My Home Server Build Journey (Log)

[ronnie_gogs]

This thread is to keep a track of my build log for my Homeserver. Lets call it the my first journey into building something which is reliable and doesn't resemble the DIY monster under my bed home server which I have now.

First up choice of Hardware
I wanted to pick up a Silverstone DS380 with an 8 hot swap drive bays and Intel Avoton C2750 Octa-Core motherboard mainly C2750D4I

Cost would have been quite a lot with following components
DS380
Motherboard C2750D4I
ECC 16 GB ram
6 HDD around 12-18 TB (WD Red)
Power Supply

I am estimating around 1800-2000 SGD

Then I started thinking about actual servers. Mainly old servers which would still work fine. With Xeon processors and good ECC ram, hot swappable bays, raid controllers and redundant power supplies designed to run 24/7.

After a lot of research I finally ended up finding and buying an old Dell Poweredge 2950 Gen III with follwing specs
2.5 Quad Core IntelXeon E5420 x 1
2GB x 8
500GB SATA 7.2K RPM x 2
Standard in-built PSU x 1 + Redundant PSU x 1
DVD-ROM x 1
Bezel x 1
Windows 2008 licence key x 1

For 350 SGD

It gives me options to upgrade processor in future as well which I can get for cheap now a days from ebay.

It weighs a ton and sounds like a jet engine with delta fans. Will be doing a mod to decrease fan noise and build a server rack with Ikea Lack table.

Second Choice software

Now I conflicted here as my main usage will be a data/media server for running Plex, storing my RAW files and experimenting with VM and file servers

Options
1. Freenas (will do all of media NAS storage part)
2. Ubuntu
3. Windows server with Plex
4. FreeBSD

Should I use ZFS or Hardware raid

This is the current progress now so will update more as I go along.

Advice on my build are welcome... Mainly which OS should I choose.

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

Been using freenas since a year. No complaints at all. The base Freenas is rock solid and has never crashed on me. Setting it up was easy too. Everything can be done from a web browser.
Main points to consider when using freenas is
1. You should be open to give up hardware RAID over software RAID
2. FreeNAS will not let you expand storage. Meaning, once a volume is created with say ZFS Mirroring and down the line you decide to add another hard disk and create a ZFS RAID5 volume, there is no other way then to destroy the volume and start over
3. Is the onboard NIC supported by FreeNAS - easily can be tested by booting it once from freenas

 

[ronnie_gogs]

Yes the points you mentioned are the ones stopping me from going for Freenas right away... I would like more flexibility as I may go for hosting my website at home in future so would like to have a lab environment to test.. Plex and torrenting for media would be main usage now and ubuntu can handle that absolutely fine without any issues.. Although I am a bit of a linux noob but there is nothing a bit of googling wont solve...

Ubuntu + Plex seems to be winning as an option for me now.

This server would be my secondary backup source I have a 4 TB thunderbolt drive which I use for main backup.

I plan to use ZFS even if I use ubuntu and disable h/w raid or I could go for traditional Raid 5 configuration

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

In my opinion, use the server as the main backup device and used the 4TB drive as the drive for storing ZFS snapshots and as a secondary backup device. that way you will get better performance, flexibility and data reliability. Plex and transmission are available as plugins are available with freeNAS

 

[ronnie_gogs]

Yeah that would be better but I will give both a shot and see which one I like better waiting on some hdd trays now so will play around with the two 500gb which I have ..