Hey!

I’ve decided that it’s time to finally get something resembling an actual server for my home setup, and I was hoping you folks could give me some pointers (given the current prices).

My current set up is just my old laptop with 2 external hard drives plugged in - one is the regular portal USB HDD, another is 3.5 HDD plugged via powered enclosure (ZFS and LUKS on both). I want to switch that for something relatively small, but extendable, as I want to add more disk space in the future. I’m selfhosting Plex, Immich and Navidrome, and occasionally some multiplayer games like Valheim. I’m not planning to use Proxmox or TrueNAS/whatever, I mostly just plan to throw Debian on it and spin everything in Docker.

I looked through some guides on https://selfhosting.sh/ and on Reddit, but that just got me more confused, as everyone keeps suggesting Optiplexes and NUCs, but I don’t get how to combine that with 20TB+ disk space while ensuring the disks are secure and well powered. Plus my understanding is most of those mini-PC’s/refurbished workstations use regular DDR3/4, whereas I was hoping to get ECC.

Should I go DIY route, or is there something I could get as a solid enough base to expand in the future? If DIY is the answer - what mobo/cpu/case should I get? My ideal budget (for everything excluding hard drives and maybe PSU since I have one lying around) is ~500 euros, but if paying a bit more would mean a substantially better deal - then I’d be OK with that. I’m in Berlin, so if you know any good local markets - that’d be great too.

Thanks!

UPD: So, I’ve learned of the existence of bargainhardware, which drastically changed my approach and so far I’m leaning towards https://www.bargainhardware.co.uk/dell-poweredge-t330-tower-server

(Yes, I understand it’s loud and more power-hungry than some of the other options out there, but it does tick all of the boxes…)

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    I don’t know if it would give you as much hard drive space as you want, but I got an Odroid HC4 a while ago and it’s been great. One of the very few SBCs with two SATA slots ready to go.

  • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.clubEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    My default suggestion is a used consumer PC (same gamer’s non-pre-built if possible bcs of the slightly better parts, but standard office shit works too), swap out the PSU for something top tier (by which I don’t mean super expensive, tho I do look at efficiency tests at low end bcs my serves idle a lot), and ofc storage for something enterprise.

    For CPU it depends what you need, but idle power consumption of average desktop CPUs are pretty matched (no sense of getting a Pentium over eg i7), I would say (bcs of market prices & availability) some Intel 10+gen (i7? … but whatever really) or AMD 5000+ (I found a few 59x0 at good p/p value).

    Consumer hardware is easier to work with & easier to make the rig silent for your usecase (that’s why I also like Exos & Red Plus drives). If you want additional quiets on top you can get a case with those (dense) foams.

    Also crucially all my HDDs (even in early 2000s) have been in these 5.25" cages/adapters with fans (noisy drives give off noise directly & via case vibrations … also in one case I don’t even have them in 5" bays, they are just bolted to the bottom of the case):

    (Various designs, I even made them diy 20 years ago, but they are super cheap today - the point being that the HDDs metal doesn’t touch the case, not even via a bolt.)

    I prefer less redundancy in one server vs having two of them as copies (maybe have a secondary location) but cram as much as possible in one server bcs I don’t need more (router is a separate box, but out of practical & second-hand-finds reasons).

  • Reannlegge@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 months ago

    So my home lab has been raspberry pi’s of varying shapes and numbers for a few years. Recently my single floor condo flooded so half of my place has been ripped up and so much crap has been stuffed in the other half I decided I should get around to planning out a more complete home lab setup. Money is a bit tight but I called up my ISP and it turns out my internet package comes with two static IP addresses so I decided to snap those up. I will be building up a firewall with a pi 5, I will continue to use a pi 4 I have running HAOS, as I try to get out of all the ecosystems. I was born into the Apple ecosystem, the first computer I remember using was some old Apple DOS computer, so breaking out of that walled garden is going to be tough but it helps that Tim Apple gave Trump a golden Apple plaque so it hurts less with every service I turn off.

    Any who because I have had a lot of time to make plans and game through my plan with AI I have decided I am going to self host my domain and email (Simple blog and 200+ annonomized email addresses) on a pi 5 that will be the third pi 5 after my firewall the first pi 5 will host things like immich, nextcloud, and the other things it is already doing one of those other things is pihole and that is where my DHCP is currently, I am on the fence about moving it to opnwrt or not. The Second pi 5 after the firewall also hosts a secondary pihole as a back up dns and all my high seas (like sonarr.tv) things and jellyfin.

    To top it all off I am going to get another pi 4 with a hdd and I will ask for it to be hosted some where to do off site back ups.