Spec a server for a server newbie!

[Megahurtz400]

Hey all!

I'm wanting to up my knowledge of networking/cyber security/servers in general so am looking for a bit of advice

I currently have a RasberryPi 4b running a plex server, which doesn't seem to have the grunt to transcode some bits to mobiles/smart TVs, so wanting an upgrade of that, but also I want to really up my knowledge of servers/linux/networking so wanting more of a "homelab" set up so I can really start playing around with stuff.

My first thought is that just grabbing an "old server" is the way to go, but i'm not 100% confident in what i'm looking for.

Currently only have 1 x 8TB HDD for my plex server, this just stores media (TV & Movies) at the moment so while I wouldn't mind some redundancy, if I lose all this it's not the end of the world.

I do want to sort a solution for storing old photos, with redundancy and possibly an automatic sync to a cloud service (Have a Google Workspace account) if that's possible?

Would also want to get to know Active Directory, SDN and just a whole host of other Networking/CyberSec topics.

So I come to you, the faithful OcUK hivemind! I'm not necessarily looking for a straight "buy this thing," but more some gentle handle holding/guidance on what I should be looking for?

Thanks as always!

 

[Armageus]

My first thought is that just grabbing an "old server" is the way to go, but i'm not 100% confident in what i'm looking f

99% this isn't a great idea. Whilst old servers are cheap (and still pretty capable), they use a ton of power, are generally noisy, have a lot of proprietary parts and the preferred rackmount form factor isn't particularly compatible with most homes
(FWIW the 1% is normally if you are going to be dealing with the associated servers at work day in day out, added experience is always a benefit in these situations, or if you are able to obtain them for cheap/free)

Edit:
The Exception being the HP Microserver range, but the older models are now getting on a bit, and the newer models are too expensive for what they offer.

Currently only have 1 x 8TB HDD for my plex server, this just stores media (TV & Movies) at the moment so while I wouldn't mind some redundancy, if I lose all this it's not the end of the world.

Unraid is generally the best option especially for media - it provides a parity volume that gives you some data protection, without sacrificing much space.

I do want to sort a solution for storing old photos, with redundancy and possibly an automatic sync to a cloud service (Have a Google Workspace account) if that's possible?

I've not personally used Unraid, but I'm fairly sure there are cloud backup plugins for it

So I come to you, the faithful OcUK hivemind! I'm not necessarily looking for a straight "buy this thing," but more some gentle handle holding/guidance on what I should be looking for?

Hardware wise, couple of schools of thought - either:-

- single big server box running Unraid (e.g. based around a decent Ryzen processor, lots of storage and ideally an NVIDIA graphics card for plex Transcoding), most services can be run under Docker, but you can also run Virtual machines e.g. for Windows Active Directory

- separate NAS purely for storage (either off the shelf or built e.g. with Unraid), and then 1 or more low power "compute" units which can be e.g. Raspberry Pi's or small form factor OEM PCs

Introducing Project TinyMiniMicro Home Lab Revolution

STH Project TinyMiniMicro is set to revolutionize the home lab segment with clusters of high-quality, quiet, low power, and inexpensive nodes

www.servethehome.com

Perfect Project TinyMiniMicro Pushing a 1L PC as a Server Concept

In our Perfect Project TinyMiniMicro build, we show three tiers of upgrades to turn the 1L HP Elite Mini G9 into a super Proxmox VE server

www.servethehome.com

 

[Megahurtz400]

@Armageus thanks for such a comprehensive reply!

For some reason I'm leaning more towards one big box holding the server and storage, I do have a 2700x/Gigabyte X370 Gaming 5/16GB DDR4 in the loft which I can dig out. Was playing up which made me upgrade but I need to troubleshoot it anyway.

Say I go with that set up as a start, would the next step be finding a "consumer" level case with plenty of space for 3.5" drives and getting things up and running?

I take it I don't have to worry about RAID controllers and the like, or the lack of more complex RAID settings as Unraid does away with the need for it?

 

[Armageus]

For some reason I'm leaning more towards one big box holding the server and storage, I do have a 2700x/Gigabyte X370 Gaming 5/16GB DDR4 in the loft which I can dig out. Was playing up which made me upgrade but I need to troubleshoot it anyway.

