Home server

[kingu000]

We're 6 people in our house and i was thinking if it was possible to have a centralized pc/server and then just a thin client for each person? and the what components those different pc's would have, the logistics of it and if it would even be feasable?

 

i'm sorry if this is not the appropriate place to post, but could you then point me in the direction of some help?

[Matt_98]

Just now, kingu000 said:

We're 6 people in our house and i was thinking if it was possible to have a centralized pc/server and then just a thin client for each person? and the what components those different pc's would have, the logistics of it and if it would even be feasable?

 

i'm sorry if this is not the appropriate place to post, but could you then point me in the direction of some help?

 

You would need some serious horsepower what would the vm's be for

[Elerek]

It can be done, I've done a 2 person pc, but expect it to likely be more of a headache than it's worth. If something goes really wrong on one person's pc, the whole system might need to restart. Configs can be rough to get set up. keeping the system cool can be hard if everyone has a nice gpu. Oh, and don't ever, ever let the host os do a major update... I learned that the hard way.

 

But if you enjoy that stuff like I do and have some backup laptops or something to fall back on, go for it.

[kingu000]

7 minutes ago, Matt_98 said:

You would need some serious horsepower what would the vm's be for

nothing special, most of them would just be used for facebook and some media streaming

[Elerek]

As far as hardware, you'd need a pretty ballin cpu, probably xeon or even two xeons for 6 people. Each person needs a gpu, which means you need at least 6 16 length pcie slots.

 

I assume you've watched linus's video about this?

[Elerek]

Obviously you needn't go so overboard, but the basics are still the same.

[kingu000]

i knew the cpu had to be pretty big, but as most of the vms wouldnt really need any high end graphics i thought that could maybe be handled clientside?

 

[Elerek]

3 minutes ago, kingu000 said:

i knew the cpu had to be pretty big, but as most of the vms wouldnt really need any high end graphics i thought that could maybe be handled clientside?

 

No, client side is basically just remote desktoping in. It can't do the graphics processing for the host. Now if you really only want bare bones graphics you could try letting the system do emulated gpus, but that's even more cpu power being used up, and likely pretty terrible performance (like, probably can't handle youtube levels of bad performance)

[Elerek]

But you could always get a bottom shelf 5+ year old gpu for $15 on ebay and use that.

[kingu000]

4 minutes ago, Elerek said:

But you could always get a bottom shelf 5+ year old gpu for $15 on ebay and use that.

so it should be a servergrade board and then just some "shitty" gpu's? 

 

[Elerek]

maybe something like:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157536

 

with 6 or these:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1N83WM4241&cm_re=EVGA_GeForce_GT_710-_-14-487-217-_-Product

[Elerek]

maybe something along these lines for a cpu: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117629&cm_re=e5-2620-_-19-117-629-_-Product

[kingu000]

okay, I'll look a bit more into it. thanks for the help

 

[AshleyAshes]

In all reality, a setup like this is 'interesting' and 'really neat to see' but it also requires a lot of technical skill and has more single points of failure.  It'll seem cool at first but by the end of the first month everyone would hate you.

 

It's one thing to set up one file server or one server to handle downloads for the entire household rather than 6 people running 6 torrent clients or something, but the thin client thing will only be an exercise in frustration.

[SLAYR]

2 hours ago, kingu000 said:

so it should be a servergrade board and then just some "shitty" gpu's? 

 

You don't need gpus unless you are doing anything graphically intensive like gaming.

At most you could get a single gpu for all of the vms to share, but is most likely unecessary.

 

Ram would be an issue, I would say 48Gb minimum for 6 users (about 8gb per person.)

 

The clients could be just and old random computer laying around all they do is receive the image via a RDP connection.

 

You can pay for unraid, but it is unecessary, there are free alternative hypervisors like xenserver, exsi, or you can use linux +KVM. 

 

Latency would be an issue if possible have a hard wired connection between the server and clients.

 

As for parts I would suggest getting a dual  lga 1366 server used like a dell r710, with a lot of ram. With dual hyperthreaded quad cores that is 16 threads or about 2 per person which should be fine for facebook, and youtube.

[kingu000]

1 minute ago, SLAYR said:

You don't need gpus unless you are doing anything graphically intensive like gaming.

At most you could get a single gpu for all of the vms to share, but is most likely unecessary.

 

Ram would be an issue, I would say 48Gb minimum for 6 users (about 8gb per person.)

 

The clients could be just and old random computer laying around all they do is receive the image via a RDP connection.

 

You can pay for unraid, but it is unecessary, there are free alternative hypervisors like xenserver, exsi, or you can use linux +KVM. 

 

Latency would be an issue if possible have a hard wired connection between the server and clients.

 

As for parts I would suggest getting a dual  lga 1366 server used like a dell r710, with a lot of ram. With dual hyperthreaded quad cores that is 16 threads or about 2 per person which should be fine for facebook, and youtube.

thanks, this was the kind of response i was looking for. only one of the vms would possibly have to do any gaming