I am reaching out to ask for the community help in putting up a home server that balances video streaming with virtualization requirements.
I have been thinking about improving my home server setup to better handle media streaming and virtualization tasks. My goal is to build an adaptable platform that can efficiently serve media content to several devices while also operating a few virtual machines for development; testing; and personal projects.
I am currently using an older tower PC with an Intel i7 3770K processor; 16 GB of DDR3 RAM; and a couple of 4 TB hard drives. The system has been solid; but it starts to show its years when handling several streams and virtual machines.
I have a gigabyte network at home with an 802.11ac router, and the majority of my streaming is done over wired connections.
I use Plex for video streaming and have a couple virtual PCs running on VirtualBox.
I am thinking about either updating my current hardware or building a new server from scratch. What CPU; memory, and storage setups do you propose for effective media streaming and virtualization? I am interested in newer processors and would like to learn about your experiences with them in similar setups.
I am thinking of using SSDs for the OS and applications; and HDDs for storage. Would a NAS configuration be beneficial in my situation, or should I continue to use internal storage solutions? How critical is it to use enterprise grade drives for these applications?
I’m ready to switch from virtual box if there are better options. Should I use a virtualization platform like proxmox and ESXi to better manage virtual machines? I am interested in how these systems manage resources and how easily they interact with media streaming applications.
Are there any specific network configurations and hardware changes that could improve the performance of media streaming and virtualization? Would upgrading to a 10 gigabit network be helpful; and is my existing arrangement sufficient?
Given that this server will be running around the clock; energy efficiency and noise levels are critical. Any suggestions for designing a server that balances performance with these factors would be highly appreciated.
If you have any more advice and frequent problems to avoid when setting up a home server for these objectives; please share them.
I would appreciate any ideas or advice you can offer. If there are any current threads and resources on similar topics; please share. Thanks in advance for the help
First and foremost what kind of budget are you talking about. That will dictate what server you build. Personally my entire hardware stack is built on AMD’s Zen 3 and 4 architecture. That being said, my next server is being built on an Epyc 9xxx processor and will be sitting on either 256GB or 512GB of DDR 5 RAM. This isn’t to say that is necessary, because it simply isn’t, but to say one can spend as much or as little as they want on such a project. And said server will replace one built on consumer grade hardware, as my current TrueNAS/jellyfin/Nextcloud box is running on a Ryzen 4600G w/32GB DDR4 RAM and serves its purpose just fine.
That is how I configure my servers. The OS drive is always a NVMe while mass storage drives are still spinning disk. At some point, mechanical HDD will go away, but at the moment they are still the most economical solution for mass storage. As for the drives themselves, it is always wise to purchase the right drive for the purpose, thus for reliability and longevity you should have drives that are built for enterprise/NAS use.
You can virtualize those machines, and some people do. The way I approached it is straight through TrueNAS Scale and installing the apps right on the box.
In the world of networking faster is always better but the real question is what kind of speed does your current network support? I utilize a 10G NIC that feed into a SFP+ port for my NAS. But if your network can’t support those speeds then that 10G NIC does you no good.
If noise is a concern, then examine every component through that lens. You can build a machine that is quite, but so long as you utilize mechanical HDDs you can’t escape the noise. I can tell you that if I used SSDs I would have incurred a great deal more expense but I would have a virtually silent server.