Sounds like ideal hardware - 2700x should have plenty of grunt, and the motherboard has 8 SATA ports. The only thing you will need is at least some form of basic graphics card to get it set up.
(Also should be plenty of "overclocking" options etc that can be used to help lower power consumption if needed. Don't forget you can also disable a lot of unused devices in the BIOS to save a few watts e.g. onboard Audio, 2nd LAN port, legacy LPT/COM devices etc)

Say I go with that set up as a start, would the next step be finding a "consumer" level case with plenty of space for 3.5" drives and getting things up and running?

Yep - Just a case of finding a decent tower with as many 3.5" drive bays as you can.

I take it I don't have to worry about RAID controllers and the like, or the lack of more complex RAID settings as Unraid does away with the need for it?

Yep the beauty of Unraid is it takes care of the data protection, and so just needs the drives to be connected via a basic SATA connection, no RAID controller or anything needed.

 

[Megahurtz400]

Sounds like ideal hardware - 2700x should have plenty of grunt, and the motherboard has 8 SATA ports. The only thing you will need is at least some form of basic graphics card to get it set up.
(Also should be plenty of "overclocking" options etc that can be used to help lower power consumption if needed. Don't forget you can also disable a lot of unused devices in the BIOS to save a few watts e.g. onboard Audio, 2nd LAN port, legacy LPT/COM devices etc)


Yep - Just a case of finding a decent tower with as many 3.5" drive bays as you can.


Yep the beauty of Unraid is it takes care of the data protection, and so just needs the drives to be connected via a basic SATA connection, no RAID controller or anything needed.

Epic! Thanks for the help

Found the Antec P101 which seems like a nice case to kick things off with, space for 11 x 3.5" drives out the box and should take all my current stuff.

I do have an Nvidia GTX 750 (maybe?), or a 3070 but would rather keep the 3070 as my backup GPU, not to mention the extra power draw and it's probably a bit overkill

 

[Avalon]

Epic! Thanks for the help

Found the Antec P101 which seems like a nice case to kick things off with, space for 11 x 3.5" drives out the box and should take all my current stuff.

I do have an Nvidia GTX 750 (maybe?), or a 3070 but would rather keep the 3070 as my backup GPU, not to mention the extra power draw and it's probably a bit overkill

A cheap Tesla P4 is probably your best option - 8w idle and essentially twice the RAM and encode units of an equivalent Quadro for bugger all ££ and also able to do stable diffusion if you are that way inclined. Beware the low end Quadro’s, the M2000 did HEVC despite what NVIDIA will tell you and is cheap, but no HDR support, the P400 does HDR but is RAM constrained and things like the 1000 are stream limited, P2000 is decent, but over priced. Idle GPU power is often lower than you think, and a card you already own is better used than sat on a shelf.

 

[Megahurtz400]

99% this isn't a great idea. Whilst old servers are cheap (and still pretty capable), they use a ton of power, are generally noisy, have a lot of proprietary parts and the preferred rackmount form factor isn't particularly compatible with most homes
(FWIW the 1% is normally if you are going to be dealing with the associated servers at work day in day out, added experience is always a benefit in these situations, or if you are able to obtain them for cheap/free)

Edit:
The Exception being the HP Microserver range, but the older models are now getting on a bit, and the newer models are too expensive for what they offer.



Unraid is generally the best option especially for media - it provides a parity volume that gives you some data protection, without sacrificing much space.


I've not personally used Unraid, but I'm fairly sure there are cloud backup plugins for it


Hardware wise, couple of schools of thought - either:-

- single big server box running Unraid (e.g. based around a decent Ryzen processor, lots of storage and ideally an NVIDIA graphics card for plex Transcoding), most services can be run under Docker, but you can also run Virtual machines e.g. for Windows Active Directory

- separate NAS purely for storage (either off the shelf or built e.g. with Unraid), and then 1 or more low power "compute" units which can be e.g. Raspberry Pi's or small form factor OEM PCs

Introducing Project TinyMiniMicro Home Lab Revolution

STH Project TinyMiniMicro is set to revolutionize the home lab segment with clusters of high-quality, quiet, low power, and inexpensive nodes

www.servethehome.com

Perfect Project TinyMiniMicro Pushing a 1L PC as a Server Concept

In our Perfect Project TinyMiniMicro build, we show three tiers of upgrades to turn the 1L HP Elite Mini G9 into a super Proxmox VE server

www.servethehome.com

Bit of a thread revive, sorry @Armageus!

