Best products from r/HomeServer

Great job on taking the first steps!

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Regarding FreeNAS (my preference). There are a ton of guides out there about how to set things up and what to do. My personal setup and favorite guide is 6 raw disks in mirrored zdevs. After running raidz3 for a year, then backing up, then trying out a raidz2, then reading to NEVER do raidz1, I decided to do a final backup, and rebuild into mirrored zdevs, and I've settled in and been running it now for about 4 years with 0 issues. I cant espouse all the benefits of this setup because the article I'm linking below will do a MUCH better job than I can in this post.

Read more about mirrored vdevs and why to use them here.

TLDR: instead of raidz1, raidz2, or some other structure, use mirrored vdevs to create your storage pool.

DISK0 & DISK1 = VDEV_A
DISK2 & DISK3 = VDEV_B
DISK4 & DISK5 = VDEV_C

...

DISKn & DISKn+1 = VDEV_n


last step:
storage_pool = VDEV_A & VDEV_B & VDEV_C & VDEV_n

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Now if you are still reading, then great! Let me share a few things about operational uses for your home server.

1. Buy and use a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).
   

• These cheap to medium expensive items are a godsend for cleaning up power from an outlet, protecting against surges, and to help aide in proper shutdown of critical (homelab) systems. These are important for the longevity of anything you plug into them.
  
• Smart UPS's have a Network Management Controller (NMC) of some sort like this one
  
• Regular UPS's don't have an NMC, but are just as capable like this one
  
• Consider a Power Distribution Unit (PDU) as well. Think of this like a large power strip.
  
• Real Life Example: Use a APC 650 UPS for your entertainment center and plugin your TV, Gaming Systems, Set-Top Cable Box, Lights, and anything else. Can hit one button, or for more advanced UPS's schedule a full power down during vacations, or time away from home, etc.
  
  

2. In regards to a Rack or Cabinet; go Square Holes!
   

• Round holes are ancient
  
• Round holes strip easily
  
• Square Holes are more "modular" / configurable
  
• Invest in cage nuts like these for the best results
  
  

3. Try to build micro or mini-atx for a FreeNAS system because of Power Savings and Quietness
   
   
4. Accessories
   

• Budget for things like VGA-to-HDMI, DVI-to-HDMI, HDMI-to-MiniDP, and a whole sort of other dongles.
  
• Budget for 12" power cord extenders to turn large power bricks into standard sized power cords to fit a power strip
  
• Speaking of power strips, budget for a nice PDU, or several high quality power strips that can be mounted with screws on wood and/or zip-ties.
  
  

5. Cable Management
   

• Cut and crimp your own Cat5/6 Cables, or buy lengths that make sense (1', 3', 6', 10')
  
• Velcro - seriously will need these
  
  
  I missed a few things I'm sure, but this is probably too large of a post to keep going. Happy building!

> My main purpose for it is really to do backups with a RAID setup and photo and other file storage.

RAID is not a backup solution. It is simply a way to utilize multiple disks to increase storage space or overall performance. You will still need some kind of backup, whether that is some kind of external USB drive like a WD Passport or using a cloud-based service like CrashPlan, that's up to you.

> I’m willing to spend about $300-$250 on the case and any components needed for it.

If you're planning on building your own server, $300 won't get you very far at all. Depending on the size you're looking for, the hard drives alone will cost more than that.

> If I wanted to “build my own” how are NAS cases usually sold?

Unfortunately there aren't a lot of NAS-centric cases around.

The SilverStone DS308 is kinda neat. It has 8 hot-swappable drive bays.

What a lot of people do is go with some sort of tower case and some hot-swap trays like these.

>Is it likely that I’ll need to buy a power supply, RAM, fans, or any other components for them?

Unless you already have an old PC laying around that you can use, then yes.

>If I built my own how hard is it to install software, etc. to run it?

Do you have experience installing an OS on a PC or laptop? I would recommend going with some flavor of Linux like Ubuntu Server. The installation process is very easy, especially if you're doing it on a brand new computer where you don't need to worry about overwriting anything important.

>What’s the minimum processor speed and memory I should aim for?

Unless you plan on doing things like Video Transcoding or running Virtual Machines, CPU speed and RAM aren't really that important. What's more important is the network hardware and your SATA controller. You want to make sure it has a good 1Gbps network card (Intel is preferred). You also want to make sure that it has SATA-III and that there are enough ports for each hard drive.

>Am I likely to get better performance by tailoring it to better specs (faster processor, more RAM) by building my own then buying a “diskless” setup?

Almost certainly. It will also be more flexible and able to do more things. It will also give you valuable knowledge and experience that you can use in the future.

>Even if I buy a "diskless" system am I going to need to buy an OS? Which one would be best?

No, you will not need any separate OS. These systems are basically little self-contained PCs with an ARM (or sometimes an x86) processor and some sort of Linux-based OS running on them. They're pretty much Plug 'n Play, just load them with some hard drives, set up networking and they're good to go.

> If I just wanted to buy one that’s completely setup, or a “diskless “ that I would add my own NAS HDs too what would you recommend?

Whatever is the least expensive, highest rated and has the features you require. The rest does not matter.

Ultimately what you decide to do depends on your goals. Do you want to learn about building and configuring a server? Then you might consider sourcing the parts and building something yourself. This will be the more expensive approach but it will also be more flexible, have much more performance than a pre-built solution and give you knowledge you can use in the future.

If you want something that Just Works™ then I would go with a prebuilt NAS like the DS216, it looks like a decent system and will give you the features you require.

