from graynk@discuss.tchncs.de to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 02 May 09:48
https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/59509309
Hey!
I’ve decided that it’s time to finally get something resembling an actual server for my home setup, and I was hoping you folks could give me some pointers (given the current prices).
My current set up is just my old laptop with 2 external hard drives plugged in - one is the regular portal USB HDD, another is 3.5 HDD plugged via powered enclosure (ZFS and LUKS on both). I want to switch that for something relatively small, but extendable, as I want to add more disk space in the future. I’m selfhosting Plex, Immich and Navidrome, and occasionally some multiplayer games like Valheim. I’m not planning to use Proxmox or TrueNAS/whatever, I mostly just plan to throw Debian on it and spin everything in Docker.
I looked through some guides on selfhosting.sh and on Reddit, but that just got me more confused, as everyone keeps suggesting Optiplexes and NUCs, but I don’t get how to combine that with 20TB+ disk space while ensuring the disks are secure and well powered. Plus my understanding is most of those mini-PC’s/refurbished workstations use regular DDR3/4, whereas I was hoping to get ECC.
Should I go DIY route, or is there something I could get as a solid enough base to expand in the future? If DIY is the answer - what mobo/cpu/case should I get? My ideal budget (for everything excluding hard drives and maybe PSU since I have one lying around) is ~500 euros, but if paying a bit more would mean a substantially better deal - then I’d be OK with that. I’m in Berlin, so if you know any good local markets - that’d be great too.
Thanks!
#selfhosted
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I can see you getting confused, seems to me you want 2 separate servers: a storage box and a services box. The services box would be doable for 500 euros - although ECC might throw a wrench in the works there. For a storage box, 500 euros won’t even buy the HDDs needed.
That’s exactly what I want to avoid though. I see no reason to power and network 2 different small boxes when just one slightly bigger one will do. And as mentioned - 500 is without HDDs, I plan to use the ones I have for now and extend it later.
Oh if you will keep using the external drives, then you have options. ECC will cost you though, some 300 euros extra as far as I can tell after a quick search. And then all the other internals would end you well above the 500 mark.
If using the external USBs, I’d just drop the ECC requirement and get a NUC.
Why do you want ECC? (Hint: unless you’re running a business database dealing with financials, you don’t need it). I’ve run Windows server on desktop hardware since the 90’s with no issues, and today’s hardware is far better than what we had then.
The reason people settle on NUCs and SFF desktops is power. They virtually sip watts.
I don’t usually recommend specifics for someone but rather ideas and ways to look at your requirements, but given your requirements (20 TB), it would be worth considering a commercial NAS, or at least a NAS enclosure running a NAS OS like UnRAID or TrueNAS.
Expansion is generally not something I’d think about for a NAS (though it can be done today). I expand my NAS once a year (swap out one drive) but I keep 3 local copies - so if it failed I can restore locally rather than from a cloud backup.
So your data lives on a NAS, and you can then either run your services there (they mostly support containers, etc these days), but I’d get a NUC or SFF to host that stuff. It makes for nice separation and gives you some flexibility.
Back to SFF and NUC - my last desktop hardware idled at 100 watts. It was visible on my power bill and used more power than my lights or just about any other single device other than heat or stove.
My SFF server idles at just under 20 watts and peaks at 80 when I’m converting videos. It currently has 8Tb of storage, but I could easily get 20 in there, it would just be expensive.
Oh, and a good NAS can spin down drives to save power when idle, which for most of us is like 90% of the time (I have an ancient NAS as redundancy that does this - it idles around 5w).
I’ll strongly disagree. Anyone who cares about the data they store in their server should care about ECC. There’s a specific reason it’s used so widely by servers, not just financial databases or whatever.
There’s also a ton of misinformation on the Internet about it, so don’t buy into the “ZFS write hole” or whatever. But ECC is very important in my experience. It’s saved my bacon in a material way twice now, and in ways that normal RAM would have just silently continued breaking things. Really that’s not much of a price premium if you’re willing to buy used, so it’s more a question of why not?
There are many computers (especially business line computers including low power SFF) that will take ECC or even ship with it from ebay or whatever. Or you can build rigs with ECC, I’ve done this route twice and had good results.
Disagree all you want - ECC has no bearing outside of high-resiliency databases.
I say this having nearly 4 decades in enterprise - ECC only matters then.
OP is definitely not doing anything requiring ECC, recommending it is just wasting money.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
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