The Ultimate Home Server - Whats your Setup? (pics welcome)

Which one?

This is the main rack.

In order from top to bottom:
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Netgear ProSafe GSM-7248 48-port GbE L2 managed switch
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QNAP TS-453Be NAS
4x HGST 6 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm HDD in RAID5
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Supermicro X7DBE
2x Intel Xeon E5310 (4-cores, 1.6 GHz)
16 GB DDR2-533(?) RAM (don’t remember the speed)
I forget what kind of a RAID card in there that I have (it’s two LSI MegaRAID SATA 8 port - don’t remember the model number in there anymore).
I think that it’s got a HGST 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm drive for the OS
6x HGST 3 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm drive in one raidz1 vdev/pool
4x HGST 6 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm drive in another raidz1 vdev/pool

Running TrueNAS Core 12.0 U1.1
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Mellanox MSB-7890 36-port 100 Gbps 4x EDR Infiniband externally managed switch (total switching capacity: 7.2 Tbps)
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Supermicro 6027TR-HTRF
4x half-width nodes

each node has:
2x Intel Xeon E5-2690 (v1) (8-core, 2.9 GHz base clock speed, 3.3 GHz max all core turbo, 3.6 GHz max turbo, 16 cores/node, 64 cores total)
8x Crucial 16 GB DDR3-1866 (running at DDR3-1600 speeds) ECC Registered memory 2Rx4 (128 GB per node, 512 GB total for the entire system)
1x Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps SSD
1x HGST 3 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm HDD
Mellanox ConnectX-4 dual port VPI 4x EDR 100 Gbps Infiniband NIC (MCX456A-ECAT)
OS: CentOS 7.7.1908
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2x QNAP TS-832X NAS
Left one I think has eight 6 TB drives and the one on the right has eight 10 TB drives.
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Not shown in the rack:
Cluster headnode
Supermicro CSE833T-650B 3U chassis
Intel Core i7-4930K (6-cores, 3.4 GHz base clock, 3.6 GHz max all core turbo, 3.9 GHz max turbo)
Asus P79WS-E motherboard
8x Crucial 8 GB DDR3-1600 unbuffered, non-ECC RAM (64 GB total)
Mellanox ConnectX-4
4x Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps SSD in RAID0
4x HGST 6 TB SATA 6 Gbps 7200 rpm HDD in RAID0
LSI MegaRAID SAS 12 Gbps 8-port internal SAS RAID HBA
OS: CentOS 7.7.1908
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And then I also have another system that runs a MagStor LTO-8 tape drive as well that runs on CAE Linux 2018 which was originally built off of Ubuntu 16.04.6 LTS. (That’s an Intel Core i7-3930K where at least one of the cores died/burned out from OC’ing it to 4.5 GHz @ 1.45 V running at 100% full load constantly. It has 32 GB of presumably DDR3-1600 RAM (I think it’s four sticks of 8 GB, Crucial), also a Mellanox ConnectX-4 100 Gbps Infiniband card, and an ATTO ExpressSAS SAS card.

Those are my home servers.

Don’t include my workstations.

2 Likes

I think one important aspect to a home server is a UPS. I have gone through three or four UPSs over the years, even replacing the batteries in one. They all just die. There was even a grass-roots attempt at creating an open-designed UPS due to how low quality they all are.

Does anyone have recommendations on a reliable (10+ years, minus the batteries) UPS?

More on topic I’ve got an AMD Ryzen 3-1200 box running Arch Linux with NextCloud, SuiteCRM for my wife’s business contacts, and OpenVPN. Separately I have an HTPC running Kodi, but I’m not too happy with it. Really I just want Kodi to be a 10-foot UI launcher for other software.

2 Likes

have contemplated investing in this. it exists, it is specialty telecom UPSes for cel towers that dont get any maintenance for 10 years. Uses LiFe type batteries. Would probably be a kilobuck for a 1500 watt (actually 1500 watt) unit. my investment would be some certifications/qualifications and probably new tooling around a proper case.

3 Likes

I have been rocking an APC Smart UPS SUA1000I since 2010, replaced the batteries twice, has saved me countless time in the event of thunder/summer storms when other electric appliances just were burnt out … being a smart series one it always provides power from the inverter/the batteries. Paid 300EUR back then and 90-ish for battery replacement
I monitor it from truenas using the usb-serial connection
I have also bought a local one last summer:

it’s 3000VA, features are similar to the SmartUps series, cost is way lower. Can’t vouch for reliability though … only time will tell …
Currently running them in series … the smart-ups is enjoying a very clean 220 input … there’s some waste due to the double conversion but …

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didnt the lithium ion UPSs that Linus showed off in the pink rack new home video have like a 8 year warranty?

edit: it was a Eaton

edit: it was only 5 year warranty, but they expect the service life to be around 8 years.