Finally got around to getting some drives to make this worth it, as well as an Wireless AP.

Just want to check that i'm on the right path before I start exploring how to go about doing it:

One big box containing:
- 2700x set up, with Nivida GPU
- Intel i340 2-port GB NIC
- Drives galore:
- 1 x 1TB NVME
- 1 x 512GB SSD
- 2 x 240GB SSD
- 2 x 12TB HDD
- 1 x 8TB HDD
- 1 x 2TB HDD

On it I want to look into setting up:

- Unraid as primary OS
- Plex as a service in Docker
- OPNSense as a VM
- Other VMs (Kali, Windows Server etc.)

Anything above sound like it's obviously not going to work?

Thanks again

 

[Avalon]

Just checking that i340-2T is for dedicated hardware passthrough to OPN? If so and as long as you are OK with loosing the network - and the whale of displeasure from everyone else in the household - then that should work. NVMe for cache, 1x12 for parity and 12+8+2 for storage, don't add SSD’s to the main pool.

 

[Megahurtz400]

Just checking that i340-2T is for dedicated hardware passthrough to OPN? If so and as long as you are OK with loosing the network - and the whale of displeasure from everyone else in the household - then that should work. NVMe for cache, 1x12 for parity and 12+8+2 for storage, don't add SSD’s to the main pool.

Yep, fine if the network does go down! The ISP router will be sat next to everything so if things get really bad can just flick it back on!

What’s the reason for not adding SSDs to the pool out of interest? Is there a way I can use them for something else, like a separate pool just for VMs or something like that?

 

[Avalon]

Yep, fine if the network does go down! The ISP router will be sat next to everything so if things get really bad can just flick it back on!

What’s the reason for not adding SSDs to the pool out of interest? Is there a way I can use them for something else, like a separate pool just for VMs or something like that?

Background garbage collection will break parity. In terms of use, you can use them as a dedicated flash pool, scratch disk, direct pass through to VM’s or a whole load of other things, but they’re 240-512GB SSD’s, while they are certainly usable, at some point you have to consider if they’re useful in this scenario or better made use of in a different way? The NVMe for example is likely much better suited to hosting VM’s.

 

[Demon]

Yep, fine if the network does go down! The ISP router will be sat next to everything so if things get really bad can just flick it back on!

What’s the reason for not adding SSDs to the pool out of interest? Is there a way I can use them for something else, like a separate pool just for VMs or something like that?

Bit of a thread revive, sorry @Armageus!

Finally got around to getting some drives to make this worth it, as well as an Wireless AP.

Just want to check that i'm on the right path before I start exploring how to go about doing it:

One big box containing:
- 2700x set up, with Nivida GPU
- Intel i340 2-port GB NIC
- Drives galore:
- 1 x 1TB NVME
- 1 x 512GB SSD
- 2 x 240GB SSD
- 2 x 12TB HDD
- 1 x 8TB HDD
- 1 x 2TB HDD

On it I want to look into setting up:

- Unraid as primary OS
- Plex as a service in Docker
- OPNSense as a VM
- Other VMs (Kali, Windows Server etc.)

Anything above sound like it's obviously not going to work?

Thanks again

A good idea, I just threw old stuff together for my server, Ryzen 3600 / B540-F / Nvidia 1660 Super in a Corsair 750D with extra drive cages, and eventually got a HBA card (LSI 9207-8i preflashed in IT mode for TrueNAS/Unraid for £60) for 8 more SATA ports. I originally had a 2700x/x370 motherboard, but found the 2700x a bit power hungry, the 3600 dropped system idle by 25w! however, if you have it already, it's a no brainer!
If you were starting afresh, then a good Intel CPU with UHD graphics are newer would allow casual transcoding, the 1660 Super is overkill, it can do 8 4k streams at once, which is a use case that never happens, I only need to transcode a max of 2 4k streams at a time and an intel i5 alderlake was up for that job, it just took a bit longer to get going..

