Hi Everyone.
Want to sort out my home server situation and would appreciate some advice.
Currently have:
- Seagate 4 Bay Business NAS with 4x4TB HDDs, RAID10
- Mac Mini 2011 i7 (4 Threads), 16GB RAM, 1x250GB SSD, 1x2TB HDD
- Time Capsule 3TB with AC WiFi
I'm about to go on one of the Cisco Meraki Courses where I'll be treated to some free hardware for my troubles (Firewall, Switch & Access Point), so my plan is to retire my Time Capsule, and review my entire setup.
At the same time, my NAS is woefully slow - at peak I get about 80Mbits from it - and it appears thats down to the cheap CPU within it, so, I want to build a server, and do something like:
- 1x VM for FreeNAS (to replace the existing NAS I have and provide my storage & Time Machine capability for my kit)
- 1x VM for Security Onion - want to have a play with this, looks like it benefits from plenty of threads/cores & RAM - https://security-onion-solutions.github.io/security-onion/ for those that are interested
- 1x VM for my Plex Library and media management(So I can take it off the Mac and just return that for day to day desktop use).
- Ability to spin up other VMs as needed for playing around (Wouldn't mind sorting out a VM to do things like DNS, Proxy & VPN that I can then feed into the Security VM too)... also if I can find time to play around with it, I may go back to using Smoothwall.
So... I need to build something that I can chuck the discs into, and have enough grunt to drive the VMs.
I was thinking about getting something like below for Hardware
- AMD FX-8320 CPU (16MB Cache, 8 Cores, seems to do OK in benchmarks against chips that are more expensive). As I'm looking at something that will be running various VMs, I am guessing more cores/threads the better, so the limitations of AMDs in single mitigated situations is minimised?
- Appropriate MoBo for above
- 32GB RAM
- Small SSD for the Host OS (Recommendations on a suitable host OS hugely appreciated)
- Hardware RAID Card for the 4x 4TB Discs I'll be taking out of the existing NAS. I'd look to run in RAID 5 to get some of the storage back ideally, but would consider other options if suitable. I presume the obvious choice is the HP PERC card that people seem do recommend I get off eBay ?
What are the obvious things I'm not considering that I need to be thinking about?
All help and criticism appreciated !
Want to sort out my home server situation and would appreciate some advice.
Currently have:
- Seagate 4 Bay Business NAS with 4x4TB HDDs, RAID10
- Mac Mini 2011 i7 (4 Threads), 16GB RAM, 1x250GB SSD, 1x2TB HDD
- Time Capsule 3TB with AC WiFi
I'm about to go on one of the Cisco Meraki Courses where I'll be treated to some free hardware for my troubles (Firewall, Switch & Access Point), so my plan is to retire my Time Capsule, and review my entire setup.
At the same time, my NAS is woefully slow - at peak I get about 80Mbits from it - and it appears thats down to the cheap CPU within it, so, I want to build a server, and do something like:
- 1x VM for FreeNAS (to replace the existing NAS I have and provide my storage & Time Machine capability for my kit)
- 1x VM for Security Onion - want to have a play with this, looks like it benefits from plenty of threads/cores & RAM - https://security-onion-solutions.github.io/security-onion/ for those that are interested
- 1x VM for my Plex Library and media management(So I can take it off the Mac and just return that for day to day desktop use).
- Ability to spin up other VMs as needed for playing around (Wouldn't mind sorting out a VM to do things like DNS, Proxy & VPN that I can then feed into the Security VM too)... also if I can find time to play around with it, I may go back to using Smoothwall.
So... I need to build something that I can chuck the discs into, and have enough grunt to drive the VMs.
I was thinking about getting something like below for Hardware
- AMD FX-8320 CPU (16MB Cache, 8 Cores, seems to do OK in benchmarks against chips that are more expensive). As I'm looking at something that will be running various VMs, I am guessing more cores/threads the better, so the limitations of AMDs in single mitigated situations is minimised?
- Appropriate MoBo for above
- 32GB RAM
- Small SSD for the Host OS (Recommendations on a suitable host OS hugely appreciated)
- Hardware RAID Card for the 4x 4TB Discs I'll be taking out of the existing NAS. I'd look to run in RAID 5 to get some of the storage back ideally, but would consider other options if suitable. I presume the obvious choice is the HP PERC card that people seem do recommend I get off eBay ?
What are the obvious things I'm not considering that I need to be thinking about?
All help and criticism appreciated !
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