Building/Buying a home server

[Daringpear]

Would it be possible to combine all the features of a wireless router, modem, and NAS onto a single small-form factor machine? What kind of hardware would be needed? 

[79wjd]

NAS/Router yes, but you would would still need/want a wireless router/access point to handle the wireless part. And a router can basically run on a potato from 15 years ago (with a bunch of NICs), and the NAS depends what you want to do (but also probably nothing more than a simple pentium).

[Bananasplit_00]

not the modem part probably but the other stuff should be possible but you would REALLY want to have a separate thing for wifi

[lbrwnie]

What was said above is correct, a modem would also not be possible (I think) if possible then not practical.

[Lurick]

Wireless router and modem are not possible, you'll need separate parts for those. A wired router/firewall is possible but not the wireless part.

[Questargon]

Well, it IS possible, but a heck of a workload to get all the features you need for it right. Pre-built routers save you that hassle and some are even equipped with USB ports and Software to stick external Harddrives into to get yourself a NAS (AVM FritzBox Routers do that for instance).

 

But if you insist, I'd go for a farily low power Celeron, Pentium or i3 system (Haswell, Skylake or newer, because they're really efficient) with onboard graphics and about 4 GB of RAM and slap something like this into it: http://www.draytek.com/en/products/router/xdsl/xdsl-wan-single/vigornic-132-series/. Do NOT go smaller than a mATX Board/Case for extensibility and the board MUST have USB3.0 for peripheral storage and SATA3 if you intend to use SSDs. Better don't use H81 Mobos, because they might run out of these (only 2x USB3.0 and 2x SATA 3). If you can get yourself a MoBo with built in WLAN, all the better, but you can also add a PCIe-WLAN-Card instead - and be able to upgrade that part to have more WLAN features in the future to come. A fairly big case with many 3,5" bays might be a good choice as well because in my experience, you might end up with a lot of old drives that are perfect to be slapped into a NAS for spare, low-performance storage space. Add a reasonly good and silent PSU in the 300-350 Watts range as well. Unless you're running LOTS of (old) harddrives, everything else would be overkill. Take care, that mainboard and drives can all be powered by that PSU cable-wise. Get some additional cables if need arises.

 

Operating system of my choice would be Linux (Fedora or CentOS to be more specific, but that's only because I've been using these for a long time now), but it might get really hard to get Linux up and running with ALL the options and tuning you might want. 

There are special Linux/OpenSource OperatingSystems for RouterPCs only out there as well (https://virtualrouter.codeplex.com/ , LTT uses something similar if I remember the Office-Move-Videos correctly) that might make your life easier by configuring them via a webinterface, but I never used them.

 

Hope that helps.

 

PS: If you want that NAS outside of your box, you could try one of these for a case. You'd need low-profle PCIe cards for upgrade though and I don't know how silent these micro-boxes can be: Aerocool CS101 (There are videos on youtube using this case) (not available in America?!?, didn't find it on amazon or newegg. But I meant something alongside a Antec VSK2000 U3, but be careful: These cases often need special PSUs that might not be silent at all)

 

P.P.S: Some details I forgot and/or read up:

1) The WLAN must be able to work in an Access-Point-Mode, or you'll be stuck with a client mode WLAN only box - not useful for a router. I dunno whether the newer WLAN chipsets all support this by default though, so you should check up on it.

2) I read about this Draytek-Modem-Card in a german magazine named c't: This card is a router/modem in itself with its own Web-Frontend - it even holds the active internet-connection while the system reboots as long as it doesn't loose power. This means, that it is a microcomputer with cpu and ram of its own. You should get the newest firmware for that card, because the current one seems to have issues with its DHCP-Server - unless you wanna run that DHCP-Server on the Linux-side anyway.

3) For optimal Lan-Performance: Consider to add an Intel-Lan-Card (unless the Lan-Port on the Draytek-Card is as good or even better). They get higher transfer rates under Linux than the onboard solutions, at least that's the case with my onboard LAN from Realtek.

 

Edited September 26, 2016 by Questargon
Added links and corrections / Added some remarks

[79wjd]

10 minutes ago, Questargon said:

.....and the board MUST have USB3.0 for peripheral storage and SATA3 if you intend to use SSDs. Better don't use H81 Mobos, because they might run out of these (only 2x USB3.0 and 2x SATA 3).

 

If you can get yourself a MoBo with built in WLAN, all the better, but you can also add a PCIe-WLAN-Card instead - and be able to upgrade that part to have more WLAN features in the future to come. 

.....

No NAS should be using external drives for storage, so no, USB 3.0 is irrelevant. And no NAS should be using SSDs as storage, so SATA 3 is irrelevant. H81 boards are perfectly fine for a NAS. 

 

A NAS should basically never be wireless, and should always be directly wired to a router, so a Wifi card is also going to be irrelevant. 

