(Part 2) Best products from r/HomeServer

There's really a couple different paths to choose when embarking upon this journey. Some folks purchase brand new hardware, while the alternative option is to consider picking up an old/used enterprise server, which can offer incredible value for slightly older, yet awesomely powerful machines with a lot of life left in them for home usage. I hemmed and hawed and was in an almost identical situation as you are right now, only this was roughly ~2 years ago.

I would encourage you to start by taking a gander at /r/Homelab's wiki, you probably won't find a better single source of information anywhere on the web: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/buyingguide

It's chock-full of great information. Do you have a budget in mind? What's your ISP bandwidth like? Are you planning to share things remotely, or going to keep most of this in-house? Do you have a decent router to build out your home network around? LOTS of considerations to make, it's difficult to find a one-size fits all solution, as every use case is going to be different to a certain extent.

For me, personally, I started with a trusty little Edgerouter-X that I managed to pick up on sale for $49 way back when. It's an amazingly powerful and versatile device that handled most everything I threw at it. From there you'll need to decide what type of hypervisor you want to run, as this can seriously affect the hardware requirements you initially inquired about.

The path I followed for learning hypervisors was sort of:

• VirtualBox -- widely used, totally free, can pretty much be installed on any desktop PC, but i found it to be a bit clunky once I got some experience with other options.
  
• Microsoft Hyper-V -- there's two variants of this (type 1 & type 2), the former being what you would install on baremetal, as your OS, then manage remotely from another machine on the network... no admin GUI, so you'll need to learn some command line. The latter option (type 2 Hyper-V) can be added to any Windows 10 Pro (or Enterprise) desktop PC, by simply going into "Programs and Features" and using the appropriate checkbox to "Turn Windows features on or off" but be advised, virtual machines want memory. Lots and lots of RAM, depending upon what type and how many virtual machines you ultimately end up running.
  
• Proxmox -- is something i only initially dabbled with, so I don't have much firsthand experience, however it's an excellent choice, is also free & open-source if you are comfortable delving into the *nix realm.
  
• VMware ESXi -- there are licensing costs associated with this, but ESXi is the free version for home use, with a somewhat limited feature set and can be rather particular about what type of hardware you run this on. This is what we were using at work and is pretty much considered the gold standard in virtualization, so I wanted to get my feet wet and learn more about what our guys were using on a day to day basis, so this is where I ultimately landed. You must check the hardware compatibility list before dropping a ton of cash, if you decide to go this route. This is ultimately what lead me to the used enterprise gear, I picked up my first legit server from Craigslist with intentions of going this route... and i currently have two ESXi 6.7 compute nodes providing all my virtualization needs.
  
  These are by no means the only options. There's a very passionate community (albeit sometimes a bit toxic) surrounding the FreeNAS project, and just as many folks love unRAID for the simplicity and versatility it offers (at a small, one-time cost, I believe fifty or sixty dollars for the license). Or you could even run your favorite flavor of Linux server and build everything yourself, from the ground up. This is a wonderful resource for getting an idea of what that might entail: https://blog.linuxserver.io/2017/06/24/the-perfect-media-server-2017/
  
  Some general tips I've managed to pick up over the years; RAM, RAM, RAM... you can almost certainly never have enough. It will be the single most in-demand resource once you get going. Don't stress too terribly much over CPU power, unless you have intentions of pushing out 4K HDR transcoded streams. Knowing what devices the end-users will be using to consume your media from a Plex server is also very helpful, but the general rule is ~2000 Passmark score per 1080p stream. This will be your bible for determining Plex requirements.
  
  Don't just take my word for anything that's been mentioned here, as my network is an absolute mess and being constantly built, broken, fixed, torn down and rebuilt all over again. That poor attempt at a jumbled network diagram is a bit outdated already, but gives a general idea of the various options available. I mostly am what you would call a "tinkerer" type homelabber. If you have a more specific professional sysadmin path in mind, this may be more of what you are looking for, but I tend to stick more to the homelab realm and get into all sorts of bad little projects. They have a great "Start Here!" thread with an incredible overview that presents things in a MUCH better fashion than I have been able to just now.
  
  Good luck and welcome to the machine! Used enterprise hardware can be had for fairly cheap these days and you are in luck, it's a great time to embark upon a homelab journey as flash memory prices have finally started to plummet, so SSDs are much more reasonable, as is ECC memory for your server(s). Storage and memory are going to be your biggest costs getting into this. You can get older generation Xeon CPUs with really decent horsepower for next to nothing. Are electricity costs going to be a concern for you? What about physical space and/or noise constraints? Lots to consider which could tip you in one direction or another.
  
