First off, want to say hello to everyone since i just joined the forums. (ive lurked for a little bit).
But here is where i am, im looking to build a home server that will act as a home media server (plex server, mythbuntu), and also act as a NAS for the home, and lastly also be able to maybe run some game servers or mumble servers or something.
Im trying to help other members of the household replace tv, so i guess thats the main thing. But i wanted a server which can also do anything else i want aswell.
What kind of hardware would you need for something like say trans-coding up to a max of 3-4 720P videos and running mythbuntu, and possibly running atleast a mumble server at the same time.
Dont have a ton of money to throw at it, so trying to keep costs as low as possible.
i already have a spare case, and have a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2255 capture card which does have some beta drivers for linux. also have a 4TB internal and 4TB external hdd.
i was thinking of maybe like an used i5-2500K, 8GB of ram, 60GB SSD and a ~500-550W psu.
Would that work out fine for my purposes? do i really need a server cpu/mobo and ECC ram? as that seems way more expensive.
And any help or tips with settings anything up would also be appreciated. (ive been playing a lot with plex server and kodi on my desktop pc)
thanks.
Here's my exact media center build right now. I do basically exactly what you want to with it, it hosts my Plex Server, a whole bunch of other services as well as a Minecraft and gMod server. It seems fairly low spec, but with only stock, headless debian, it pulls along just fine. As far as transcoding with Plex, I think I've gotten mostly lucky that the majority of devices I stream to are able to utilize direct play.
I detail more about my media server setup in another post.
https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/my-current-media-server-setup/72259?u=bluekoda
I'd say that the i5 is probably a good step up, and you may think about getting a couple of 32GB SSDs and putting them in a software raid0 for roughly double the speed.
wow that is pretty awesome. And did you ever release/finish that?
im fairly new to running/maintaining a home server. So im guessing ECC ram with a server cpu/mobo isnt really that important for a home server? (didnt really think it was but a lot of people say it is)
Ive seen mention its best to run everything in virtual machines. (so have a host os for the server, then have a vm for say mythbuntu and home media, and maybe another vm for game/mumble servers?). id probably go with 16GB of ram then.
and any other help you are willing to give ill take. ive already started ordering a few things for it. So ill probably be getting it started within a week or so.
VMs are handy if you're running a bunch of services and you want to play around with something without accidentally breaking something else.
Well I suppose it's technically 'released', I've been using it for coming up on 2 years now and it's always worked great.
As far as ECC and server grade hardware, for something like a little home media server, I don't think it's really necessary. As far as your software backbone, I used stock debian just like I am on my desktop right now. I'm really into sort of 'building' my own distro how I want it though. Wendell seems to be fond of FreeNAS, so that'd probably be a good option, however if you want to go the VM route, Wendell also has a great guide for Proxmox.
But of course, if you need any help, we'll be here.
Well proxmox really seems interesting, that may be something i try and fiddle with when i get it all set up i think. Would probably do something like a container with all 4 cores access for the media server, and maybe run game/mumble servers on a full VM (for security) and limit to 1-2 cores.
thanks for the help, and when i get it built and running in the next week or so, ill definitely come back possibly looking for a little more advice. I tend to learn best from my own tinkering, but appreciate tips or points in the right direction on things.