First Time Home Server Advice Needed

[nkaplatt]

Looking at getting into the homelab scene and after some research I need a few pointers.

 

First off essentially I'm looking for my homelab to do the following things short term.

• plex server 
• NAS (with file access for multiple people over the web)
• Development VM's for applications in writing/ will build over time
• Potentially self hosting of my brothers website (will have low traffic) 
• Backup repository for 2 laptops and PC
• A host of other VM's down the line for playing/ learning e.g pfsense 

 

Having done a bit of browsing and asking a friend of mine he suggested a HP Z800 or Z820 (if I can find a relatively cheap one). As far as I can understand this machine sounds like it'll have plenty of processing power and RAM capacity, however what I'm unsure about is the HDD aspect. I'm looking to use FreeNAS as the base OS so would be booting of a thumb drive, is this possible with this machine? Additionally over time I'd build up a big chunk of data to store so would ideally be looking at getting fewer larger drives (say 4TB or 6TB as this will give me long term growth instead of buying lots of small drives that I end up having to change all of them) but again I've read somewhere the Z800 series only supports 2TB which be a massive pain.

 

Are my concerns accurate and if so what other solution should I start looking at? 

 

Thanks in advance.

 

EDIT: 

Since posting I've done some more reading and seen some suggestions for a dual E5-2670 setup - it seems I'd be able to get a super micro 2U 8 bay rack case that would allow an ATX dual LGA-2011 mobo for the xeons is this a viable option? I believe it increases cost a fair bit but that's okay, I'd rather do it right first time. 

Edited August 11, 2017 by nkaplatt

[Ezzy-525]

In regards to Plex, what sort of workload are you looking to put through it? As in...how many 1080p (or 4k if that's your bag) streams at once?

[Lurick]

What does your budget for the system and everything (excluding drives) look like?

[nkaplatt]

Just now, Ezzy-525 said:

In regards to Plex, what sort of workload are you looking to put through it? As in...how many 1080p (or 4k if that's your bag) streams at once?

To begin with it'll need to cope with 2 1080p streams, however I see that increasing to 4 in the near future once friends request access.

[Ezzy-525]

Just now, nkaplatt said:

To begin with it'll need to cope with 2 1080p streams, however I see that increasing to 4 in the near future once friends request access.

In that case I'd suggest making sure your CPU has a PassMark of at least 8000.

[nkaplatt]

1 minute ago, Ezzy-525 said:

In that case I'd suggest making sure your CPU has a PassMark of at least 8000.

Is that stand alone CPU performance? Or combined if it has dual socket support? 

[Lurick]

2 minutes ago, nkaplatt said:

Is that stand alone CPU performance? Or combined if it has dual socket support? 

Plex will scale to multiple processors.

[nkaplatt]

4 minutes ago, Lurick said:

What does your budget for the system and everything (excluding drives) look like?

Excluding drives I've got roughly £500 to play with, however I'd rather do this right the first time so if saving for a few more months is the best bet then I'm happy to do that.

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, nkaplatt said:

Excluding drives I've got roughly £500 to play with, however I'd rather do this right the first time so if saving for a few more months is the best bet then I'm happy to do that.

Hmmm, I'm tempted to say save up a little more but it depends on how you want to do everything.

My suggestion would be look at something like the HP servers or a Dell R620, used of course, and then couple that with a 6 or 8 bay NAS for expansion as time goes on. You can point Plex to the NAS and have the server take care of the backups and the NAS just do storage for the most part. Separation of duties will allow you to have the power for all the VMs and whatnot separate from the storage component so you don't have to worry about drive limitations but obviously gets more expensive.

[Ezzy-525]

Would a rack server be ok for you or are you looking for a tower?

 

There's some decent stuff to be had on eBay when it comes to end of life datacentre servers.

