Home Server Hardware

[b1nary27]

Hello LTT community,

I've been searching for server hardware for a little homeserver for quite a while now but couldn't really find what I needed. Currently I use a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B with two external hard drives as Samba server, webserver, media center (kodi) and some more stuff but it isn't enough to fit my needs. Samba server is pretty slow due to the 100Mbit limitation of the Pi and it's currently running via Wifi as it also serves as media center connected to my TV where I can't connect it via LAN. So I thought of buying a real server with better performance. First off all I'm gonna list my use cases for the server and a few more requirements I've got for it.

So I'd use it for the following things:

- Samba server

- Webserver (Apache, PHP, maybe Node.js) (for local usage only, kind of as a testing environment for some projects, Mediawiki, Wordpress and some monitoring stuff)

- MySQL Databases

- Probably Nextcloud for sensitive data (I already run a nextcloud instance on a webserver which is placed in a data center so I don't have to open any ports from my local network for data I need outside of my home)

- Download server (probably pyLoad as I want to run the server headless)

- Backup my data from my Linux and Mac machine using rsync

 

There are a few more conditions it should meet:

- Little power consumption as it should run 24/7 (currently paying ~0,26€/kWh; shouldn't be more than ~10€/month for electricity costs)

- Should run quiet and cool (quiet isn't that necessary as it would be placed in a different room than were I sleep but it would still be nice to have; also the room were it would be placed in is always at ~17-18°C)

- Price shouldn't be more than ~500€ (without hard drives)

 

Oh, and it should either run Debian or Ubuntu Server as OS.

 

Furthermore I don't have that much experience with virtualization other than some Virtual machines I've used with VirtualBox & VMware but I've read that using Docker on a homeserver would make sense in certain circumstances. Would you guys recommend it for my use cases? And if so would it increase the RAM usage heavily?

Is there any hardware you could recommend for such a server?

 

Thanks in advance.

[NelizMastr]

Just to get some other numbers thrown out there here:  €10 a month at €0,26 per KWh means the system can't consume more than 53W in total, including drives. That's not going to get you a lot of performance. A NAS style harddisk will consume between 4 and 7 watts, a fast consumer drive (like a WD black) will consume between 6 and 12 watts.

 

Based on that, I'd say drive wise, go with NAS drives like the WD Red and Seagate Ironwolf. They're quiet, don't run very hot and consume little power. Performance should be enough (and they're rated for 24/7 use  )

 

Assuming 2 drives, we have 35W left for the CPU, RAM, fans etc.

 

Honestly, what I'd do, is get an entry level server like a HPE Microserver. The Gen10 base model is quite power efficient and it should be good enough for your needs. It takes ECC DDR4 unbuffered memory and comes with 8GB by default. Add drives, RAID them up and off you go. And they're in budget  

 

I can't give you much advice on the software side of things, as I'm primarily a Windows sysadmin.

 

 

 

 

[karsnoordhuis]

Didnt asrock have an atom based 8 core cpu on an itx board? Passively cooled so low power, ddr3 ecc support witch is cheap as chips, a massive amount of sata port and 2 ethernet ports with a third for ipmi

[b1nary27]

Thanks for the hard drive recommandations and the clarification on the power consumption. If 53W in total is not enough for good performance it wouldn't be a problem if it's a bit more when the system is not on idle. I just put those numbers in because I didn't want to pay like 300€/year just as upkeeping/electricity costs. Coming back to the hard drives: I wouldn't need more than two drives as I don't have too much data to store (a few hundred gigs of movies & TV shows and less than 100gig in my home directory). The HPC Microservers don't look too bad (kinda bugs me that they only support Windows Server and ClearOS from what I've seen; correct me if I'm wrong) and as I've seen they're using SoC's. I've been looking for SoC's yesterday and most of them (Atom's from Intel don't consume more than ~15W) but I wasn't sure whether they're powerful enough (furthermore I'd have to replace the mainboard if I wanted to upgrade the CPU one day). 

[Mayaa]

You could go for something like this

If i remember correctly it should be less than 150 euros. Its a 10w tdp quad core and from what i can tell the performance should be good enough for what you listed.

Leaves a good budget for the rest of the components.

[NelizMastr]

1 hour ago, b1nary27 said:

Thanks for the hard drive recommandations and the clarification on the power consumption. If 53W in total is not enough for good performance it wouldn't be a problem if it's a bit more when the system is not on idle. I just put those numbers in because I didn't want to pay like 300€/year just as upkeeping/electricity costs. Coming back to the hard drives: I wouldn't need more than two drives as I don't have too much data to store (a few hundred gigs of movies & TV shows and less than 100gig in my home directory). The HPC Microservers don't look too bad (kinda bugs me that they only support Windows Server and ClearOS from what I've seen; correct me if I'm wrong) and as I've seen they're using SoC's. I've been looking for SoC's yesterday and most of them (Atom's from Intel don't consume more than ~15W) but I wasn't sure whether they're powerful enough (furthermore I'd have to replace the mainboard if I wanted to upgrade the CPU one day). 