  I think I've given you plenty to chew on for now. My apologies in advance if I've overwhelmed you, as that was NOT my intent... just hoping to save you a little bit of time, as I've spent a couple years constantly reading, researching, evaluating various software and projects and I've really only scratched the surface of what's available. Never enough time in the day.
  
  Regardless of what path you choose, have fun! I highly encourage both Plex and Pi-hole as your first two projects once you get going. In a perfect world you'd have at least two Pi-holes set up for redundancy. My primary runs in a little Ubuntu Server VM, the secondary nameserver is on a little Raspberry Pi 3 B+ which can take over if I need to reboot servers for whatever reason. Bonus points if you consider combining Unbound with your Pi-hole, as well as an OpenVPN server, or PiVPN for secure browsing while out and about and potentially connected to any sketchy open WiFi networks, PLUS ad-blocking for your entire network and while on the go. Next to Plex, it's probably the single best project I've tinkered with over the past couple of years.
  
  Please keep us posted on what you decide -- don't hesitate to ask questions if there's stuff I've ranted and raved about that isn't clear in any way (sorry, i tend to ramble in a stream of consciousness style that isn't easy to follow)... rely on the communities of each of these projects, as they're often fantastic resources to help you. If yer unfamiliar with Linux and wanted to learn, then Linux Mint is where I started and would encourage you to use that as your first Linux VM once you're ready. You don't need to buy anything to get started, you'd be surprised how much you can learn on an old PC that's just lying around -- and once you've gotten your feet wet, you may find that your plans will continue to evolve and change. I don't think I've ever once seen a "finished" homelab. They're always a work in progress as there's no limits to what you can learn and do. YMMV.
  
  Thank you, please drive through. . . =)

> 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!

Checkout:

• https://www.serverbuilds.net/
  
• /r/JDM_WAAAT
  
  The build above is more expensive than I would spend for a home media server, but everyone has a different budget. You might want to consider alternatives to some parts that are just as good, but cheaper. For example, do you really need those noctua 120mm fans? You can get a 5 pack of Arctic fans for $27 and do just as good a job cooling. There are other things you could do without or find cheaper alternatives for. Below are a couple of things that jumped out at me:
  
  I'm not sure about the 10 gb ethernet adapters. I get your desire to link your PC, but check to see what other bottlenecks you have and if the 10 gb adapters will do anything (e.g. hard drive / ssd read and write speeds).
  
  While we are talking storage, I always try to challenge peoples assumptions that they need RAID. RAID is not a backup solution. RAID is about up-time. RAID is not easy to expand. For media storage you might be better off using a pooling solution like mergerfs or stablebit drivepool.
  
  Is the ethernet cable going outside? If not, then you don't need the direct burial / waterproof cable.
  
  The netgear switch seems unnecessary if you only have two devices with 10gbe and you can connect them directly.
  
  The rosewill drive cages are nice, but if you don't need hot swap you can save ~$80 by switching to Norco 5 x 3.5" HDD Hard Drive Cage.

I recently bought one of these with this RAM and this hard drive to replace my virtualized pfSense install after I was away for two weeks and had ESXi issues that took my VPN offline. I know this sub isn't a fan of Realtek NICs, but what I was looking for was: a processor that supports AES-NI, fanless, compact, dual NICs, low power consumption, and decent price. This machine hit all of those, with the only drawback being non-Intel NICs. So far, I've had absolutely no issues with it. It's a little overkill if you just want basic routing, but I wanted to be able to run OpenVPN, Snort, pfBlockerNG, etc. and have a comfortable overhead for anything I wanted to try in the future.

For an access point, Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-AC-LITE or UAP-AC-PRO are pretty popular "prosumer" products. I'm sure someone can recommend some good switches, but I'm currently running a Netgear GS724T and it provides me with the features I need (VLAN, LAG/LACP) and I'm happy with it.

I think you're trying to do to much with 1 Machine. Think about it like this


1 machine for your gaming - because you want it to be stronger than the others


1 machine for your storage / voice server solution doesn't need to be amazing hardware wise.

1 machine for your website.


A separate machine for your website is key. Because this device needs to sit in your networks dmz because if it's compromised you do not want people on your internal network able to get at your private data.

