I currently dual boot proxmox on my desktop pc for tinkering and general homelab stuff, but I’m thinking about upgrading to a proper homeserver, with permanently deployed VMs and containers, that can double as a homelab environment.
I’m looking to run:
Proxmox on the baremetal homeserver on 2 SSDs in raid1, VMs and containers will also be stored on the SSDs.
VM running pfsense or vyos or another software router/fw. This will be the router and fw for my physical home network, as well as the virtualized VMs and containers, so a 10GBit port passed through to the VM will be connected to a switch for my physical devices, and a 1GBit port passed through to the VM will be connected to my ISPs router (running in bridge mode), or at least that’s the plan.
VM running truenas with 3-4x 8-10TB HDDs passed through to the VM for a VDEV in a ZFS pool (possibly expanded by another 4 HDD vdev in the future).
Container running jellyfin with access to the media files on truenas, hardware acceleration active for decoding/encoding/transcoding via the iGPU or a dedicated GPU.
Container running pi-hole, for network wide ad blocking.
Container running tailscale, to access the homeserver from outside the network.
Maybe 1 or 2 more VMs and maybe a few containers for tinkering/homelab stuff, nothing permanent, nothing running 24/7.
Backups will probably only be done for the environment itself (proxmox + VMs) and sensitive data like family media and documents via external HDDs once a week, I probably won’t bother backing up all media files.
Considerations:
Power is quite expensive over here in Europe, so low idle power consumption would be great.
Noise levels should be kept to a minimum, the server will either sit in my living room or in a closet/storage room, so ideally close to silent or at least quiet.
I could make room for a larger machine, but ideally less than a desktop big tower in size, smaller is better I suppose. Small pc (minisforum?) without any HDD space + external usb hard drive enclosure might also be an option.
“Enterprise grade” vs “consumer grade” hardware, where does it make sense to save money and where do I really want the good stuff? With a hypervisor and several VMs running 24/7 I’m worried about killing consumer grade m.2 SSDs in a few years. I’m assuming enterprise grade HDDs also make sense in this case, or will I be fine with “prosumer” nas drives? SATA vs SAS HDDs? Should I get a platform with ECC memory?
CPU and memory, 8 cores at a minimum, ideally 16+, 64GB, 96GB or 128GB?
Network switch, what are my options here for a decent, ideally not too expensive, VLAN capable managed switch? PoE is not required at the moment, but could very well be an advantage in the future with PoE access points. 10GBit uplink and ideally 5GBit for some or all ports, at least 2.5GBit, I don’t really want to be stuck with gigabit in the future.
Access points that are vlan capable, multi SSID (so VLANs can be mapped to specific SSIDs), wifi6 should be enough, but possibly 1 wifi 6e or wifi 7 AP for wireless VR.
Is a modern iGPU, like the Radeon 780m on APUs or mobile ryzen CPUs, good enough for jellyfin? Or do I want a dedicated GPU for that task? Ideally I want to be able to stream 4k HDR bluray rips from my server with possibly 2-4 more concurrent 1080p or 4k streams going at the same time.
What I’ve looked at so far:
Building my own system, either with ryzen or ryzen pro, miniITX or mATX motherboard, in a case like the Fractal Design Node 804 or Node 304, or Jonsbo N3 or N4.
Minisforum, or another company’s, minipc with a ryzen mobile CPU, afaik there are also pro models available for ECC support, + external drive enclosure for the harddrives.
Any help on the topic is appreciated, I think I have fairly well defined goals of what I want the server to be able to achieve, and I want to get something decent from the start and not start out with a cheap solution that I’ll have to upgrade part by part over the next years.
If any of my plans for this server and home network seem odd or seem like a bad idea in general, feel free to tell me as well.
And finally, if I’m missing a killer app that I could be running in a container or as a vm, that you would definitely recommend in any home environment, I’m also more than open for any suggestions. Maybe a central backup server or something like that?