These servers aren't meant to be upgraded. You basically write it off and get a new one. That's why they're relatively cheap. I run the previous generation, the gen8 which you can upgrade yourself but is significantly older s1155 hardware, and that's a great machine, but with a quad core non-L Xeon E3 it's not super efficient.

 

The alternative would be an Atom SoC based board, like the ASRock Rack C2550D4I. 

 

A sample config would be this (memory is ECC UDIMM, not really that cheap sadly):

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU:  Integrated with Motherboard
Motherboard: ASRock - C2550D4I Mini ITX Atom C2550 Motherboard  (€316.17 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Memory: Kingston - 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  (€39.90 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Memory: Kingston - 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory  (€39.90 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Case: Fractal Design - Node 304 Mini ITX Tower Case  (€81.10 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Power Supply: be quiet! - Pure Power 10 400W 80+ Silver Certified ATX Power Supply  (€47.99 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Total: €525.06
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-04-19 11:42 CEST+0200

[b1nary27]

54 minutes ago, Mayaa said:

You could go for something like this

If i remember correctly it should be less than 150 euros. Its a 10w tdp quad core and from what i can tell the performance should be good enough for what you listed.

Leaves a good budget for the rest of the components.

That one looks pretty good. With a 10W TDP it's just a little more than my Raspberry Pi. Also I could get that one for 100€ which is pretty cheap. So Mainboard, CPU, 8GB RAM (don't know whether this might already be overkill but 4gigs isn't that much cheaper), a good PSU, an insulated case and SSD would cost me less than 400€. That would be even cheaper than most entry level NAS Systems. I guess I'm gonna go with that Motherboard and SoC!

[b1nary27]

2 hours ago, karsnoordhuis said:

Didnt asrock have an atom based 8 core cpu on an itx board? Passively cooled so low power, ddr3 ecc support witch is cheap as chips, a massive amount of sata port and 2 ethernet ports with a third for ipmi

I assume you mean the ASRock C2750D4I? That one looks also really good to be honest. Of course it's a bit pricey in comparison to the other ones but 2x 1000Mbit Ethernet is pretty nice, as well as 8 cores @2.4GHz. So I'm pretty sure which drives to pick, which PSU, Case & Memory but still struggle on which Mainboard & CPU to pick.

[karsnoordhuis]

As wendell from teksyndicate (now level1techs) said, it is great for transcoding and streaming media to a kodi box for example with multiple clients hitting it at the same time

[NelizMastr]

Plus, a CPU like that won't have to max itself all the time because of the excess capacity. This improves performance while reducing power consumption. Win/win  

[b1nary27]

Ok, so I'm gonna list my current picks right here with the reason's I picked them so if I'm incorrect on something maybe someone may correct me.

RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600 (supported by both ASRock Boards/both SoC's; and it's more than enough for my use case)

PSU: Some 400W be quiet! (probably the one @NelizMastr recommended) as I made some good experience with be quiet!

Case: I still got a normal tower case laying around somewhere at home but the Node 304 looks really good and enough space for more hard drives when needed so I'm gonna go with that one.

Hard Drives: Two WD Red's (either with 2TB or 4TB each)

SSD: Got one laying around for the OS so no need for a new one

Motherboard + CPU: Either the ASRock C2550D4I (quad-core) or the ASRock C2750D4I (octa-core) the only differences I found was the amount of cores, the amount of cache and the different TDP (both still have a very low TDP with 14W & 20W)

So would you guys recommend the C2550D4I or the C2750D4I? I've found the C2550D4I at a price of ~290€ and the C2750D4I at around 390€. Do you think the extra charge is worth it?

[b1nary27]

So, little update on my decisions regarding the Motherboard & CPU. I'm going to pick the octa-core model from ASRock, but I'm not sure about the Memory currently. The memory linked by @NelizMastr is ECC memory but only runs @ 1333MHz whereas this runs @ 1600MHz and it's reg ECC memory. Should I buy that one instead?

[NelizMastr]

14 hours ago, b1nary27 said:

So, little update on my decisions regarding the Motherboard & CPU. I'm going to pick the octa-core model from ASRock, but I'm not sure about the Memory currently. The memory linked by @NelizMastr is ECC memory but only runs @ 1333MHz whereas this runs @ 1600MHz and it's reg ECC memory. Should I buy that one instead?

You'll have to check if the board supports registered ECC. ECC UDIMM and ECC RDIMM aren't compatible with eachother or supported at the same time.

 

On a FreeNAS forum, I came across this line:

 

Quote

The Avoton will not take registered RAM. There are 16GB unregistered ecc dimms available, but they are pricey and tougher to come by.

So you'll need ECC UDIMMs. More expensive than ECC Reg, sadly.