'm guessing you'd probably just have a script set to run as a cron job run like once a minute or something like that to poll a folder and process the files therein. Or will things be a little more complicated than that?

chances are I'll try to setup an ARCH system, get tired of the endless customization and wind up on CentOS or some other redhat distro I've setup before, unless there's some really attractive option on windows server I don't know about?

Not anything that won't cost money. And I've always gone with something out of the box rather than trying to setup an Arch system. I've considered it in the past and might lay out a VM to practice with it. But for now I'm sticking with either Fedora 23 or OpenSUSE Leap.

[biotoxin]

ouch on the switch, I've got at least 2 more switches floating around here I know are gigabit and they come with POE on half the ports

the height of my fancy requirements is assigning an IP address for my carbon dioxide laser cutter and my printer, which switches don't always do...

the rest I imagine my existing router will be able to handle unless I find some great deal on wifi AP's and decide I want no less than maximum signal anywhere on my property, then I might wonder about getting more than a switch

 

as to automation that's basically the process I have now, it checks when the last time I used the computer was regularly, then checks a specific folder for files, and checks if it has any interrupted or unfinished work, then gets to work either resuming what it was doing or starting a new project, I might need to reconfigure the script slightly to accommodate the server but as long as the principals are the same and it's not a huge amount of extra work that's the setup

 

I've set up a couple arch systems before and played around before settling on easier setups, the red hat options I've done before so I just know my way around making it easier than playing with freeBSD or similar

 

as to hardware I'm currently looking at a dell r910 with 4 E7540 cpu's and 32gb ram for around $430 shipped, if I read correctly that gives me 48 threads? as I understand those are 6 core hyperthreaded? and I can always spend a little extra to get more ECC if I go with a zfs setup

thoughts? I know they're slow at 2ghz or 2.6 turbo, would it be worth it to go with 4 QC's at more like 3.6ghz?

I also saw a deal for 6 HP dl580 g5's with 4 quad cores at 2.4ghz and 16gb ram each, which is a step down in ram and efficiency but technically more processing power if I can muster the juice to run all of them in maybe the garage during the winter only...that was around 400$ + shipping which is probably a conway freight costing me at least another 100$ if not closer to 300$... which would put it out of my budget and patience anyway

[biotoxin]

just saw a dl585 g2 with 4 quad cores at 2.9ghz 32gb ram and even some drives for 200$ and free delivery... tempting but I still like the idea of 48 cores, it kinda excites me a bit, and I'm not really sure what kind of performance difference between ram I'd be looking at...

 

I need a breakdown of ram performance to clock performance as it relates to transcoding... if only linus had one such video ...

he probably does I just can't find it

[biotoxin]

been staring at that r910 for 4 days now, seems like the best deal overall out of everything I've been looking at, right under my budget and with only being one system I save on energy costs, as well as I imagine better actual performance even over the higher thread count from the 6 machines option from an efficiency standpoint.

 

this is where I need someone who knows more about it to step in and hold my hand for a minute or something, because maybe I'm looking at all the wrong details?