How do I go about making my own server?

[tinverse]

I'm working on a degree in computer science and I want to build my own server, or I think I want to anyways. I bought a domain to play around with a while ago and it seems like I really need a server of some sort to actually do anything with it. So if I were to look into buying a server and building one, what do I need? I want to be able to host things like IRC, teamspeak, and game servers. Nothing serious with the games stuff. Just small games like terraria. Also to work on and host my own website. I'm really just trying to mess around with all this stuff in my spare time.

 

I was thinking I could just buy some older server parts from ebay and set something up, is that actually an option or is it much more complicated than that? If so, why? What all do I need?

[Luc401]

It really depends on what type of server your going for. You can consider your everyday pc a server if you load some teamspeak server client on it. You will most likely need some basic knowledge is routing, so like port forwarding local and external IP'S, static, dynamic. Pretty sure most people on this forum can help you out; or just PM me.

[ImmyCakes]

Are you looking for something like a 24/7 server or just a small server to use now and then

[tinverse]

2 minutes ago, ImmyCakes said:

Are you looking for something like a 24/7 server or just a small server to use now and then

Ideally it would be nice to keep it up 24/7 so I can host things on it that can be accessed whenever my friends want to use them. It wouldn't need to support much traffic.

[Windows7ge]

If you're looking to build your own you'll need:

Server grade motherboard (not necessarily server grade but probably something with LGA2011 or 2011-V3 and supports ECC memory)

Xeon CPU (Or another with ECC support)

ECC RAM

Hard drives (dependent on what you're trying to do)

Server rated PSU (redundant power supply)

Chassis isn't quite as important so long as it has adequate airflow and can hold everything you want.

If you require a lot of drives you might want a RAID controller unless you're running an OS like FreeBSD.

You'll need a high upload speed from your ISP if you're gonna do a lot of file sharing or hosting.

 

I'm probably missing some things or have an error somewhere but those are my immediate thoughts.

[Lurick]

14 minutes ago, JaredM54 said:

Rather than build a new one yourself you could look at used Dell servers on eBay. I have an r710 and am very happy with it, they're great for home use since they're fairly quiet and more power efficient than other options. You can also consider any of the other members of the Dell r family.

The R710 and R610 are both great models and you can usually find some pretty beefy versions of either for a few hundred on ebay.

[tt2468]

1 hour ago, Lurick said:

The R710 and R610 are both great models and you can usually find some pretty beefy versions of either for a few hundred on ebay.

This^^^^

Used servers are the most economical. You can get an r410 for even cheaper, and still have the same performance as the more power hungry bigger siblings. The r series is also VERY quiet compared to other brands or models.

[Jarsky]

2 hours ago, tinverse said:

I want to be able to host things like IRC, teamspeak, and game servers. Nothing serious with the games stuff. Just small games like terraria. Also to work on and host my own website. I'm really just trying to mess around with all this stuff in my spare time.

 

I was thinking I could just buy some older server parts from ebay and set something up, is that actually an option or is it much more complicated than that? If so, why? What all do I need?

for most of that stuff, i'd just use a AWS EC2 or MS Azure instance. If you really want to run your own server from home, you can run it on anything thats a standard x86 platform (Intel/AMD CPU's) - its usually much more cost effective to buy a complete server off eBay than to buy parts and piece them together. Just take into consideration that 1U servers have very loud fans a lot of the time, so you typically want something 2U, or a tower case. You could also just get a basic PC box and use that as a server.

[Mattias Edeslatt]

Digital Ocean? 

 

Sure, not a physical server in your room, but I think you can do everything you want for very little money.

[minutellim]

11 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

If you're looking to build your own you'll need:

Server grade motherboard (not necessarily server grade but probably something with LGA2011 or 2011-V3 and supports ECC memory)

Xeon CPU (Or another with ECC support)

ECC RAM

Hard drives (dependent on what you're trying to do)

Server rated PSU (redundant power supply)

Chassis isn't quite as important so long as it has adequate airflow and can hold everything you want.

If you require a lot of drives you might want a RAID controller unless you're running an OS like FreeBSD.

You'll need a high upload speed from your ISP if you're gonna do a lot of file sharing or hosting.

 

I'm probably missing some things or have an error somewhere but those are my immediate thoughts.

For what he's wanting to do, I think this is entirely overkill. If he's just hosting a TS server and a website for his friends, he could get away with an embedded system for next to nothing. It wouldn't be future proof, but I don't think one of the J1900 Celeron solutions would sneeze at it. He'd also be able to run it with all desktop components. I don't think a Xeon and ECC RAM is what you need here.

[Undertow_]

1 hour ago, minutellim said:

For what he's wanting to do, I think this is entirely overkill. If he's just hosting a TS server and a website for his friends, he could get away with an embedded system for next to nothing. It wouldn't be future proof, but I don't think one of the J1900 Celeron solutions would sneeze at it. He'd also be able to run it with all desktop components. I don't think a Xeon and ECC RAM is what you need here.

Could he just use a G3258 and a normal RAM kit? Or would that not provide enough power?

[minutellim]

Unless he expects his website to be getting hundreds of hits at at a time or querying large data sets, I think a G3258 with 8GB of RAM is more than enough. 

