Hello, I would like to get more into homelabbing and I’d like to use some of my old parts to build a homeserver. I previously dipped my toes into this world by running proxmox on a laptop with a broken screen and I really enjoyed learning more about networking and linux. I have 2 older systems that I can re-use. One is an x79 system with a 3930k and the other system has an i5 3570k. I also have 2 8TB HDDs and 1 14TB HDD
What I would like to do with the homeserver is to act like a NAS to store media, be a seedbox, run pihole, home assistant. I would also like to have one of these systems behave as a router. Preferably, I’d like to have the router on the 3930k systems as well but I’ve heard that virtualising a router is not a good idea and could lead to some serious headache. I could probably try to use the broken laptop as a router instead as it will use much less energy than the 3570k system but I’m not sure if that’s ideal. If you have any other recommendations on what to do with a homeserver I would love to hear them!
Now here is where I’m getting confused on where to progress. I’m not sure what to do for SSDs. I’ve heard that Proxmox and particularly Proxmox with ZFS has a tendency to destroy SSDs. Is ZFS something that I need? Can I get away with using consumer SSDs? I would preferably like to spend as little money as possible and focus on bang for my buck. So I’m thinking about getting just 1 SSD to run proxmox under but then I also heard that having a SSD to cache the harddrives in a NAS is really impactful. If this is the case, I’m guessing I’d have to get a second SSD but I’m not sure what size it should be. Right now my plan is to mirror the 2 8TB HDDs and have the 14TB HDD primarily for backup and for media that I do not care about.
As it stands, what I’m thinking about purchasing further is
1-2 SSDs (not sure on the size)
Network switch for the router
Is there anything important that I’m missing?
I would really appreciate some answers. I asked some similar questions on a discord and it was a very frustrating experience because it felt like I wasn’t being listened to and there was a lot of elitism from people with huge homelabs that were more concerned about talking about their system than clearly explaining things to me.
You don’t need ZFS, you don’t need SSDs either. Big SSDs are expensive, cheap SSDs won’t meaningfully increase your storage capacity
You don’t need proxmox either, nor virtualization. Virtualization is useful in some respects, but it’s also overhead and complication.
To run a filtering DNS daemon, a bittorrent client, export NFS or SMB shares, or docker containers like home assistant any regular Linux distro is fine.
Running a 8 TB mirror and using the 14 TB as a backup destination sounds dandy to me. What’s your network? 1gbe? 2.5gbe? It’s very easy to saturate 1gbe.
SSD as a cache is a cool extra, but totally optional. You’ll still have some disk caching happening without any SSDs, in RAM
I’d just start on your journey now with what you have, with proxmox if you want, with ZFS if you want. When you find something is so slow it’s a problem come back and post about how to best fix the bottle neck.
It’s in my opinion best to start small (and cheap and slow) and iterate. Sometimes the answer is more hardware, other times the answer is different software.
People talk a lot on the internet. Proxmox likes to write a bunch of logs, so keep an eye on your SSD wear. ZFS has nothing to do with it.
Try TrueNAS, popular choice. There is also zVault, an open-source TrueNAS Core fork.
good plan
Depends on what you want to do with them.
I recommend getting a size you can later use with additional SSDs you buy down the road, so they have matched capacities. Mixed capacities are really bad for everything storage.
SATA SSDs are pretty much on life support for years now. NVMe SSDs are stuck with 4TB capacity on M.2, and enterprise SSDs are usually way more expensive.
A bunch of stuff for NAS/homeserver. OMV certainly being a popular choice…seems more consumerishly minded UI and functionality. Never appealed to me, but I can see why it has a sizable fan base.
Just get all the ISOs and try out stuff in a VM…pick the one that “feels good”
I started with a spare 2700x and 16gb of RAM, bought the cheapest b450 motherboard i could find, found a fractal define 2 or 3 at the local waste collection site and took any drives I had laying around.
I have now 64gb of ram a 12tb and 2 6tb HDD, 2 1to ssd in mirror for vm, and the platform is clearly underperforming (trying other settings and learning iscsi to check if that can help my performances in vm) but I am happy to have started with literally garbage and used parts.