Hope that helps!

Tried to keep my previous response preference free, but I ended up going with unRAID for my own setup for a couple reasons. The biggest reason was the real-time parity calculations across pooled storage. I didn't like the thought of having a window where newly written data wasn't parity-backed. And other solutions that offer that all involve stripping the data across disks, where in you lose access to all your data in the event that you have multiple disk failures. Because files stored entirely on a single disk in unRAID, if you lose more disks then your parity setup can handle, the data on your non-failed disks remains accessible. To me, that scenario was more likely then corruption due to bitrot that SnapRAID can help protect.

The other reason was ease of management. Everything just feels easier to setup and get running in unRAID over OMV. Dockers and VMs are treated as first-class citizens right beside your storage. And the community is really helpful. To me, that ease and community support was worth the cost of the $70 lifetime license that includes version upgrades. Also, while /u/yllanos thinks of using USB storage for the OS as not right, I believe the opposite: The OS requires so little space, so why would a take a significant of my usage disk space for it when I can just place it on cheap USB storage that's only really accessed at boot. It helps that we run a similar setup for our vsphere servers at work (SD cards for OS storage with no local disk). Ended up going with https://www.amazon.ca/SanDisk-32GB-Ultra-Flash-Drive/dp/B077VXV323/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1540845020&sr=8-11&keywords=SanDisk+ultrafit, as the small footprint means I don't need to worry about breaking the thing.

Since it sounds like you're building a new system for this, I'd say that you plan around testing a couple different solutions before you transfer all your "good" data. Do an install of OMV, and get a rudimentary setup going. Test things like replacing the disk and/or adding a new one. Get some shares going. Then wipe the setup, and try again on unRAID, using their 30-day free trial (that you can easily have extended an extra 30 days). Do the same thing, and see which you like better.

I wish I could say that the solution you seek is easy. I wish I could say that you have everything you need. Sadly, I do not believe you have a good platform from which to launch into all of the above points.

While your Seagate Storage Server does have quite a few capabilities of its own, it will be limited to the version of Windows that it was custom built to run. I have used other Windows Storage Server devices during my IT career ("dime a dozen Windows IT guy here") and I can pretty much tell you that Storage Servers have all been tailored to be fancy file servers that exist within a Windows Active Directory environment. Can they be tailored to do other things? Sure. But it's going to take quite a bit more than just some tinkering to get it right. Even then, the ease of use that you've identified in your goals will likely be sacrificed to a great extent.

All that being said, not all hope is lost. Your Storage Server can still be used as storage. But what you need now is to augment your daughter's "lab" with a laptop or desktop computer that can do all or as many of the other things as possible. As you've probably learned with the RPi, linux has many things to offer your little one. You have the storage. You just need something with a bit more flexibility to add the missing pieces.

Alternatively, if you were looking for a system that had most of the bells and whistles out of the box but could be tailored to your liking, a base level Synology NAS might fit your needs. A Synology NAS can actually act as a Wiki, A Blog, A file server for your daughter's art, a code repository (if programming is her thing), a media center with mobile app functionality (maybe for your husband?), and much, much more. A Synology DS 216 with at least one hard drive (depending on your budget) may be all you need and could really tick off all of those boxes.

These are just a couple of options and I'm certain others will have different suggestions. But I do believe you'll need to augment your current hardware to achieve your stated goals. Good luck! Your daughter is lucky to have a mom as caring and as interested in her growth as you.

I get that you're on a budget, but I think you'd still be quite disappointed with that 8350 because it's still pretty dated. You can't really look at core count and determine the overall strength of the CPU. Efficiency and how much performance per core is more important. For your needs, you really need to start with something like a Ryzen or recent i5 or i7 to give you good performance with room to grow. That's why the T30 is such a smoking deal because you're getting a very strong CPU, PLUS a case, motherboard, PSU, HDD, room for expansion and 8GB of ECC RAM. It "lists" for $800 or so, so you're really getting fantastic performance.

Now, you CAN probably shoehorn Windows 8 on it. And I'm sure even Windows 10 would run just fine, but you'll encounter an issue or two with drivers, maybe, but I don't think you'd be dead in the water. It would work. You'd just have no audio, for example. It is a server board, after all.

You could just download the trial or evaluation edition of Windows Server 2016 or 2019 and install that. It gives you 180 days to test it out and it's no secret you can issue a simple PowerShell command to rearm the trial 2 more times to give you more than a year of running the OS at no cost. Then you can decide if you want to buy a license. I'd recommend Server Essentials since it's the lowest cost SKU for Server and comes with 25 free CALs, which is a great deal.

OR, run Linux.

I'm going to send you a PM which I think will help you in terms of your OS options.

This is the ECC ram that I bought for my server.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017UGKMOK/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It drifts in and out of stock, but you can find similar ECC sticks easily. And prices are pretty reasonable these days.

​

Personally I’m running on two physical boxes separated by a firewall. One hosts my files, the other hosts services available from the internet. The internal one runs Debian 10 with all services running in docker, and the external one runs FreeBSD 12, with all services running in FreeBSD jails though a nginx reverse proxy, and storage mounted from the internal one via NFSv4 using Kerberos and encryption. I have filesystem auditing, log watching, fail2ban, connection rate limiting and GeoIP blocking. The firewall runs PfSense, and besides PFBlockerNG (pihole on steroids), it also runs IDS/IPS in the form of Suricata. Storage on the internal box is encrypted with LUKS, which is auto mounted by systemd using a key stored on an encrypted USB drive, which in turn is auto mounted by systemd using a key stored on the unencrypted root partition. Storage is divided between ZFS RAID1 on a couple of SSDs, along with Snapraid/Mergerfs on 4*spinning rust. I update all software daily.