[Windows7ge]

5 hours ago, minutellim said:

For what he's wanting to do, I think this is entirely overkill. If he's just hosting a TS server and a website for his friends, he could get away with an embedded system for next to nothing. It wouldn't be future proof, but I don't think one of the J1900 Celeron solutions would sneeze at it. He'd also be able to run it with all desktop components. I don't think a Xeon and ECC RAM is what you need here.

If his objective is to ghetto rig a cheap server you're right he could do it for significantly less than what I listed. However that introduces higher potential for software conflict and reliability issues. He mentioned possibly being a IRC host. I wouldn't want someone hosting my services on a ghetto rigged computer, if the PSU failed (no redundancy) or a drive died, even worse the RAID controller failed or he had overheating issues and his server was down for weeks till he found a solution it'd be a very bad service and I wouldn't want him to host for me. Where I'm coming from is just from a reliability standpoint but I suppose he could get away with a LGA1150 Xeon or something similar.

[Isakwang]

You are thinking way overkill. He could probably just get away with 2 WD reds in raid 1, meaning there's no need for a raid card. Psu could be a problem, so the redundancy could be good. in terms of irc it looks like it will be just for his friends, so downtime wouldn't be that big of a problem

[Electronics Wizardy]

17 hours ago, Mattias Edeslatt said:

Digital Ocean? 

 

Sure, not a physical server in your room, but I think you can do everything you want for very little money.

AWS is cheaper and also has a free teir.

[Cruorzy]

To start with i would go cheap like DigitalOcean indeed,

Just to get a glimpse of what you want to do exactly.

 

Ill use their service to host 3 Teamspeak servers and mess around a bit before putting it on my (bigger) linux production machine.

Also hosting website's on it like 5 of them and runs smoothless, and since i assume you dont have experience with coding you should start simple and inexpensive or atleast build it beautiful

 

If you have the time and it does not  have to be rushed i would take the advantage to learn making you're website from scratch, so you have atleast a understanding if that is something you like or not.

 

If your website requires alot of processing power you can upgrade to a dedicated server there are alot of expensive but also cheap one's, i managed to get a Xeon 1230 for like 25 EUR monthly. If you want to run a game server you can skip Digital Ocean and find this sort of server for like a month of 2 and see how you like doing this sort of stuff.

Then again after a short period you can always build your own and see if you actually use it for stuff instead of getting bored/annoyed of maintaining the thing you did setup.

 

^^^^^^^^^^

     IMO

^^^^^^^^^^

 

Then again making some basic website is not hard, it's a great thing to encountered once.

Once you get the hang of it you will make some sort crazy idea and then the "Fun" part comes and actually building your idea.

Like you can start running a Minecraft server and instead of some basic MC website hosting server you can make your own crappy one!

then improve and improve you probably start installing plugins when you have plugins like MCMMO if that one is still around you can setup MySQL store the information in the Database and you can call it with your simple website in a simple way to start with.

[CtrlAltELITE]

I think you guys are going about this completely the wrong way.

 

HOME (i.e Not small business) server project. Where data integrity is not VITAL you dont NEED server speed hardware. Imo grab a 3rd or 4th gen i3 desktop PC from ebay (you can do this for ~£100 (US$150)) kit it out with a few GB of RAM, some HDD space (again refurbed drives from ebay ~£40). This will give you the hardware basis for a server which you can host small games servers, Plex media units, voip servers and other power user type purposes. A newer i3 home desktop will be far more efficient and reliable than a ropey old xeon blade, you can kit it out with PCie cards to support your HDD and ethernet routing needs.

 

Want to experiment with offsite hosting? Look up Raspberry Pi Co-location. Thats my next little project personally!

[tinverse]

I know it's been a while, but I wanted to give a update since some people followed this. I found some old servers through government surplus sites. But, I think I may have been getting a little ahead of myself. I talked to some friends who work at data centers with servers they run out of their homes. I think a server will be to loud for my needs right now.

 

I am currently learning to write C++ and I think I can do basic/medium complexity stuff fairly well. I found someone who's willing to give me their old PC (with decent specs surprisingly) for free. So I'm going to try and hook up my current computer to it with synergy that Luke talked about on the channel.

 

I'll just run some server stuff in the background on it and see how it goes. Although if anyone wants to give me opinions on distributions, that would be helpful. I'm torn between debian and red hat right now. I currently use mint, but want to move away from it. (even if it does have the best color scheme)

[.:MARK:.]

5 hours ago, tinverse said:

I know it's been a while, but I wanted to give a update since some people followed this. I found some old servers through government surplus sites. But, I think I may have been getting a little ahead of myself. I talked to some friends who work at data centers with servers they run out of their homes. I think a server will be to loud for my needs right now.

 

I am currently learning to write C++ and I think I can do basic/medium complexity stuff fairly well. I found someone who's willing to give me their old PC (with decent specs surprisingly) for free. So I'm going to try and hook up my current computer to it with synergy that Luke talked about on the channel.

 

I'll just run some server stuff in the background on it and see how it goes. Although if anyone wants to give me opinions on distributions, that would be helpful. I'm torn between debian and red hat right now. I currently use mint, but want to move away from it. (even if it does have the best color scheme)

Get the PC and then use VMware ESXi, none of that Synergy crap. Then you can experiment with any operating system you like, and have VMs for each function. Want to make a game server? Sure just spin up a Debian VM with a core and 2GB of RAM and you're good to go.