Need a little help planning home server

[Nimblor]

Im putting together some ideas for a home server. I am finally getting around to setting up my home network and I am receiving very conflicting information on what the best course is. I would like a managed setup with some vlans so I was thinking about a server with proxmox and a vm for opensense to manage my network. I would have to add a NIC for it and 4 port gb cards are pretty cheap. Also, vms for plex, truenas, pihole, something that can run sonarr and similar stuff. Ideally it would be headless and hidden away somewhere in the basement or something. My plex will have local and external users, maybe 3 at a time absolute max.

I don't have Gb internet and I have enough not too old routers, and gb switches around to use that I could supplement with some APs if needed. The cost of a good router kills me and I need someone to tell me why my plan will not work.

Hardware would be an ebay r620, r720 Or repurposing my current PC, maybe adding some more ram. I have never worked with a server like r620 but it looks like fun.

All thoughts on this are welcome.

 

[The_Jizzler]

Your on the right track. Your machine in your sig will do what you want with some added NIC's. Then again a R620/720 sounds fun too, and are super bargains on ebay. I have a 620 myself so I am partial. How much storage do you need?

 

[EarthDog]

Sounds like overcomplication for what you want to accomplish.. Vlans, etc... there really isn't a need to separate out chunks of your home network IMO. But for giggles and practice, hell to the yes!!

 

[Nimblor]

Your on the right track. Your machine in your sig will do what you want with some added NIC's. Then again a R620/720 sounds fun too, and are super bargains on ebay. I have a 620 myself so I am partial. How much storage do you need?

I think that I currently need about 10-15 TB. My system has been pretty steady at that size. Room to grow is always good. Currently I have 9 hard drives in my case, no raid. It is a bit of a mess but it is ok and stable.

The home networking interest is because I am going to hardwire for media and consoles and I also have a few IOT and am interested in getting into home automation a little bit. I am a little concerned about security if I have remote plex access.

 

[The_Jizzler]

In that case your probably looking at an r720 LFF so you can use 3.5" drives. I'd be looking for a r720xd LFF personally. The xd chassis will have 12 3.5" slots and an optional "flex Bay" in the rear for 2 more 2.5" drives. The r720 will want it's disks in raid so if you move your existing disks, you'll need to back them up, wipe and create raid array, restore data. Also, Dell raid cards will complain about non Dell drives. You will lose some predictive failure features and maybe something else, can't recall at the moment. Not too big a deal as used Dell SAS drives at 4tb or less are pretty cheap.... orrrrr you could go with whatever server, r620, r720, whatever, and put an external HBA card and hook it up to a JBOD cabinet and fill it with your current disks and they will just pass through to windows as they are. Just another option to consider...

 

[Nimblor]

After some discussion here at the house It looks like the plan is going to be to turn the current rig into a server. (Then I get to build a new PC for me ) I will need to get a nic card, sas raid card, a quadro card for plex encoding and probably some more ram?. I saw that the 4tb sas drives are very inexpensive so that is a good option for expansion. Do I need to have any worries about non-ecc ram? It does not seem compatible with my current CPU. Also, adding ram, are any matched DDR3 1866 8gb sticks good or am I better off getting a matched set of 4 sticks. Is higher capacity better?
Lots of questions.

 

[The_Jizzler]

Honestly, you could take your current rig, toss in a quad nic, load the OS, setup a soft raid (Linux mdadm or windows storage spaces) and your off to the races. You wouldn't need the raid card or new drives. GPU isn't needed for Plex in my experience, transcodes fine in a VM with no GPU passthrough. You could go for more ram, but not critical really. Non ecc should be fine. Matched sets are nice, but if you can just get another dual set of the same RAM that's how I'd go. 32gb total should be good

 

[Janus67]

You don't need a Quadro for Plex encoding. I use a 1650 Super and it can do as many encoded as I need it to up to 4k. There's a simple driver 'hack' that unlocks the encoding limit if you think you will be more than 2 (maybe 3 now?) At once.

 

[Nimblor]

You don't need a Quadro for Plex encoding. I use a 1650 Super and it can do as many encoded as I need it to up to 4k. There's a simple driver 'hack' that unlocks the encoding limit if you think you will be more than 2 (maybe 3 now?) At once.

Currently I am using integrated graphics and my 4770k gets bogged down with transcoding. I have not looked at options at all but I need something to help with the transcoding. I was thinking about a quadro p400 or p1000; the 1650 super is priced higher but looks far superior. I have seen successful systems with a quado and pci pass through with proxmox but not with a 1650 super. Assuming it is the same, that would be a nice addition!

 

[Nimblor]

I think I can make this all work with my current motherboard. I found another matching 16gb of ram. The motherboard has 2 3.0 x 16 slots, 1 2.0x4, and 1x1 slot. I looked at the 1650 supers.. they are expensive. I can get a quadro p400 for around $100. It looks like there is a patch to let it encode more than 2x. The Intel I350 can go in the 2.0 slot and thinking about a LSI 9211-8i for the other 3.0 slot. This leaves the 1x1. That is no room for a nvme card which is kind of a bummer.

 

[Nimblor]

Thought I would post an update. After exhausting research on a variety of different options and then test-driving proxmox, unraid, truenas core, and scale, ubuntu server, and associated derivations with nas software running as a vm, or container, etc. on a laptop with a USB array ; I settled on Unraid (bare metal). It has a very low intimidation factor, nice gui, and a huge support following. I purchased a sas 3 HBA and bought 5 10tb sas arsenal hard drives. It took almost a week to move the media data from my jbod mess to the array. The hard drives are fast and loud, its like a marble machine in there, but it works great. I have a 500gb ssd running as the cache and have 3 more sas/sata and 5 more sata ports for additional ssd or whatever else I can shoehorn into the case. I will probably add some of my 4tb sata drives but I won't need to worry about that for a while.

I decided that I did non really need any 10gb networking because the building of the array is sort of a one time thing. I could always add it later if 'need' it. Several slow and steady rsynch sessions got transfers taken care of. Research showed me that a server also running pfsense or whaterver acting as a router is a problem looking for a solution. If anything stops working, your network is also down. This pervasive concern presented a level of needed competency that is beyond my skill and interest set.

Setup went pretty smoothly, I think I have enough ram at 32gb (maxed out) to run plex transcoding in ram. I set 15gb up for that and it seems to be working just fine.

I was able to come in under budget with my new PC build so the next project is getting a new router so I can get a reverse proxy set up and get rid of this spectrum equipment. Thanks everyone for your help and support with this project.