Sound complicated ? Good, because it is!

While I would recommend trying anything sufficiently advanced to challenge your skills, I would not recommend using “basic Linux knowledge” to setup a secure internet facing system. There are simply too many variables that needs to be configured just right, and while most distributions today offer fairly sane default configurations, there are still lots of places you can screw up.

Unraid is a fairly polished paid solution that will do all you want, and provided you setup your firewall rules correctly it is also fairly secure.

FreeNAS is a FreeBSD open source, free, system that will also do what you want, and be fairly secure (as much as Unraid, and possibly more)

OpenMediaVault is a Linux Port/Fork of FreeNAS. In theory it should be just as good, but I’ve not had much luck with it, though I’ve not used it for long periods of time.

If you must roll your own, I suggest you first go out and get a copy of UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (5th Edition), and study it carefully. That will equip you with a lot of valuable skills for securing and not least recovering data from the system when it crashes, which it will eventually!

Next, This guide will help you setup the basic stuff, but leaves out a lot of security configuration. I found some of the missing configuration in this post. While written for a Raspberry pi, it should be applicable to just about any Linux distribution, though package manager commands will vary.

Finally, you really should consider limiting who has access to your nextcloud server (or any service for that matter). Does it need to be accessible to the whole world ? Or is it sufficient to limit it to a single country ? While GeoIP blocking is easily thwarted by using VPNs, it will keep a lot of the random drive by hackers away.

Don’t be tempted to open up SSH to the internet, and if you do, make 100% sure it’s setup to allow key only authentication. Instead, setup a VPN, and use that for remote administration.

Oh, and people telling you to use Traefic for reverse proxy on a public host are a lot braver than I am. There are known security problems with exposing the docker socket inside a container, and runC, the daemon responsible for running docker containers, has had its share of severe security holes

They're nice from what I've seen however for the most part, a NAS will function the same as all other NAS devices. It's from it's basic functionality where you will see a difference. I know that Synology is kind of the benchmark of NAS devices. They have great support and operate on a Linux based OS which is great. Also they have a lot of backup options and free appliances which from what I've read the WD MyCloud and other devices don't have.

On Amazon you're going to find the best price for most devices new. IMO this https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=synology&qid=1556817727&s=gateway&sr=8-2 plus 2X4TB WD Red drives is a better option.

It really depends on what you want to do now and potentially later. You can buy...

1. an external HDD like the WD 10TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive for $206.98 USD and connect it to the laptop,
   
2. a consumer NAS like the Synology 2 bay NAS DiskStation DS218+ (Diskless) for $289.62 USD plus the cost of HDDs,
   
3. a PC that can take a couple of hard drives like the HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF i7-4770 3.40Ghz 16GB RAM 2TB HDD 240GB SSD Win 10 Pro (Renewed) for $315.99 USD plus a larger HDD,
   
4. something like the HP ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Ultra Quad-core 8GB DDR4 SDRAM Serial ATA/600 Controller Micro Tower Server Model P03698-S01 for $395.00 USD plus the cost of HDDs, or
   
5. any number of other options.
   
   Since you are familiar with Ubuntu, which is based on Debian, you should look into Proxmox VE, which is a Debian server with custom tools and a web UI for creating and managing Linux containers (LXCs) and kernel-based virtual machines (KVMs) and storage management. LXCs are similar to Docker containers except they behave more like virtual machines. Pre-built LXC containers including tons of web development frameworks like LAMP, Node.js, Drupal, Django etc. are available from TurnKey Linux for downloading and installing in minutes. Great fun!

On Synology, using PhotoStation, you can tag: Location, People, and generic tags. So, outside of the location and people in that photo, you can tag specific qualities of the photo (landscape, car, dog, animal, black and white, birthday, etc etc)

You also have the option to share the photo or add the photo to a shared album so you can share multiple photos at once.

At the top of the linked page, you can click a link for a live demo of DiskStation Manager, of which PhotoStation is a part of. And you can explore it on your own. They don't give you a username and password, but I was automatically logged in after I waited a short while. Once logged in, click the set of four squares in the upper left and select PhotoStation. Play around with it and see if that's what you want.

Keep in mind the the 2-bay Synology's don't come with hard drives, so that'll be a separate expense:

• $150USD - https://smile.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS216se-Diskless/dp/B014SKVQR8/
  
• $84USD (x2) - https://smile.amazon.com/Red-2TB-Hard-Disk-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/
  
• $318USD - Subtotal (doesn't include tax)
  
  I linked to a WD Red HDD because those are rated and designed for use in NAS systems, it's a drive I'm familiar with, and a brand I trust. But, in the end, you can go with whatever drive you want. For what it's worth, the 2TB Seagate IronWolf, another HDD made for NAS systems, is only $79USD, bringing the subtotal down to $308USD.
  
  I'm going to assume you have minimal knowledge of NAS systems so I'll add some additional info. You also may need more than 2TB drives, depending on how you set up the volume, RAID1 or RAID0, you'll have 2TB and 4TB of space respectively. I’m not saying you’ll need 3 drives but if 2TB or 4TB isn’t enough space, you’ll n Ed to purchase larger drives. But, that should be plenty of space.
  