The way unraid will steer you is to have a cache pool, which is where you want fast solid state storage (I use NVME m.2 WD Black drives) in a mirrored RAID pair, I use this for buffering all file transfers, all docker app data, VM HDD images etc.. and it's mirrored for redundancy.
Then your main array is a load of HDDs, but the only limitation is the parity drive (the one you'll effectively lose in terms of storage space) has to be the largest drive size..

And then all my ad-hoc SSDs or old small HDDs I didn't want to throw, I just use the 'unassigned devices' plugin to have those mounted as just regular one off disks, and use those for plex transcoding space, temp download space, etc, and I also create a mirror of really vital data from my main array to a single backup drive using DirSyncPro in a docker for added protection..

Your setup should be fine, there can be issues with passing through various hardware as per all VMs, but the unraid forums are very good for helping with that..

 

[Megahurtz400]

Cheers guys!

Will get Unraid installed this evening and start having a play. Will leave the small SSDs out of the pool too.

If I set the NVME as the cache, will I be able to use that for VMs and the like? Or is that strictly for temp storing data before writing to the disks?

 

[jigger]

Having the system running a firewall and routing is iffy. I’d separate that from the server.

 

[Megahurtz400]

Having the system running a firewall and routing is iffy. I’d separate that from the server.

That's the long term plan!

Is the reason it's iffy because if the Unraid goes down i'll lose all internet? Or are there other concerns?

 

[dlockers]

Search my thread on here for my old ESxi Whitebox decommission. It is just a case of joining mission critical stuff with more playgroundy type stuff.

I know it may contradict your current thinking, but don't OCD on number of devices. You can pick this hardware up so cheaply --- for e.g. I run a small Dell thing I got off of MM for Plex (i3/256gb SSD/8gb of ram), and a small Dell OptiPlex as a Plex server. If I wanted a NAS I'd probably grab another Optiplex (or use your hardware you have listed there).

 

[jigger]

That's the long term plan!

Is the reason it's iffy because if the Unraid goes down i'll lose all internet? Or are there other concerns?

Yeah, you open a whole host of potential problems. One is you paint yourself into a corner into a corner somewhat for hardware resources and potential future services. And yes, you have some potential security gotcha’s. I’d definitely have a dedicated system.

 

[Megahurtz400]

Yeah, you open a whole host of potential problems. One is you paint yourself into a corner into a corner somewhat for hardware resources and potential future services. And yes, you have some potential security gotcha’s. I’d definitely have a dedicated system.

Weirdly, we've just replaced an old Optiplex D08S with 4GB ram for something with 16GB, I take it this would be more than enough for OPNsense?

Annoyingly the Intel i340 NIC I bought last week was a full height version, but that can live dormant inside my 2700x machine till it needs to be used I suppose

 

[jigger]

Weirdly, we've just replaced an old Optiplex D08S with 4GB ram for something with 16GB, I take it this would be more than enough for OPNsense?

Annoyingly the Intel i340 NIC I bought last week was a full height version, but that can live dormant inside my 2700x machine till it needs to be used I suppose

Should be fine. This touches on some aspects.

 

[Avalon]

A few more thoughts - The forbidden router covers this better than many things I have seen. With dedicated hardware pass through you skip many of the security concerns and performance issues, though obviously the router only comes up after UR has booted. Cache will be where dockers and VM’s host as standard, but they only boot/load after the array is mounted, so technically if your array won’t start, you have no network. OPN can run on 4GB, depends how much extra you plan on adding, but if you want light resources, then OWRT is able to run comfortably on 1GB. The i340-2T just needs a low profile bracket - I used a 4T in a 2U and LFF box.

 

[Megahurtz400]

Thanks for the advice guys, really appreciate it! @Avalon @jigger @dlockers @Demon

Have a low profile Intel i350 nic on the way from eBay, and hopefully this weekend I can get Unraid installed on my big box, and OPNsense installed on the Optiplex and turn the radiator off in the office from now on

Will report back with how it goes, i'm sure i'll find some more questions to ask