3 Likes

I’ve had a home server for just media for 6/7 years. Before it ran on an old laptop with windows. At some point 2 years ago i got fed up by windows (it restarted out of itself for updates AARGH). I went to ubuntu server with no experience with linux (apart from a few vm’s). a lot of windows…

Specs:
My old gaming pc. MSI Z170 ITX,
Intel 6600k, 16gb ram (quicksync!)
500gb nvme pci-e drive
14tb hard drives (8 + 4 + 2)
Coolermaster V650 (one of the more efficient atx power supply at very low load)

Power use: 33W with drives always spinning.

Software running:
Ubuntu server LTS (21 i think).
Docker with about 34 containers running at the moment.
I’m self employed and want to do some stuff for industrial companies with IoT, i’ve done some testing on this server, but i kind of want to build a new server to do more of that. run nextcloud and bitwarden.
I’m just kind of scared of losing something and then not being able to do anything. For now i’m still using o365 e-mail and onedrive for files/photo storage, But it really annoys me how incredibly slow onedrive is with trying to find a certain photo.

Management

  • Homer (for static landing page)
  • Portainer
  • Unifi controller
  • Nginix Proxy manager (also for reverse proxy)
  • Authelia for single sign on
  • Grafana with Influxdb, Telegraf and varken
  • Duplicati for backups
  • Code server for editing config files (still easier for me than ssh in with nano)

Home

  • Home assistant
  • Nodered
  • Dahua vto2mqtt (to connect my doorbell to home assistant)
  • Mqtt broker
  • paperless-ng (installed it this week, works really well with a wifi document scanner)

Media consumption

  • Plex (video)
  • Booksonic (audiobooks)
  • Ubooquity (comics)
  • Calibre (application for managing library)
  • Calibre-web (graphic interface to acess books)
  • Restreamer (for streaming content to my friends without getting taken down.)

indexing, downloads and others

One of the great things you can do with Iot and this kind of “tech” stack, is connecting stuff that would normally be incredibly complicated and take a lot of programming time. This is hacked together by listening to UDP multicasts of a Wifi receiver of my electric window blinds.
short presses on my Hue switch turns the light on/off. long presses open or close the kitchen blinds.


Obligatory dashboard

5 Likes

I’ve had lots of different setups over the years, but lately I’ve stuck to the ASRock DeskMini X300. All SSD-s, quiet and low power. Physical limitations also force me to pick what data to retain so that this hobby doesn’t get even more expensive.

Quick specs:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G
RAM: some decent 32GB kit
Storage:

  • 500 GB Samsung 980 NVMe SSD for OS (yes, very overkill)
  • 500 GB Samsung 980 NVMe SSD for a simple ZFS pool, mainly scratch/cache use case
  • 2x 4TB Samsung 870 QVO: for all my services and bulk data where bitrot is not acceptable
  • 1x 4TB Samsung 870 QVO, connected over USB 3: I keep my media here, and I don’t really need redundancy here, just plenty of space.

I actually have set up the setup like this:

One recent addition that’s not pictured is an UPS that I received as a gift: APC Smart-UPS 750. Anything on my table is powered through that and at idle I could run off of batteries for over an hour. With my laptop and monitor running as well, it’s more like 50-60 minutes.

I post updates about my setup also in my blog. The image above is from this post.

3 Likes

Hey everyone,
It’s my first post on the forum, I decided to register and share my thoughts when I saw these “The Ultimate Home Server” threads:)

I re-builded my home server a week ago, current hardware configuration is the following:

Component Type Component
Motherboard AsRock Rack X570D4U
CPU AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
RAM Crucial 64GB Kit (32GBx2) DDR4 3200 MT/s CL22
CPU Cooler Scythe Fuma 2
Case Fractal Design Node 804
Power Supply Corsair CX450
SAS HBA SAS HBA LSI 9207-8i PCI-E 3.0
SAS Cable 2 x Mini SAS 36Pin (SFF-8087) Male to 4 SATA
SATA Power Cable 3-Pack 4 Pin Molex to Dual SATA Power Y-Cable
Case Fan Arctic P12 PWM PST (5 Pack) - 120 mm
Case Fan Thermalright TY-147A SQ
SSD ESXi OS Intel DC S3700 100Gb
SSD ESXi VM Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe
SSD ESXi Files (ISOs, etc) Intel DC S3700 100Gb
SSD TrueNAS App/Jail Intel DC S3700 400GB
HDD TrueNAS Data WD Easystore 12TB (WD White)
HDD TrueNAS Data WD Easystore 12TB (WD White)
HDD TrueNAS Data WD Easystore 12TB (WD White)
HDD TrueNAS Data WD Easystore 12TB (WD White)
HDD Backups WD Red 8TB NAS

I decided to move from the TrueNAS Scale with Dockers and VMs approach to Hypervisor (ESXi in my case) with a bunch of VMs approach.