[jkirkcaldy]

I would probably stay away from the Z800/Z820, they are great machines that I use daily when working with Avid for video editing etc but for using as a server I think they are going to be very power hungry and I think there are a few limitations in terms of how many drives you can put in them. 

 

Not sure what your requirements are in terms of the size of the computer but these computers are pretty huge.

 

In terms of actual performance, I have a home server that I put together using my old gaming hardware, a i7-3770 32GB RAM no gpu etc and it runs plex, and two linux vm's constantly with another linux vm I use to play with and a win7 vm for windows testing. 

 

I also host a website, game server and run crashplan for the backups and it runs it all great. 

 

For plex this will easily play 4 hd streams I think the most I have had is 4 transcoded streams and one direct play with my family accessing it and there were no issues. And the Passmark score is total so with two xeons you should be laughing, especially for 4 streams. 

 

Just make sure that whatever you chose you make sure you get enough RAM, I don't bother with ECC as my workflow doesn't really require it but I think the Z800 series can be a little fussy when it comes to hardware. 

 

 

[nkaplatt]

9 hours ago, Ezzy-525 said:

Would a rack server be ok for you or are you looking for a tower?

 

There's some decent stuff to be had on eBay when it comes to end of life datacentre servers.

I'm open to suggestions, as far as I'm aware a rack mount might be easier for longer term additions to the home lab? 

[nkaplatt]

7 hours ago, jkirkcaldy said:

I would probably stay away from the Z800/Z820, they are great machines that I use daily when working with Avid for video editing etc but for using as a server I think they are going to be very power hungry and I think there are a few limitations in terms of how many drives you can put in them. 

 

Not sure what your requirements are in terms of the size of the computer but these computers are pretty huge.

 

In terms of actual performance, I have a home server that I put together using my old gaming hardware, a i7-3770 32GB RAM no gpu etc and it runs plex, and two linux vm's constantly with another linux vm I use to play with and a win7 vm for windows testing. 

 

I also host a website, game server and run crashplan for the backups and it runs it all great. 

 

For plex this will easily play 4 hd streams I think the most I have had is 4 transcoded streams and one direct play with my family accessing it and there were no issues. And the Passmark score is total so with two xeons you should be laughing, especially for 4 streams. 

 

Just make sure that whatever you chose you make sure you get enough RAM, I don't bother with ECC as my workflow doesn't really require it but I think the Z800 series can be a little fussy when it comes to hardware. 

 

 

That's really helpful cheers! Yeah I've heard so many different things about the Z series and really didn't want to buy into it to only find it basically isn't fit for purpose. I'll take a look into hardware on eBay as I don't have anything lying around but at least this gives me a good baseline. Thanks again 

[Mikensan]

Definitely any old gaming hardware will work, I second that. I also second not really needing ECC RAM more so if you have some normal RAM laying around. The additional cost of getting a board/chip that support ECC as well as the ECC RAM itself usually isn't a great deal more, it can't hurt to price it out once you're ready. So while it's not needed, if it's a small enough cost to get it I would just for that extra sense of security.

 

You can get CPUs pretty damn cheap on ebay if you want to piece a solution together. Another had mentioned the R620 but last I checked those are still pretty expensive compared to the R610s which have a lot of giddyup. But since you want storage I'd say go for the R710 or R510 which will fit more disks. They are physically larger than any desktop you'd buy however.

 

In terms of a rack it's mostly an aesthetic for home use. You could easily build a lackrack and just mount the switches at the top and lay the desktops on the bottom and poof, compact storage under a table lol. Otherwise for a new rack you're looking at $200+ new.

https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack

 

1080p transcodes are what take the most CPU, so if you converted your movies to h.264 then it will direct stream on most devices and you'd only be limited by your network at that point. Any sandy/ivy bridge i5 or newer/better is going to plow through transcodes.

 

When you buy RAM, make sure you buy the largest size stick you can so that you have free memory banks allowing you to add more in the future (most consumer boards are limited to 32gb anyway I believe).