[Questargon]

I was more thinking alongside the routes of my little server I have at my place, where everything, including a "NAS" - i.e. several harddrives and a Linux OS, is slapped into a standard PC box. I overlooked his wish for "small form factor"... my bad

 

The cheap H81 mobos only have 2 SATA3 and 2 SATA2 onboard connectors, so if you want to add more drives or an optical drive you'll be out of SATA-connects soon. Depends on the usecase.

[79wjd]

1 minute ago, Questargon said:

I was more thinking alongside the routes of my little server I have at my place, where everything, including a "NAS" - i.e. several harddrives and a Linux OS, is slapped into a standard PC box. I overlooked his wish for "small form factor"... my bad

Form factor isn't what I was criticizing. I wouldn't go smaller than mATX either since you want some expandability for sata multipliers or extra NICs. 

[Questargon]

On another note: Is loudness a topic?

[whatshappeninman]

13 hours ago, Daringpear said:

Would it be possible to combine all the features of a wireless router, modem, and NAS onto a single small-form factor machine? What kind of hardware would be needed? 

I've run these for years. You can do all but the (cable?) modem in a variety of fanless 32-bit x86 products for a not-insanely-expensive cost, but certainly more than you would pay for some consumer solution whose hardware profile just barely satisfies the use case. I also use a separate device for wireless so that it/they can be placed to provide the best signal rather than having to be near a CATV feed and/or the cable modem. 

 

Shuttle makes a fanless line of Celeron PCs - small, has USB 3.0 and under 200US. They are bare bones; you need to add memory and storage - but they do include wireless and bluetooth. I use a basic SSD and topped off the memory to make the use of LXC and/or VirtualBox more practical. Decent machine - RealTek ethernet but this solution can easily route/firewall/VPN at speeds beyond my current cable subscription (~ 140Mbps down/13 up)

 

Mine is a Shuttle DS437 (they have a newer version now, the DS57U, Celeron 3205U, can take at least 16G of memory if you believe you need it - probably not for your use cases. It can run CentOS 6.x (7.x and above only support 64-bit) with zero issues. Edit: I don't use this for a NAS, either. Whether or not this would be suitable really depends on what you expect from it and what the requirements are. You can get away with it, but it's a much more sensible router/firewall/bridge than a NAS. 

 

The Shuttle has a PCIe connectivity, so you could pull something off with that if you're really interested in achieving all those use cases in the same host. 

 

It's not cheaper than a shrink-wrapped consumer solution but is definitely superior in terms of capacity and functionality. 

[Questargon]

Let's get crackin'

 

The hardware I would use is as follows:

 

Intel Celeron G1840 2x 2.80GHz So.1150 BOX

No faster CPU needed for a router.

Scythe Iori Topblow CPU Cooler

More quiet than the boxed cooler and the heatsink is so massive, the mainboard controls might even turn the fan off completely.

MSI B85M-G43 Intel B85 So.1150 Dual Channel DDR3 mATX Retail

4x PCIe slots, 4x SATA3, 2x SATA2, USB3 front connector, 3 PWM fan connectors.

2x 2GB Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1333 DIMM CL9 Single

4GB should be enough for almost everything a router has to do.

350 Watt be quiet! Pure Power L8 Non-Modular 80+ Bronze

4x SATA power supply and a good quality.

Zalman Z12 Midi Tower black

2x 120mm fans, one directly in front of the drive bay. 1x 3,5" bay, just in case you want a Cardreader in there. (You might have to replace or swap the fans if you do not want blue illumination, because the fan in the front has blue leds in it. Oh, and make sure to stick those fans into the fan control headers [sysfan1/sysfan2] of your mainboard so you can control them via software later).

 

64GB Transcend SSD370 2.5" (6.4cm) SATA

I recommend using a SSD as a boot drive because it makes the regular Linux-Updates really, really fast. 64GB are more than enough for a Linux system. You could basically pick any SATA 3 SSD here, as long as it has about 64GB capacity.

 

Sum: ~ $230

ASUS USB-AC56 AC1200 WLAN Stick

This stick works under Linux and includes an USB extension cord to put the stick to a place with better WLAN reception.

 

Price: ~ $50

DrayTek VigorNIC 132 (the version WITHOUT optical cable)

As in my previous post: The internal Modem/LAN-card for VDSL/ADSL internet connection.

 

Price: ~ $120

 

OR:

 

DrayTek Vigor 130 External ADSL/VDSL Modem

 

Price: ~ $100

 

(You might even need another modem than one of these two before when you don't connect to your internet via DSL)

3000GB WD Red WD30EFRX 64MB 3.5"

Good price/value ratio in my opinion and these are harddrives especially for NAS. Slap as many into your box as you like (max 5 with that case).

 

Price: ~ $110 each.

 

Any other suggestions from other people around? Let them be heared!

 

Kind regards.

 

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Questargon said:

Let's get crackin'

 

The hardware I would use is as follows:

ASUS USB-AC56 AC1200 WLAN Stick

This stick works under Linux and includes an USB extension cord to put the stick to a place with better WLAN reception.