At the moment I run TrueNAS Core as VM and passthrough HBA card with all HDDs and one dedicated NIC (migration went smoothly).
Also, I run 4 VMs on the other NIC - HomeAssistant, Torrent, PiHole and Linux Server for different file management (still in progress of configuration it, but I would like to have there NextCloud as “personal cloud”, SyncThing for local PCs-NAS sync, Photo center, maybe something else).

My goal with this hardware was to have one server that can be located in my “office” room (no loud fans and the “regular” case). Also, I chose AMD for the power efficiency and easier cooling.

A few photos:


7 Likes

Haven’t made the final decision on the Operating Systems and I have to figure out how to install the storage in XCP-ng, not to mention waiting for backup drives which should come soon (plus this way I have a place to put the data while I reformat the current drives) pool but:

Server 1:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6 Cores/12 Threads, 3.3 GHz)
  • RAM: 4x8 GB (32 GB total) DDR4-2400 MHz
  • OS: XCP-ng 8.2
  • Storage: 1 TB NVMe SSD (for the OS and Virtual Machines), 2x4 TB and 1x2 TB (10 TB total) HDD Storage and 256 GB NVMe SSD (might setup as a large pool and SSD as cache but I have to do that around XCP-ng as well though I was gonna run it through a TrueNAS VM.

Server 2:

  • CPU: AMD A8 7600B (4 Cores, no HT)*
  • RAM: 2x8 GB (16 GB total) DDR3-1600 MHz
  • OS: Nothing currently (might try XCP-ng on this one as well, or QubesOS and HomelabOS as alternatives)
  • Storage: 480 GB SATA SSD for the Operating System and Virtual Machines

*I got the specs wrong.

2 Likes

Still a work in progress.

Server 1:
Dell Poweredge R820
4 E5-4650v2 Intel 10 core CPUs 40 total cores
256 gb EEC Reg DDR3 Ram
I am using Unraid on this

Server 2:
AMD 3900x NAS
6 ea 8TB HDD
Dell H310 6Gbps SAS HBA w/ LSI 9211-8i P20 IT Mode Running ZFS RaidZ1
Dell Broadcom 57810S Dual Port 10GBE
I am running Truenas Scale on this

Switchrack:
MikroTik CRS309 9 port 10gb switch
Netgear GS724TPP 24 port 380 watt POE+ switch
4 Raspberry Pi 4 8gb K3S cluster

Workstation:
AMD 5950x on a MSI Creation MB
32 gb 3600 MHz
Asrock Phantom Gaming 6900xt
Arco Linux OS

Cloud:
I am using Linode as a Wireguard server to VPN my traffic.

8 Likes

Not much space at home so I used regular tower size, however… this Fractal Design Define 7 XL can handle 12 HDDs… with current 20TB HDDs it’s possible to reach 240TB total capacity. In the picture back side connecting 6 x 10TB IronWolf Pro. TrueNAS. 10Gbps network.


4 Likes

LOL I just got done watching @wendell 's video… Thats my motherboard :slight_smile:

Also, I’ve seen above my case the Fractal Node 804. Obligatory Pics here:

Also, if you look at the pictures you notice the CPU cooler… Wait how is it mounted that way??? If you look at Post 12 from the same blog I did you can see the water-cooled solution I tried…lol It worked just fine, I just decided I didn’t want the risk of it frying and spraying coolant all over my hardware. I used all my hardware I had squirreled away to mount that monstruous 120mm MSI cooler “the right” way in the case using a Noctua mounting kit, and merging it with the MSI hardware :). The cooler worked because it was “offset” over the center of the CPU socket to miss the RAM because I ended up upgrading to 64GB using all the DIMMs.

@wendell I’m excited to see where you go with the case choice. I had been eyeing hardware (because I had nothing to do over pandemic and till now…well and forever now that I’m retired…lol) for a long time… Prices for cases, especially with hotswap capability were high before, but no where near as bad as they got. They have settled some, but seems they were in high demand for a while (everyone building PC’s or NAS’s with free time? lol JK I know better). I went the Fractal node 804 route sacrificing the hot swap due to price.

I did however see an interesting case I’m not sure I’ve seen you mention that I have been eyeing… It wouldn’t fit your need for the X470D4U M-ATX, but its a ITX case with 6 hotswap bays and takes a FLEX ATX psu and dual rear 120mm fans with room for a single pcie expansion card.

Found it here if your interested… It keeps selling out and pushing back delivery dates. Sure its a cheap Asia no name special.

There had been some changes to mine. I went for a RAIDZ5 with the five 6TB Ironwolfs instead of mirrored pairs with a hot spare, Up to 64GB ECC ram from 32, I added a Mellanox 10G Nic, and swapped a few different drives around. I have the Ryzen 2700 in it now, but a 3700x or the 3900XT I may put in. Depends on my next gaming build. Of which I have a plethora of cases to explore… Like on my post HAA (Hardware Addicts Anonymous).