  RAID1 will mirror the drives, so all the data is both drives. So if one drive fails, all the data is still available. Just put in another 2TB drive and the system will copy the data over to the new drive. RAID1 has redundancy and you're protected against a drive failure.
  
  RAID0 will combine the drive space. So, two 2TB drives is now 4TB of space. However, if one of those drives fails, you lose all the data. RAID0 is particularly useful for speed, and for program scratch discs. I would never keep important stuff, like photos of my family and vacations, on a RAID0 NAS system.
  
  Of course, RAID is not a backup. Just because there is redundancy doesn't mean your data is safe. I'm not sure if it's the same in Canada but if you have Amazon Prime, you can back up all your photos to Amazons Cloud Drive. Depending on how/where PhotoStation stores your photos, you may be able to set up a backup task to copy the photos on the NAS to Amazon Cloud for you. That way, should the RAID1 array fail, and you need to replace both drives, your photos are still secure & safe and you'll be able to download them off Amazon.

Cable management to start.

You need to set yourself ample time and be in a focused mood to do it.

Basically, you sit down one Saturday (or other day off), and unplug EVERYTHING.

Line up all of the equipment the way you want to so it looks nice and neat, and then run the wiring. (optional but helpful: label the wires)

I use these a lot at work: https://smile.amazon.com/VELCRO-Brand-Reusable-Fastening-Organizing/dp/B001E1Y5O6/ you can also buy one long roll of velcro so you can cut to size, I like that better at home.

To address the flipping over because of cables, you have to contort the cables. Bend them in the opposite direction they want to bend, not too hard but firm, and they'll end up wanting to stay straight.

Pro-tip: If you hang a group of cables over a hook and cable tie them together at the bottom, near the RJ-45 tips; leave them there for a week or so, you end up with really straight cables. (I got this trick from my former boss).

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Edit: for me, if I had a wire rack I would make it look more pleasant by putting a wooden board, or even poster board on top of the metal wire so you couldn't see through it. That may just be a personal preference though.

Edit 2: Thank you kind internet stranger for the silver!

I had a similar thread a few weeks ago with some tweaks/settings that I've stumbled across.

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeServer/comments/5hhk8o/windows_10_settings_for_home_server/

As for your specific question about redundancy, modern versions of Windows do have some options built in, search for "Windows Storage Spaces" for more info on that- it comes with mixed reviews.

I personally use some awesome software from a company called StableBit to accomplish this. It's called StableBit DrivePool https://stablebit.com/DrivePool

I also like their StableBit Scanner product, basically a disk health surveillance tool that will send me emails if there are issues with any of my disks. I think it was about $50 for DrivePool+Scanner.

EDIT: seeing what you'd be using the server for- I don't think a server is the right choice for you. A NAS (network attached storage) would be best for your situation. It's going to use significantly less power, cost less, meet your storage needs, excellent reliability, low maintenance, and high redundancy.

For example:

-This Synology NAS: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BNPT1EG/
-Two 4tb Western Digital Red drives: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00EHBERSE/

Thats $170 for the NAS and 2x$146 for the drives = $432

You will set the drives to mirror eachother for redundancy leaving you with 4tb of storage for your wife's photos. And if you don't have an off- site backup solution already there are plenty of Synology plugins to help you with that as well.

Wow that is a great starting point to get a dream network install
And by dream I mean your dream and also the network intall guys dream ;)

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For what you have:
A 40+ heught full rack that is wll ebted. Also you already have installed good network cables on a patch pannel.

From the looks of it also a PowerDistributionUnit is already installed.

​

What I would do with it:
Install a grat network
Costs about 4 Units of height

e.g. a full ubiqity UniFy setup:
https://amzn.to/2XyulfS + https://amzn.to/2XFgk00 + https://amzn.to/2G3Uk3I + https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UAP-AC-PRO-Access-Included/dp/B07CKG5LJF

For a install like this suitable mount points in the house are already there...


Install a Uninteruptable Power Supply
Another 4-6 height units
https://amzn.to/30pyTlG

This way your system stays up for power outages of 1h (more makes little sense since by then the UPS at the provider typically are also out of battery)

​

Install a rack mount NAS for all your Data
Anoter 2-3 Height units

https://amzn.to/2LOGCpr


​

The rest is harder to fill up if you don't want to put in your own server infrastructure...

I prsonally would also build a high end computer / Gaming machine and use steam link / thin client to connect to it. This way The noisy hot gaming setup is in the garage ;)

CPU upgrades are more complicated then it seems. If you buy a Ryzen 3000 now and say 2-3 years down the line you want to upgrade it's going to be a little hard. First the new AMD cpus aren't going to work on your existing board (AM4 is on it's last gen right now). So unless you can find a used higher SKU Ryzen 3, you're going to need to update your mobo as well. Maybe even RAM? That's a whole system upgrade there. If you plan to upgrade you're going to need to upgrade fairly often and quickly to expect to be able to reuse parts.


If you're just talking about the act of building a computer, there are lost of great guides on YouTube and it's not as hard as it would seem.

If you don't want to deal with paste I highly recommenced thermal pads like:
https://www.amazon.com/Innovation-Cooling-Graphite-Thermal-Pad/dp/B07CKVW18G/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=thermal+pad&qid=1569897016&s=electronics&sr=1-4 OR
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PHLJYWK/ref=psdc_2998409011_t3_B07CKVW18G
It's going to preform close to the best thermal paste but saves so much headache.

x570 has great features but you're never going to use them in a server (pci-e 4.0, overclocking features). But the same really goes for an x470 board as well (Multi-gpu. I say save money on a B450 board.