 

Price: ~ $50

DrayTek VigorNIC 132 (the version WITHOUT optical cable)

As in my previous post: The internal Modem/LAN-card for VDSL/ADSL internet connection.

 

Price: ~ $120

 

OR:

 

DrayTek Vigor 130 External ADSL/VDSL Modem

 

Price: ~ $100

 

(You might even need another modem than one of these two before when you don't connect to your internet via DSL)

Well, without knowing his using case for the NAS I wouldn't recommend a CPU, nor would I recommend an amount of RAM. Also, there are better low profile coolers, but he also doesn't need a low profile cooler (something like a Hyper 212/Pure Rock/H7 are all good solutions). The case is exactly nice, nor is it cheap, nor is it small (even a basic Source 210 would be better). There's no benefit to using an SSD for PFSense and nor is there a need for it for a NAS. 

 

What is the purpose of the wireless adapter exactly? 

 

I also really recommend not incorporating a modem since that won't always play nice with the ISP (plus, for example, I couldn't even easily use that since my internet comes in over coax).

[Questargon]

12 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

Well, without knowing his using case for the NAS I wouldn't recommend a CPU, nor would I recommend an amount of RAM. Also, there are better low profile coolers, but he also doesn't need a low profile cooler (something like a Hyper 212/Pure Rock/H7 are all good solutions). The case is exactly nice, nor is it cheap, nor is it small (even a basic Source 210 would be better). There's no benefit to using an SSD for PFSense and nor is there a need for it for a NAS. 

 

What is the purpose of the wireless adapter exactly? 

 

I also really recommend not incorporating a modem since that won't always play nice with the ISP (plus, for example, I couldn't even easily use that since my internet comes in over coax).

Fair enough. This was mostly guessing on my part anyway. I read somewhere that FreeNAS would need even more memory, about 8 GB - so yeah, parts of my list really depend on the use case.

 

The SSD is for when @Daringpear wants to run Linux on his box. Belive me: I loved it when I put a SSD into my server and Linux updated itself 2-3 times as fast. Also you can have your OS separated from your other data, which can come in handy when you need to upgrade either the OS- or the Data-Storage. Other than that: Yes, it's optional.

 

The Wireless-Adapter and modem were included for when @Daringpear wants to have everything in one box. He can skip modem if his provider supplies a router/modem and forces him to use that. WLAN is only needed if the provider doesn't provide a router with already built in WLAN.

[79wjd]

11 minutes ago, Questargon said:

The SSD is for when @Daringpear wants to run Linux on his box. Belive me: I loved it when I put a SSD into my server and Linux updated itself 2-3 times as fast. Also you can have your OS separated from your other data, which can come in handy when you need to upgrade either the OS- or the Data-Storage. Other than that: Yes, it's optional.

 

The Wireless-Adapter and modem were included for when @Daringpear wants to have everything in one box. He can skip modem if his provider supplies a router/modem and forces him to use that. WLAN is only needed if the provider doesn't provide a router with already built in WLAN.

He shouldn't be interfacing with either the router or the NAS enough that he would benefit from an SSD (and if he used something like FreeNAS, then the OS is loaded into RAM anyway). Your OS should no question be separate, but an SSD isn't required and is just a waste of money for most people/use cases. 

 

You can't use a wireless adapter to replace a wireless router. No matter what, he needs a wireless AP if he wants wireless. 

[Questargon]

*lol* You're absolutely right. I forgot all about WLAN AccessPoints. Although some WLAN Adapters CAN be switched into AccessPoint Mode (virtualrouter has a list of compatible adapters), a real AP is the better (and maybe even cheaper) way to go with less hassle. Picking the right WLAN Adapter for your needs that also flawlessly works with Linux and all the options you need is - an odyssey XD. The AP is another external box though.

 

A TP-Link TL-WA901ND seems to be okay for that, or -  a bit cheaper - the TP-Link TL-WR802N.

 

Regarding the SSD... if the OS is Memory only, then you're absolutely right. I guess that FreeNAS can be booted from an USB stick (haven't looked it up yet)? You could also replace the SSD with a cheap HDD, but hey, that's a question of budget (and preferred system loudness) I suppose.

[79wjd]

59 minutes ago, Questargon said:

*lol* You're absolutely right. I forgot all about WLAN AccessPoints. Although some WLAN Adapters CAN be switched into AccessPoint Mode (virtualrouter has a list of compatible adapters), a real AP is the better (and maybe even cheaper) way to go with less hassle. Picking the right WLAN Adapter for your needs that also flawlessly works with Linux and all the options you need is - an odyssey XD. The AP is another external box though.

 

A TP-Link TL-WA901ND seems to be okay for that, or -  a bit cheaper - the TP-Link TL-WR802N.

 

Regarding the SSD... if the OS is Memory only, then you're absolutely right. I guess that FreeNAS can be booted from an USB stick (haven't looked it up yet)? You could also replace the SSD with a cheap HDD, but hey, that's a question of budget (and preferred system loudness) I suppose.

freenas can be booted off a usb