Current testbench setup:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (stock)
Noctua NH-D15 with two Noctua NF-A14 Industrial PPC 3000 PWM fans (to replace the stock fans, to ensure that the thermals will be kept well in check).
Asus ROG STRIX X570-E GAMING WIFI II motherboard. (Due to the memory issues that I was seeing on the 12900K/Asus Z690 Prime-P D4 motherboard, the 12900K was RMA’d back to Intel for a full refund. Asus refused to issue a refund, so I asked for a board swap instead. The cheaper board (the Asus X570 TUF Gaming Pro WiFi request was denied, but they replaced it with a more expensive board instead, so sure… wasn’t going to argue with that. Course, by then, I had already filed my lawsuit against Asus, but hadn’t served them the papers yet.)
4x Crucial 32 GB DDR4-3200 unbuffered, non-registered RAM (128 GB total)
1x Samsung EVO 850 1 TB SATA 6 Gbps SSD (I think that’s what it is)
Nvidia GTX 660 (nothing really special about that)

soon, I’ll be adding a Mellanox ConnectX-4 100 Gbps dual port Infiniband card in there, but not yet.

Trying to get the basic system up and running first.

Currently running an explicit dynamics simulation which SHOULD finish in about 50 minutes total run time.

1 Like

Fractal Meshify 2
SuperMicro A2SDi-8C-HLN4F (I stuck a 40mm Noctua to the passive CPU Cooler)
be quiet! Straight Power 11 Platinum 550 Watt ATX
64GB Kingston Server Premier DDR4-2400 reg ECC DIMM CL17
3x WD Red 4TB
3x Seagate Ironwolf 4TB
2x INTEL D3-S4610 960GB

Installed Proxmox and Truenas as a VM.
Currently isn`t running, because I am still not sure what way I should go with the software solution…
But then i saw the ultimative homeserver - series.
Maybe i should go this route.

3 Likes

You are where I am trying to go. Everytime I’ve tried to use Ubuntu instead of windows I get confused at getting different apps or containers to access my libraries for movies and shows for instance on sdb. I always quit and go back to my windows comfort zone.

VM Server
SuperChassis 835BTQ-R1K28B
Supermicro X9DRH-7F
2x E5-2680 v2
128GB Memory
8x 1TB WD Blue
750Ti
Intel PT Quad Port Server Adapter

1 Like

Currently running TruNas. X370 motherboard with a 1800X, 32gb ram, 5x 4TB drives stripped together. It says I have corrupted files but I haven’t found which ones are corrupted yet. It usually crashes at least once when I first run it but this month it decided to be nice and work while my workstation decided to crap out repeatedly till I did a OS refresh which still took a dozen tries to work. I do have plans on building a new one but since Pudget systems and Wendell exist, I can’t even trip over one so I will use a 5950X and install Proxmox.

3U supermicro chassis with a Xeon L5645 and 48GB ram.
10x 3TB HGST drives RaidZ2 with XigmaNAS booting from an internal USB drive.
Just using the 6 onboard sata ports plus a couple ASMedia PCIe Sata cards.

My journey upon this path started with a dual core and two mechanical hard drives to play music and movies running WinXP in the year 2002. -Young and Poor-
Over time I’ve built out many servers for home use moving hard drives from system to system.
From dl360&dl380 G3s’ on up to Dl380 G8’s.
Currently I run a hodgepodge of stuff that will not make sense or just seem dumb to some, but it works for me.

Main hub for data was built up over time and currently resides on a:
HP Dl380 G6
2x xeon x5675 24Threads
48G Memory
20 hard drives of various size and age. Roughly 94 TB.
Running win7Pro, not allowed outside the LAN.
Was meant to be a media server, now it just holds everything in a pre-stage way to all my other servers, backups, and does encoding.

Main server is a:
HP DL380 G8
2x xeon E5-4690v2 40 Threads
286G Memory
D3700 Enclosure
40 Hard Drive capacity.
34.5TB SSD Storage capacity.
26TB Spinning Rust Storage capacity.
Running ESXi with several webservers, Nextcloud, gaming servers, and random VMs for random things. -All Running Debian-
I use avideo platform fka youPHPtube as my means of media distribution. Its been tedious to set everything up, but a very gratifying end result.

MikroTik Cloud Core Router and many Cloud Smart switches.
Provides a VPN for all my access and routing needs.

Really the next step I would like to take is to consolidate all this down to a very quiet self built server solution with minimal power draw, as it is currently… its loud, produces lots of heat, and the power consumption is more than I like.

Still it was a great learning experience and lots of fun to build out.

1 Like

Really, really COOL!