Go over to r/buildapc for more advice.

Hello! A small NAS should be a good solution for your company. If you want to increase the level of security you could always buy another NAS which replicates the first one. Another option would be a daily backup which you carry home with you after a work day. If your server gets destroyed the data is still save.


I don't know what exactly you mean with your question but some companies allow thier users to use addons or other services to download stuff directly on you NAS-Server (e.g. Synology, QNAP). For your local network the speeds should be sufficent but they won't be really good. Consumer NAS servers usually have a gigabit connection and can therefore transfere at a speed of ~100 MBps. For normal office work the speed should be enough and you won't notice any slowdowns.

​

If you haven't bought a device yet you should consider buying an used industiral server with a good RAID controller and sufficent RAM. You can find these all over eBay and other platforms.

​

Synology and QNAP are known for reasonable prices, easy installation and good speeds.

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-bay-DiskStation-DS218j-Diskless/dp/B076G6YKWZ/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=nas+server+2+bay&qid=1563207524&s=gateway&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&sr=8-4

​

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS218-Diskless/dp/B075N1BYWX/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=nas+server+2+bay&qid=1563207533&s=gateway&sr=8-3

Not turnkey, but a much better option than a QNAP or Synology.

Workstation: ~$300
https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F302947028588

Hard Drives: 6x$105=$630
WD Red 3TB NAS Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD30EFRX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008JJLW4M/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_XyZ-BbKN4D314

OS: Free
FreeNAS

Total: ~$1000

12TB Usable In raidz2 18TB Total.

In a 4-bay NAS the best you could do is raidz1/Raid 5. Raid 5 is worthless. Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

I got an iStarUSA S35 with a trayless drive cage, it will probably run about 170'ish. I like it a lot, but you'll have to go another route on the PSU as it takes a Flex PSU. Not a huge deal, they are on Amazon, NewEgg, etc

The tray less model I got... https://www.amazon.com/iStarUSA-S-35-DE4BL-3-5-Inch-Trayless-mini-ITX/dp/B00EC32KEA/ref=sr_1_24?keywords=istarusa+s-35&qid=1564973279&s=gateway&sr=8-24

A trayed version is also on Amazon as well, but I have no experience with it. You could save a little coin and go this route:

https://www.amazon.com/iStarUSA-S-35EX-Compact-3x5-25-inch-Mini-ITX/dp/B017S6RIU8/ref=sr_1_18?keywords=istarusa+s-35&qid=1564973279&s=gateway&sr=8-18

Then buy this...

https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-5-25-Inch-3-5-Inch-Hot-swap-SATAIII/dp/B00DGZ42SM/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=rosewill+drive+cage&qid=1564973142&s=gateway&sr=8-2

My friend uses that drive cage in a generic tower case so he has hot swap, and he likes it.

Synology is a good choice. QNAP is another vendor that a lot of people like. Regardless of vendor, I would get something with Ethernet connectivity so you can stream media from it, back up your computers, etc. I would also set it up with mirrored drives, so that if one drive fails you don't lose your stuff.

The Synology DS218+ looks pretty reasonable. That and a couple of big cheap Black Friday NAS drives and you could be up and running for $600-$900 depending on the size of drives you get. I don't know if this sounds like a little or a lot to you because I don't know your budget.

I do have a preschooler though, so I know how kids can impact disposable income. I have $2.5k in my 8-bay e3 xeon freenas box, luckily completed before my son was born. It's powerful and it does everything I need it to do. I highly recommend this solution if you like to tinker and spend money.

A lot of folks on the datahoarder subreddit buy western digital easystore external usb drives for bulk storage. I believe the last DAT sale had 8tb easystores going for $160 or so. They are just normal sata drives inside.

That sounds perfectly promising, thanks for providing one complete reasonable setup, thats pretty much what I wanted to see under my post :)

So just for my conclusion:

I buy the TS440 (standard version 4GB RAM/ NO HDD)

1x Crucial 16GB Kit

1x SSD 120GB

1x HDD 3TB

• I currently only have 1TB of media, and MC/CSGO won't fill the rest that fast, so I guess 3TB is more than enough
  
• I know 20GB RAM might be much, but I "helped" hosting a public minecraft server external and there it ate all the RAM it could get :P
  
  I still have one more quesiton:
  I think I'll just buy one standard lenovo 3.5 inch caddy to start, but where do I put my SSD? It's 2.5 inch. You said 'laying on the bottom' did I understand it correct you just wrapped it in somehow? xD
  
  Second question:
  I can't find the TS440 that cheap anywhere else, amazon won't ship it outside the US, and I don't live in the US...any ideas where to get it?

So the Perc H200 does connect to the backplane but requires some interesting connectors. I couldn't find the part numbers for the actual dell equiv.

I picked up these

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008VLHOR2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-685183-001-Proliant-DL360E-Gen-8-90-Degree-Mini-SAS-SFF-8087-Cable-672240-001-/332276019068?hash=item4d5d31af7c

​

Now for the flash guide... I had no issues using this guide:

​

https://techmattr.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/updated-sas-hba-crossflashing-or-flashing-to-it-mode-dell-perc-h200-and-h310/

​

But the issue I was having was; I could not flash the card in the T410, I had to use another computer I had around.

​

Hopefully thats not the case for you!

​

Good Luck!

​

​

Lovely when they do that.

What's your budget? I could see this as an easy upgrade path:

• Purchase an HP ML10 Server
  
  
• Move your disks over
  
  
• Move RAM over (if you'd like.)
  