I am not that old but I spent an awful lot of time trying to plan in my life, (mostly because I didn’t had the money to buy computer parts or guitars and I still don’t). Just do first, and learn.
Then check if what you want to do is possible, if not consider what you can do before trying to plan to have a network switch and ssds and drives you may never need. You can get used stuff, like ssd and switch for really cheap like 5-10€ and have a homelab with what you need and want.
Just do. You don’t need fancy hardware, I ran my first ZFS pool on 6x USB pen drives to learn. Bought HDDs two months after that when I felt comfortable and knew what I needed.
You can technically run your homeserver on your phone if you really want to. And Pis and other SBCs are popular for good reasons. Most stuff is just overkill.
Know what you need and what you want. And learn what is what
Get the stuff you need first and get the stuff you want later.
Having expansion capability is rather important, as you learn what you need as you get experience and you do more and different stuff with the server. Spare SATA ports, PCIe slot/lanes or simply space/mount point available in the case are always good.
For SSDs, it all depends on your storage needs. 4TB SSDs are currently the sweetspot, seeing as you can get cheap ones for less than $200.
This makes a full SSD server viable if you only need 10 TB or so of storage - though it is quite a bit more expensive at the moment. For your use case, it is not in any way mandatory, but it is worth considering spending $600 on a 3x4 TB SSD ZFS setup.
If all you want is a cache a $30 512 GB SSD should be more than enough.
Also, do consider power draw. Every watt drawn costs ~7.2 kWh per year, so saving 50W on a 24/7 system equates to 360 kWh saved per year. That can amount to $50-$100 less per year, depending on your electricity deal.
You don’t need proxmox either, nor virtualization. Virtualization is useful in some respects, but it’s also overhead and complication.
I want to use proxmox primarily because I liked learning about how to use it and I thought it was cool. Virtualisation is a really neat concept to me and I want to explore more uses with it
Running a 8 TB mirror and using the 14 TB as a backup destination sounds dandy to me
If I did go this route, would I install proxmox on one of the HDDs and call it a day or would it be recommended to run it on something like a flashdrive and keep the HDDs independent from the OS?
What’s your network? 1gbe? 2.5gbe? It’s very easy to saturate 1gbe.
Right now, I’m limited to 1gbe. It’s not something I can upgrade for the foreseeable future. I could maybe get a 2.5gbe connection between my main desktop and the homelab but the rest of the computers would be limited to 1gbe
I’d just start on your journey now with what you have, with proxmox if you want, with ZFS if you want. When you find something is so slow it’s a problem come back and post about how to best fix the bottle neck.
Thank you for the advice, I guess I’m just concerned about moving a lot of data to the drives and getting everything setup and then finding out my configuration is not the best, which could potentially lead to me to need to start from scratch
I may just get 2 512gb SSDs then since they are really cheap. 1 for running Proxmox and 1 for a cache. I’m aware of power draw but I’m working with what I have and I’ll upgrade to something more efficient in the future
Totally get where you are coming from, just remember that you can justify a slightly more expensive-but-efficient system - if it costs you $100 more but saves you $50 per year it is a no brainer while $500 more is a bit more questionable.
You need to do the math yourself though, in the end this is advice to be taken or ignored to your own specific circumstances. Your foot and 50 lb weight to drop, hopefully not on your foot
You need to think about the importance of each server / device and how important they are for the environment as a whole.
As the router is basically your only connection to the internet, I would say it is fairly important this must not go down. Your minecraft server going down for a couple of hours, you have sad kids that need to go watch Youtube or Netflix a couple of hours. Or play the PS5 / Switch.
But your router going down? Then you have sad kids with no internet, and then it is only a matter of time before reality starts to crumble…
So for this reason, the router should always be separate from everything else. If you want something to practice routing on, then no biggie, put it in there - as long as it is not your main router it should be fine. But the main router, just have it as a separate machine, period.
Given how cheap home routers are these days, I’d simply spend the $200 on a decent modern consumer router.
Update I was able to get a free Ryzen 7 1800x. I’m going to try and find a cheap motherboard that supports ECC hopefully and stick an old 128gb SSD from a broken laptop to run Proxmox
It’s a bit of a ridiculous thing to be elitist about.