Setting up a FTP server/media server/light desktop use computer for my Girlfriend.

[Hudson89506]

Hello Every one!

My family has built up huge amounts of data from, family photos, video, and music over the course of several years. As well as lots of documents that pose little to no security threat. Yes, I know I still need to keep good tight security for my network. I have ~4 TB of data to store. I would love to be able to have my family load up what ever data they want to back up onto this server from their home. I would also like to use this as my main mass storage for personal data at home I can upload over the local network or from another computer off site ( when I get more drives that will be optimal for this configuration). 

 

I am an experienced builder but lack in some basic network knowledge and have little experience with configuring a server. I plan on using the computer's CPU, MOBO,RAMM and Bootdrive, along with a spare mass storage HDD's I have now in my current main PC. Then I am going to keep, my PSU, GPU, CPU cooler, fans, case and upgrade to an I7 8700k, new AROSE Gigabyte z370 gaming 7 MOBO and some new ddr4 ramm.  The old parts in my current build is going into a new case with a 4tb WD purple drive to test my server on. An AMD FX8370 CPU, a Gigabyte 970A-UD3 AM3+ socket MOBO, 16GB of G.SKILL DDR3 ram. A spare display GPU I have laying around for a monitor, a 125G SSD for the boot drive and a few misc small programs.

 

- Will this hardware be enough for what I intend to do?

 

Now, I am only using one 4TB drive to test out at first. I will get better drives in later on and set up a RAID Array. I plan on getting two large NAS drives (WD red or Seagate Iron Wolf? feedback - on what brand offers the better performance is appreciated) about 6-10TB in size and putting them into a RAID 1 array on the motherboard.

 

- Now, I should be okay with a raid 1 array? I will just mirror the other drive correct? if one of the drives fails there is another one already backed up and then I simply just replace the bad drive correct?

 

- For only having two drives at first and then plan on going to 4 total and my MOBO supports RAID 1, I won't need a RAID card necessarily right? Or will a RAID card help in the performance of the server?

 

After Installing all the necessary hardware, getting windows and all the necessary drivers installed I plan on installing and using FileZilla server on the server it's self. And anyone els wanting to download or upload to the server will have to have the FileZilla client installed on there PC.

 

-Am I right, this software will take care of all of my FTP and mass storage needs over a network? 

 

 

I know I need to port forward in my router and disable windows fire wall to allow Filezilla to talk with the outside world. I have a Netgear Night Hawk x6 ac3200Ti-Band Wifi Router that has a built in Gigabit Ethernet switch.

 

- Will my computer and the server exchange data fairly well without hogging a lot of bandwidth on my network?

 

Any help or insight is appreciated

[Anghammarad]

If you already bought the purple... well can't be changed... if you haven't get a red... because the purple are made/optimized for surveillance camera use.

 

I just build a home media server with 4 4tb Ironwolf drives configured as Raid 5, one drive may fail, and the data is still intact. So I have left 12 tb of brutto capacity. With a raid 1 I would only have 8 tb left brutto... 

 

as for Media server... try something like owncloud... 

[jde3]

FreeNAS + Nextcloud. Sounds like a dream. (Nextcloud is a fork of Owncloud and is generally considered to be better)

 

Configure ZFS to be in a mirror configuration with equal sized drives. If you want to raise capacity on ZFS later you can replace a drive with a larger and re-silver it then replace the other and re-silver. You can also start with a single disk and attach a mirror later. ZFS is intended to be used with unreliable drives (actually all drives are unreliable, and it acts that way) so you really don't need the most expensive drives out there but you do need to be notified if they fail and have replacements ready.

 

Configure Nextcloud to run in a jail (there should be configs for this for FreeNAS if not a plugin.)

 

Configure lets-encrypt for the Nextcloud jail. (you may need a real site for this but its convenient)

 

Configure ZFS snapshots at a regular time for 6 months to a year or so depending on use.. this may be every week or every day depending on your storage. Set quotas for users in Nextcloud.

 

Point your users to the various Nextcloud apps out there, all major platforms are supported and there are tons of apps out there. (Yes Owncloud apps work with Nextcloud, at least for now if you can't find one but.. most are ported)

 

Avoid plugins.. both in FreeNAS and in Nextcloud. Reliable storage is boring and you'll have fewer problems if you just use one thing.

 

If you want to point them to a backup program, they can use whatever they want but Duplicati is a pretty good open source client backup.

 

One tip is make sure your users understand that this is the *BACKUP*, a backup involves two copies, the one they have and the one they backed up so they shouldn't use this in the same manner as dropbox. (ie free storage) This is only where they go when the loose their original copy.