  
• Sell off your current computer (or use for a media PC/friend/Whatever.)
  
  Gives you 4 clean easy to use drive bays plus a fifth if you take out the cdrom. Better CPU and RAM. This one would be even faster for PLEX and more VMs.
  
  

I was actually so shocked by that synology box price I decided to take 15 minutes to see what could be built from used server components - obviously I'd put more thought into actually building a system than 15 minutes, but here's just a cursory example of how much better used server hardware is for home server use:

​

This is a Supermicro (high-end reliable server grade) Motherboard with Intel NIC (best brand), a low power Xeon quad core with hyperthreading and 32GB of ECC RAM, powered by a bigtime overkill fanless PSU.

That Xeon is about 250% more powerful than the Pentium in the Synology box, and it has double the cores/threads which is very important for a server. It also has 4x as much RAM.

The xeon will draw more power, a full xeon e3-1286L based system (with 1xHDD) pulls a max of ~90W on a benchmark stress test. Synology claims that their box pulls a max of ~127W while accessing all 6 disks, normalizing that for 1 disk (HDD's pull ~9W max usually) that's ~82W under load for the synology. Based on average US energy prices and 24/7 operation under maximum load - it would cost you about $11 more a Year to run the xeon based system. So not worth mentioning.

That gives you a dramatically more powerful base system for ~$645, just add HDD's like the synology.

​

So as you can see, the difference between buying prepackaged hardware and DIY from used server parts its just insane.

​

​

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https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-X10SLM-F-server-workstation-motherboard-LGA-1150-Micro-ATX-I-O/273573769438?epid=1707598449&hash=item3fb24470de%3Ag%3ANn8AAOSwIJFb9q~&LH_ItemCondition=4#viTabs_

​

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https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-E3-1286L-V3-ES-QFF9-3-20GHz-LGA1150-4-Core-8M-Server-CPU-Processor/333146861874?epid=4014168006&hash=item4d9119b132:g:juQAAOSw7SFbv5cG

​

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Crucial-32GB-4x8GB-PC3L-12800E-DDR3L-1600-240pin-UDIMM-ECC-Server-Reg-1-35V-RAM/232579056047?hash=item3626cac1af&enc=AQADAAADAFjVrDbVsZ8oH%2F8PNHtt9VX4%2Fw7FZcmMuqsX8uaFEduVoSlFD7YzaFJxI%2B19xgEo3qM4MrMlcMqPQse1uinyFK%2FgUb8s1FdDz1neKTkAwxDsc4HwD4l%2FX%2FuRFduxJl3qs8Pr3hsrUxsLyBOFsGL6rnLSkClEwQ0zwpW67ZeFEhABSi3%2BB7mhbTTO15LlJWT95Kq0mwNTHFvrFFIlup3ojN%2B6%2B8jh5ly3BRkEdTMJE6prFk%2FOMrKcVWVNFt2P9tQpOdMAxJ7ZJceCt4blbMXjx5Gme3voX26q0uKPiz9DPxSlLQw8vSTkHXrufh2a1P3eg9TeAVXwHFgwU%2BBrVYM2Svpaii1WtrBLezLxDa%2FmUC17h6kudq6q29%2FfTGQGjNUmyDy5KAHrvYe7O5MbHenozUstZaiLKqbDy4b085iW014FSYanry8tINmWgLXHO7Baym17aLnzm3up76GPV1ckPZHV2Tka8gditkUPMO3d8lndw5VUfrWLK4y4bRJaKCGB1noEVbf1YxWljUtK%2BWXEzbwbpP8omkE3FWhzGlyjQ7BF5gmRRckhXOrgO4H5m95po0Q3yQXft%2BV3EBBx4VHKON5s4SXxYhHfTrUmHlnbyDF6sSw3w2hNhwSTpQHvwnRId%2BPp3Vo78aA2bcnRbRBTsETa88YR1BrIdrNxoMnxTHT3uJ81XcaqdWHfBe%2B3U0%2BSqpNx4a%2BwqNlWPjWEGdb4U0rrV4DJYWjp4imjn9d6N3%2BaOVZJGHTHOq2bLZS5CXxmTYI7kiC5VHoFmF6LN4BcYBqNn4vIPNfPuG33cloiRL8ilmrQTFqTIvuLSljdTxLUqDcJ3i0Gv18iNl%2F2XZ%2BRDLvnjWr1STxO68R2liLSIDJ7n835n3uzHf6QndL82G2Cyzm75raNpX60oSsqnafyzNfa8HmwgAzXNjOUXzCLIuqyxYpXulMftNiPiKrOhGIyNWAfLu%2B6yASIn0VtvLQMzsyzbfCL6%2F6CW4FImRjYVe4G1l3Ue3a4B%2BDc8xrxK2onBg%3D%3D&checksum=2325790560470d20ad38c9bc4d6690953d7b47062682

​

https://www.amazon.com/Silverstone-Nightjar-Completely-Acoustics-NJ520/dp/B00KHO0IG0/?tag=akshatblog198-20

​

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?item=N82E16811352047

This is considerably better for about the same price.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01230V2U6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_nfIMybWC7AJQQ

It has a much better CPU and it's in a platform where you can easily upgrade parts.

It also comes with a 500GB HDD and 8GB of Ram for on $10 more than what you posted.

Also it has a fan to cool the CPU. Fanless stuff is not good for anything that requires a decent amount of CPU usage. It will just thermal throttle.

