Home server related stuff

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Slow

Original Poster:

6,973 posts

136 months

Thursday 22nd October 2020
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Looking at setting up a home server mostly for file sharing/much more space for storage, my pc already had 4 drives inside of it alone. Having had a drive st a brick and die on me taking 3tb of movies I thought it might be time to move to a home server with raid as to prevent these type of issues in future.

But why limit it to just my pc when the whole house could get onto it via the ethernet and wireless connections? Same goes for the stupid printer which is plugged into the slower computer.

I was doing some basic research to start me off as not sure the best way to go about this as servers arent really my thing, building and setting up a computer, running ethernet and access points is more what I have done so far with my IT skills. I found that some people have started to set up a single monster PC running VM's to each computer (well just monitor/peripherals now) using things like 16 core epyc cpu's, 64gb ram and a graphics card per VM as the VM doesnt let you split up the gpu the same as a cpu lets you.

Currently there are 2 computers with 2 more laptops (these would just want wireless access into the file storage system and printer). The older computer is using a i5 2500k with a gtx 570 and something like 8gb of RAM. The better one has a i7 6700k, gtx 1080 (soon to be a 3080 for that lovely rtx) and 32gb of ram. Then you start thinking about setting up some weaker 2 core old gpu VM purely on the TV's with wireless keyboard/mouse for watching movies off the server.


Basically what I am asking is what do we think are the best options for moving forward?


Cost is obviously going to be larger to set up a VM server but when replacing one slow computer and wanting a storage server anyway...
This feels like man maths with a car where you start off with a £3000 focus and end with a £19000 focus rs.



geeks

9,121 posts

138 months

Thursday 22nd October 2020
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Buy a NAS. Honestly a server for file storage at home is enormous overkill

Slow

Original Poster:

6,973 posts

136 months

Thursday 22nd October 2020
quotequote all
I did think as much but between wanting in excess of 20tb of data spread over multiple drives to keep costs down upon disc deaths - I’ve had a few die so it’s my biggest fear.

Ideally would be looking at 10 drives of 3tb each to account for raid 5 losses while staying above 20tb and having it not fail upon 1 dead drive?

When I learnt about raid it was only 0 and 1 where you had 2 drive both die together or halved your storage space basically by having duplicate drives.

As I say a bit new to this but when I looked at nas they looked to suit less drives much better.


Slow

Original Poster:

6,973 posts

136 months

Thursday 22nd October 2020
quotequote all
ash73 said:
I wouldn't use RAID for this, I'd have 2 sets of storage, the primary backing up regularly to the secondary.

The backup should be off-site, or in an outbuilding.

It's not a transactional system, media content isn't updated frequently so a periodic backup is adequate.

RAID doesn't protect against fire or theft, so you STILL need an external backup, i.e. you need triple the storage!

It also doesn't protect against cryptolocker viruses, which can infect all network drives.

And it doesn't protect against accidental deletion.

You'll probably want to do it anyway... I'm just pointing out it doesn't really achieve much.
I am not that worried about the data that theft/fire worries me overly. It’s rather the hassle of redownloading and losing currently worked on projects having only a 30mb connection due to location.

Currently have 8tb basically full and before the 3tb death was closer to 10. Figure 20 is what I should aim for to give me spare space without worry and in the future I could either add drives or upgrade drive capacity. It is not all movies, it’s just the main use the other machines would be getting out of it.

I am open to all suggestions but from my googling a server set up of some sort seemed the logical choice but was unsure the best way to go about in regards to going overkill with the VM for replacing the old machine and movies onto the tv’s.

As the house stands there are 3 WiFi routers, 2 computers, 2 laptops, a printer and 2 main tv which it would be nice to be able to play things on.

As I say, not my area of expertise but would be nice to get everything linked into one main storage with the printer attached.




devnull

3,745 posts

156 months

Thursday 22nd October 2020
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Just buy a synology NAS. Super easy to use and very flexible in terms of what it can do.

I could have sat down and created a freeNAS install etc etc, but I'd have a fairly power hungry unit in comparison to what value it gives back to me.

Magnum 475

3,507 posts

131 months

Thursday 22nd October 2020
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Make that two Synologys (Synologies?) for static content. 1 for use, and 1 for backup. As already mentioned, RAID is most useful for storing stuff that changes constantly. I have mine configured in RAID5, which gives me good fault tolerance without being overly expensive.

As has been said before though, RAID only protects against a single drive failure, so a decent backup is essential. You can also look at Cloud backup services - Synology has one now, google drive is also an alternative if you don't have too much data.

The other option that can be considered is an Ubuntu server. This is useful if you want to run other things as well, say PiHole, Roon Server (or any other music server), video servers etc. I started with Synology and added Ubuntu later so I've got both, but an Ubuntu server is great for running lots of different apps on as well as file storage.

dontfollowme

1,158 posts

232 months

Friday 23rd October 2020
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Exploring this option too. Does Synology guide you through getting the data from a load different physical drives in my PC onto the NAS?

dontfollowme

1,158 posts

232 months

Friday 23rd October 2020
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Yeah daft question in hindsight.

Mr Whippy

28,944 posts

240 months

Saturday 24th October 2020
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Have a really good read on the Synology support forums (or any NAS you propose buying) to find out all the stuff it might not do for your needs.
I bought based on the published promises.

I found my DS920+ really underwhelming for the money vs what was promised.

Encryption, limited and clunky.
Backups, limited.
Hardware, cheap (fans just horrible noise like £2.50 items, casing seemed to resonate and buzz and amplify hdd noise)
Software limiting, started having to learn SSH and Linux to do certain tasks like clear logs.
Final nail in coffin was usb with encryption keys not ejecting after boot, leaving me having to login to press eject, to not corrupt the usb stick. Yet support not being able to figure out from full logs and wanting to log in (so security issues)


I sacked mine off and threw the HDDs in my old desktop PC, running storage spaces (duplicate) on a win10 machine with bitlocker.
I have another local hdd that gets a robocopy mirror.
Syncthing folders and mapped drives to my clients for work etc.
Jellyfin and iTunes and dlna and syncthing and Remote Desktop and and and...

I know a PC is more expensive, but it’s justified in how much more you can do with it, and how much better the quality is.


I’m sure stuff like QNAP and Synology suit many people. Just make sure it is what you want/need for the cost first too!