[Hudson89506]

Forgot to mention that my girl friend will be using this as a desktop as well. Nothing major, web surfing, homework and Email.  Thus why I plan on running windows. I would have gone with FreeNas but I still need it to be a useful workstation for my girl friend. Also why I plan on installing FileZilla Server on this same PC

[jde3]

Hmm.. well if you have your mind made up, not much I can tell you. I also can't help you with Windows in any regards (To me the words windows and server are like fast and tricycle).. I wouldn't know what it's requirements are.

 

You have an issue here in that desktops don't make good servers. Their use cases are different.. I can say that if you wanted both it is possible depending on your level of skill. FreeNAS is (pretty much) just FreeBSD with a web frontend. It wouldn't be impossible to do something like GhostBSD to provide a decent desktop and it's close enough to vanilla FreeBSD that any quality Nextcloud guide for it should work. I believe Digital Ocean may have one.

 

That... wouldn't be the slickest desktop in the world.. but it would give you web email documents etc. This all depends on if you want to keep your girlfriend I suppose. get the lady a real rig man.

 

Come to think of it... I had an Emby server like that.

[AbsoluteFool]

There is way to many parts here to see diffrence on the "server" and your old PC.

 

Filezilla server will work just as VSFTPD for linux or any other FTP servers. FileZilla is a very easy software and doesen't use alot of resources. However your connection to the network and internet speed may vary depending on the data being dumped from outside of the network.

 

• Open port 21 for filezilla and portforward the IP it is using don't disable the firewall.
• Raid 1 is two mirrored drives yes. But when you want to rebuild the drives into a diffrent arroy you will also lose all data on it.
• 128GB is a bit small to hold the Windows OS + random software, atleast when not all programs agree to install on another drive.
• You will not need a raid card unless you want to go with hardware RAID.

However i will add that using a daily use PC as a server is a bad idea. Because, when the mass dump of data comes the computer will be useless for the person usinig it at the moment. I would think it's a better idea to use a shitty MB a simple 2 core CPU 2-4 GB RAM and install VSFTPD on a linux server for this. You can simpple make a software RAID 1 on the server and you can put it in your basement or something.

 

 

[jde3]

Avoid ftp if possible. Use ssh and rsync.

[Hudson89506]

On 4/6/2018 at 5:00 AM, AbsoluteFool said:

There is way to many parts here to see diffrence on the "server" and your old PC.

 

Filezilla server will work just as VSFTPD for linux or any other FTP servers. FileZilla is a very easy software and doesen't use alot of resources. However your connection to the network and internet speed may vary depending on the data being dumped from outside of the network.

 

• Open port 21 for filezilla and portforward the IP it is using don't disable the firewall.
• Raid 1 is two mirrored drives yes. But when you want to rebuild the drives into a diffrent arroy you will also lose all data on it.
• 128GB is a bit small to hold the Windows OS + random software, atleast when not all programs agree to install on another drive.
• You will not need a raid card unless you want to go with hardware RAID.

However i will add that using a daily use PC as a server is a bad idea. Because, when the mass dump of data comes the computer will be useless for the person usinig it at the moment. I would think it's a better idea to use a shitty MB a simple 2 core CPU 2-4 GB RAM and install VSFTPD on a linux server for this. You can simpple make a software RAID 1 on the server and you can put it in your basement or something.

 

 

I had a feeling it would take a huge dump in performance when a user from the outside does a large data dump. However, My GF will not use it everyday. She is a book worm and will probably spend most of her free time reading a good book. If and when she does get on it she will most likely check her e-mail and shop here and there. I mean, she will only use this for less than an hour once or twice a week. If she is on longer than that it would be to type a paper in Word. It will have an 8 core CPU in it so i have a feeling it would be able to handle several tasks at once. I could be wrong lol.

To be honest it is a learning experience for me. I understand there will be a bit of trial and error with this project.

If I need to do something different then later on I will.

Thank you for all your inputs, greatly appreciated.

[AbsoluteFool]

On 15.4.2018 at 11:26 PM, Hudson89506 said:

I had a feeling it would take a huge dump in performance when a user from the outside does a large data dump. However, My GF will not use it everyday. She is a book worm and will probably spend most of her free time reading a good book. If and when she does get on it she will most likely check her e-mail and shop here and there. I mean, she will only use this for less than an hour once or twice a week. If she is on longer than that it would be to type a paper in Word. It will have an 8 core CPU in it so i have a feeling it would be able to handle several tasks at once. I could be wrong lol.

To be honest it is a learning experience for me. I understand there will be a bit of trial and error with this project.

If I need to do something different then later on I will.

Thank you for all your inputs, greatly appreciated.

FTP or SSH doesen't use alot of resources from my experience. The thing that will eventally be the first problem is the network and not the computer it self. But yeah, on the use you want i'd say go for it. But try SSH instead of FTP.