There's a good deal on 3TB WD red...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B008JJLW4M/ref=mp_s_a_1_4?qid=1451405948&sr=8-4&pi=AC_SX220_SY330_QL65&keywords=4tb+wd+red&dpPl=1&dpID=51Fqd4-lDPL&ref=plSrch

4TB Seems to be going for £120

So £240 for 8TB/9TB

So maybe more like £400

You'll need case / mobo / CPU / psu

Have you considered a commercial NAS product, like Synology? With your light needs, you would probably be safe with a 2-bay and a couple of 2-4TB hard drives.

However, remember that the online systems handle a lot of things for you, such as disks dying, that you will need to handle yourself if you go local. With only two disks I would enable a feature called "RAID 1" that will help protect your data if one of the drives dies. However, the redundancy means that if you (for example) have two 2TB disks inside the NAS your available space will only be 2TB - the second disk will always be a "backup."

Also, considering this is for a business you should also think about backing up the data somewhere off-site for emergencies (such as your office burns down, or gets robbed). This could even be OneDrive - you wouldn't need to use it except if something happens to your data, and every week you could add any new/changed files to OneDrive from the NAS.

Synology supports Dynamic DNS. I assume your firm has a website; the person who manages that may be able to help you get the NAS set up on a domain like cloudfiles.website.com that would let all employees connect and download files from anywhere.

This is, of course, assuming you only need the server for data storage - that is what a NAS is good at. It can do other kinds of calculations and processing too, but it would not be as good as a typical server for that purpose.

Well consider what you're paying for: you're not paying for just a box of parts, you're paying for everything that went into the design, testing, and refinement of the entire system.

You're paying for all the design work that went into laying the system out so it's as compact as possible without making it run too hot or making the fan run too loudly. And at the same time that design allows access to any component without any tools at all, coming apart in a very simple, intuitive, and modular way.

You're paying for the testing of how big a fan do they need to effectively cool something as powerful as a Xeon E3 without sounding like a jet engine (and whether or not a Xeon E3 was even reasonably cooled within these design parameters) and the strategic placement of temperature sensors to ensure no component was over-heating and nor were they generating too much noise over-cooling components running within acceptable parameters.

You're paying for all the system integration that went into making iLO a brain-dead easy to use system that, aside from replacing components, totally eliminates the need to ever physically touch the machine. A system that can stream an ISO across the network and make it appear to the machine itself, before the OS is even loaded, as if you have physically plugged a DVD drive into a SATA port. A system that, even though the entire rest of the machine is powered down, can still give you sensor read-outs and status reports, and then can turn the machine on and give you full access to a remote terminal that the machine believes isn't remote at all.

And then to top it off it comes with a full one year warranty, where if anything goes wrong you can simply hand the thing off to HPE and say "fix it." Or, hell, depending on the warranty terms and the nature of the problem you can even have a guy come right out to you and fix it on the spot.

And this has all been tested to run at full tilt, all cylinders firing, for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year.

That's what $429 gets you. Now if that's not important to you, and it sounds like it isn't, then I'd say just go ahead and build one then. You'll get more power for less money and you can drop a bunch of features you'll probably never need, like ECC RAM (unless you decide to go FreeNAS, then ECC RAM is strongly recommended).

Just a word of warning about your budget, though: depending on how you want to handle storage the majority of your $500 budget is probably going to be eaten up by hard disks. If you're going to set up like a RAID5-like system you generally want to lean towards NAS/RAID drives because non-NAS drives handle read/write errors in a way that can make your whole system hang, and those'll set you back $100 per 3TB disk.

ECC RAM 16GB: http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-DDR3L-1600MT-PC3-12800-CT2KIT102472BD160B-CT2CP102472BD160B/dp/B008EMA5VU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1452264155&sr=8-2&keywords=ecc+ram

SSD 128GB for the FreeNAS will be valuable if you are going to have lots of traffic in your home server. Then the SSD will act as cache, increasing the speed of the transfer.

Mobo: http://www.amazon.com/Asrockrack-Motherboard-Mini-DDR3-E3C224D2I/dp/B00G9U6FIQ/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1452264276&sr=8-3&keywords=asrock+rack
I have this mobo. It works well. But I'm facing some issues with the IPMI (simply is dead), so I cannot remote power on the server. Now it is 100% powered on all the time. not an (big) issue.

Case (came with all fans needed): http://www.amazon.com/Fractal-Design-Mini-ITX-Computer-FD-CA-NODE-304-BL/dp/B009LHF4FO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452264378&sr=8-1&keywords=fractal+design+node+304

This is my server setup. Bought the itens in USA when I was on vacation there.

For the HDDs a little tip: Buy all same sizes (does not matter the brand).
Security tip for paranoic: buy same hdds sizes, different brands, and different batchs.

If you use the HDD same size, you can setup the storage in RAIDZ. Get full features that ZFS can bring.

Suggest the video of a webinar shown yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJa94v_PKWA

Yeah that's actually a pretty decent machine for a simple home server. You could run FreeNAS or Openfiler or OpenMediaVault on there pretty easily. The RAID configuration you're proposing is perfectly fine. You could then put the two RAID volumes into one LVM group to make one big LVM volume, if you want.

One thing I worry about is the available SATA ports. The specs don't list what's available but I'll assume it's four ports. If you want to add more drives, you'll need a SATA controller card, and it looks like there's only one PCIe x16 slot and one regular PCI slot. You'd want to use the PCIe slot for a SATA controller for its throughput, but the video card is likely occupying that slot, and if there's no on-board video, you'll have to install a PCI video card or use the PCI slot for the SATA controller or sacrifice video altogether, all of which seem problematic.

