Greetings,
This will probably not be the correct section but I thought it was better suited than hardware, I’m in need of guidance/assistance.
I’m setting up my first server (running Ubuntu server 20.04) on a dedicated computer (parts list below-if needed), basically I have a HDD for storage and ssd for OS + cache disk. What I want the server to do is the following:
Torrent client
Done
Samba server
done, but don’t know if/how to set up caching
Kodi player
If I understand correctly it is best to have Kodi installed on a desired device and point it at the samba server, it is not recommended to have it running locally on the server ?
Minecraft server
On the to do list
A way to remotely connect to the server
was thinking openvpn (for ease of use), but am looking for recommendations keep in mind that I will share the server with people who don’t like to click buttons.
Game caching server
On the to do list
Parts list:
CPU
AMD Ryzen 5 3400G
MB
ASRock B450 GAMING-ITX/AC
RAM
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2×8)
Storage
WD Red WD40EFRX 4TB
Samsung SSD 970 Evo Plus M.2 NVMe 250GB
Power supply
Seasonic Focus GX-550 80+ Gold 550 Watt
Can someone nudge me in the right direction regarding caching and setting up a remote connection?
If you really want caching is going to need to be handled on the filesystem level, not on the samba level. IE bcache, ZFS L2ARC, lvmcache.
If you really need the speed for some files, I would suggest just buying a big SSD for those files specifically. Then create a separate samba share off of the SSD.
Video streaming, and other similar things are fine to run off of a hard drive since it uses sequential access, which HDDs are fine at. Unless you have 2.5 or 10gbps networking, a single HDD can max out a 1gbps network for seqential workloads.
What do you want remote access for? Movie streaming? Music? General file access, like upload/download? File sync, like dropbox? Something else?
Side question if I wanted Kodi to use the SSD as a cache disk, would I still need something like “IE bcache, ZFS L2ARC, lvmcache.” ?
I was thinking in the lines, if they are connecting from a computer to make it seem like they are accessing a network drive for general file access (samba) and then to have Kodi running locally for content streaming. But the server and client are on a separate network.
Kodi runs on the client devices, not on the NAS. You would need to install Kodi on each device you want to play video from the NAS on, and then point them at the NAS samba share.
So yes, if you wanted ssd caching for Kodi, it indirectly requires on of the ones you mentioned. This is because the caching would have to be done on the NAS, and since samba does not have caching, you have to do it on the filesystem level.
Kodi by itself is maybe not the best option then. Samba does not work well, and the performance is really bad when going out to the internet.
You may want to setup Plex, Emby or Jellyfin on the server. Then you can use the apps for them, or even Kodi with a plugin(I know Emby has a Kodi plugin at least).
Hmm. Samba does not do well over the internet, and that is assuming you are running it inside a VPN. Running it not in a VPN over the internet is horribly insecure.
Maybe looking into Nextcloud? And the nextcloud sync client?
If you want full “desktop” access to the server install realvnc server and setup an account. You can then remote in.
As for caching, not sure that would add anything to your performance as you aren’t running any data query services. You would be better off getting a second hard disk and mirroring them for resilience, they will improve speed as well.
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