Server building and components guides?

jermzilla · November 16, 2018

Google searching has been a pain trying to find some server building and components guides. I keep getting directed to LTT and I see that a lot of the members here are pretty helpful. I enjoy watching Linus' videos so if you guys have any videos of his that are good for what I am looking for I would love to watch those as well. Essentially I am looking to build myself a home server, a powerhouse in itself I would imagine because I want it to perform in the following way:

Run linux + homeassistant
Host websites (of smaller scale)
Run 1-2 game servers or more depending on capabilities.
Act as a NAS and store family photos and videos
Work as Plex Media Server to stream movies and TV shows
Output/stream music from apps like Spotify and Pandora to house speakers
If possible, run security monitoring software for IP cameras and sensors (still not sure how to handle this though)

Most of these services I would like to have running simultaneously 24/7. So with that said I don't have a specific budget in mind, likely no more than $1000 but the cheaper the better and I am open to used parts and building my own. I also haven't really taken into consideration power consumption costs, but that is a big factor if this is going to be on 24/7.

Any help is much appreciated, thanks!

AbsoluteFool · November 16, 2018

3 hours ago, jermzilla said:

Google searching has been a pain trying to find some server building and components guides. I keep getting directed to LTT and I see that a lot of the members here are pretty helpful. I enjoy watching Linus' videos so if you guys have any videos of his that are good for what I am looking for I would love to watch those as well. Essentially I am looking to build myself a home server, a powerhouse in itself I would imagine because I want it to perform in the following way:

Run linux + homeassistant

Host websites (of smaller scale)

Run 1-2 game servers or more depending on capabilities.

Act as a NAS and store family photos and videos

Work as Plex Media Server to stream movies and TV shows

Output/stream music from apps like Spotify and Pandora to house speakers

If possible, run security monitoring software for IP cameras and sensors (still not sure how to handle this though)

Most of these services I would like to have running simultaneously 24/7. So with that said I don't have a specific budget in mind, likely no more than $1000 but the cheaper the better and I am open to used parts and building my own. I also haven't really taken into consideration power consumption costs, but that is a big factor if this is going to be on 24/7.

Any help is much appreciated, thanks!

I'd say you can do all this with consumer hardware. However i would personally consider using a hypervisor for this. Maybe something like this:

VM1 PLEX, Linux with Samba (Will also work as a NAS) Can probably also be used for a web server as Plex uses another port.

VM2 Game servers.

VM3 Survilance.

Not sure what you mean by Output/stream music from apps like Spotify..

myselfolli · November 17, 2018

19 hours ago, AbsoluteFool said:

Not sure what you mean by Output/stream music from apps like Spotify..

Following, because I am intrigued what OP means by this and what comes from it ^^

jermzilla · November 18, 2018

13 hours ago, myselfolli said:

Following, because I am intrigued what OP means by this and what comes from it ^^

I was thinking of connecting an audio receiver off the server so that it would be able to play music throughout the speakers that runs off it, but I realized that some of these audio receivers have the app built in

AbsoluteFool · November 18, 2018

10 hours ago, jermzilla said:

I was thinking of connecting an audio receiver off the server so that it would be able to play music throughout the speakers that runs off it, but I realized that some of these audio receivers have the app built in

Like mapping the audio pipeline? I'm not aware of any programs on servers that can do things like that. But i would assume you'll just create a worse music expenrience by moving it from place to place. That would be kinda if i had streaming server 1, stream c,ontent to streaming server 2. to actually get an output. And that is without counting for the application pipeline itself.

You'll have to do your own testing on this. And in this case i'd put this in it's own VM for testing purposes.