If there's not enough room inside for all four drives, you could install something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-5-25-Inch-3-5-Inch-Hot-swap-SATAIII/dp/B00DGZ42SM/

Also, this is probably the correct sub for what you're asking.

How about a TS140 for $220 - http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkServer-70A4000HUX-i3-4130-Computer/dp/B00F6EK9J2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421116847&sr=8-1&keywords=ts140

Paired with two WD Red 3TB drives for $230 ($115 each)- http://www.amazon.com/WD-Red-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLW4M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421116933&sr=8-1&keywords=wd+red+3tb

You'll have two extra SATA for future expansion, and WHS can run without issue on 4GB.

The Rosewill RSV-R4000 is a great case. It's highly modular and upgradeable. The only issue is that you have to buy sliding rails separately... OR you can get universal "shelf-style" rails.

This was my build in October of 2011 so these parts will not be available now but there should be something similar.

• CPU - Intel Celeron G530 $56.99
  
• Motherboard - ASUS P8H67-M LX $89.99
  
• Ram - Team Elite 8GB (2 x 4GB) $39.99
  
• Case - NZXT Source 210 $54.99
  
• PSU - Corsair CX430 $39.99
  
  Total Cost before Hard drives: $281.95
  
  This was my first build and it did me well (I only replaced it around 5 months ago)
  
  Here is a very similar build that has in stock parts
  
  
• CPU - Intel Celeron G1820 $45.99
  
• Motherboard - ASRock H97M 69.99
  
• Ram - [G.SKILL NS Series 8GB (2 x 4GB)] (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231645) $54.99
  
• Case - NZXT Source 210 $54.99
  
• PSU - Corsair CX430 $39.99
  
  Total Cost Before Hard Drives: $265.95
  
  As for a storage drive since you only want 2tb I'd suggest this drive
  
  
• WD Red 2TB NAS $95.99
  
  If your planning on buying Windows server I'd look here for a copy of Server 2012 R2 Essentials /r/microsoftsoftwareswap/
  
  

Rosewill RSV-R4000 will fit 3 of these

Quad nic is nice to have. It has 2 already built in. (I believe). The box uses ECC unregistered mem.

Crucial 16GB Kit (8GBx2) DDR3/DDR3L-1600MT/s (PC3-12800) DR x8 ECC UDIMM Server Memory CT2KIT102472BD160B/CT2CP102472BD160B

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008EMA5VU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_LR8jxbY4T8S72

Still a bit pricey but it basically has the same features as the gen8:
https://www.amazon.com/ProLiant-Server-System-Dual-core-i3-4150/dp/B01230V2U6/

Edit: this is a discontinued model as well, I bought this server before I bought a Gen8, it's more modern though.

Those bays will fit in the same manufacturer's 4u rack mount cases.

https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Rackmount-Computer-Pre-Installed-RSV-R4000/dp/B0055EV30W/

One of the options listed already includes 3 of them. If you already purchased 2 of the holders, the least expensive option will be $99 for the dual bay case.

Sure - Just measure your cables and check if your want straight or 90 connectors. This is one that I bought for the A to A side, but mine is a tower, not a rack mount.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008VLHOR2

The DS380 is one I've been looking at. (https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-Mini-ITX-Computer-DS380B/dp/B00IAELTAI)

I really like the Hot Swap bays, and the FreeNAS forums have stories of people who have used this case with lower powered Atom builds (C2550 or C2750). Some people say that the drives get warmer if you put higher end CPUs in place, but they mitigated that by adding cardboard to direct airflow.

If you plan to use an ITX board, the Fractal Design Node 304 is quite small and gives you more options for expansion. If you want something that's insanely future proof, you can go with a Silverstone DS380B. Again, I'm assuming you are using an ITX board.

These guys?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DGZ42SM/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1

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What about power, cpu, ram and your MB?

This Rosewill case is one I've been fawning over for a while.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055EV30W/ref=twister_B01N5HO6X2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352027

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339

https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-Mini-ITX-Computer-DS380B/dp/B00IAELTAI

https://www.amazon.com/Norco-Mini-ITX-Computer-Storage-support/dp/B012UO63TK

How about mini-itx instead?

http://www.amazon.com/Silverstone-Tek-Mini-ITX-Computer-DS380B/dp/B00IAELTAI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418141421&sr=8-1&keywords=Silverstone+Tek+Premium+Mini-ITX+DTX+Small+Form+Factor+NAS+Computer+Cases%2C+Black+%28DS380B%29

Here:

https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-Technology-Mini-ITX-Computer-DS380B/dp/B00IAELTAI/ref=pd_cp_147_3?pd_rd_w=m2btz&pf_rd_p=ef4dc990-a9ca-4945-ae0b-f8d549198ed6&pf_rd_r=9MGHG1DYF2GDKZFYH6RW&pd_rd_r=9e7c53ea-6f47-11e9-9381-ffdfe42e5ee6&pd_rd_wg=75dXv&pd_rd_i=B00IAELTAI&psc=1&refRID=9MGHG1DYF2GDKZFYH6RW

There are a few. I actually have the [Norco ITX-S4] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J353KH8/) that I use for my NAS and is around the same size as the U-NAS. There's also the Silverstone DS380B, Chenbro SR30169 and Supermicro CSE-721TQ-250B that are slightly larger.

Here is the desktop version of your link