You could mix the gaming / storage solution (easy enough to host smb shares with windows) you could have a few drives, 1 OS drive, one local drive to store whatever, and 1 raid solution for your data integrity and backup.



Here is what I use for a freenas solution that has 6 TB of zfs storage and 2 TB raid 1 home drives to back up important data. Although I got this for about 50 dollar cheaper. It's been running for about 4 years now.

ASRock Motherboard & CPU Combo Mini ITX DDR3 1066 N3150DC-ITX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013CT9HLI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_3-mwzbQK4PD8G


Do some research which raid solution fits your needs.

> Stick to the 1Gbps switches, but you will also need a NIC that can run at 1Gbps. You can use two NICs to aggregate for redundancy or use MPIO for more throughput.

Don't almost all newer motherboard support 1Gbps? I'll most likely get a decent NIC for the NAS system, though I don't think I'll benefit from using NICs for the PCs themself.

Would it be better to buy 2 of these Intel Gigabyte NIC over a more expensive dual Gigabyte NIC like this broadcom NetXtreme II or this Intel NIC?

If I were to use MPIO, would I need a more intelligent switch to handle the errors? Or is getting 2 NICs enough to get that running? Since NICs aren't too expensive, this seems like a good option.

> Do yourself a favour; don't go out and spend too much money right now. You will regret it if you purchase something that will be made redundant 2 months later because it doesn't fit in with your setup. Have a look at this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-G1610T-ProLiant-Micro-Server/dp/B00DDIC1DA/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427034818&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=dell+gen+8+microserver

I'm here to find the right solution, though I don't want to get a low end system that will need to be replaced in a few years. That would be more expensive in the long run, especially since the file sizes have been increasing extremely fast. I've seen these HP Proliant servers, which are nicely priced, but won't meet my "storage needs". I've almost filled the 4 drives I have, so that doesn't seem like a good option.

Are there other things I could have overlooked? Thank you for the advice!

I've just built a FreeNAS box on a Dell T310. Xeon 2.4Ghz x3430, 8GB. 4x3.5" bays, with 2x5.25" bays you can do what you like with. I put two of these to give me 6x3.5" and 4x2.5" bays. There are 6 onboard SATA ports, so I'm using a Dell H200 card for the 3.5" drives and my 2 SSDs with 8087 to 4xSATA cables. It runs idle at about 80w, and kicks up to 120w when it's transcoding a Plex 1080p stream.

You could use whatever hypervisor you like on it.

It doesn't take just any mishmash of RAM though, so either find one with 16+ installed already, or be ready to shell out a bit more to get yourself to the maximum of 32GB.

The Dell T320 is a great looking box too, and newer, with 8x3.5" bays, bigger RAM capacity, etc.

I feel your pain about Supermicro's EEATX standard. I misread it as EATX and purchased a used X9DR3-LN4F+ and stuffed in dual Intel Xeon E5-2670s with 192GB Samsung ECC PC3-12800R and then went to drop it into my Rosewill RSV-L4412 case...and...it extends into where the PSU goes. Crap.

I purchased some nylon risers to keep the top edge of the board from leaning too much, but it's not going anywhere and then I decided to order SFX-L SilverStone 700W PSU and it fits RIGHT in between the motherboard and the top of the case. I need to create a bracket for it, but it fits nicely above the board and will supply enough power for everything. Just gotta wait for the wires & connectors so I can make some custom cables, but this has been a sweet setup so far.

Picture (with SFX psu standing in/doing nothing): http://i.imgur.com/0NUvo64.jpg

Another picture: http://i.imgur.com/7Rpwg7V.jpg

You've been gracious, please double check my setup for me?

• Dell Studio XPS 9100
  
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005JZDUHQ/?coliid=I37PVAE7FH82JM&colid=4GMQANWRNRES&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
  
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018YHS8BS/?coliid=I3IEENMIJPIFYW&colid=4GMQANWRNRES&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it
  
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EHBERSE/?coliid=INZLNO6VWT4CM&colid=4GMQANWRNRES&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it&th=1

Yeah, you need something like a Kill A Watt to measure the actual electricity usage. Run for 10 minutes or an hour to get an energy usage rate (e.g. a = .5 KW/hr). Then you need to know how much electricity costs in your area (I use a rough guess of b = 25c/KW). Combining those numbers by multiplying gives you units of cents per hour (c = a * b = 12.5c/hr).

The problem is now we need to guess what a new server will use, let's say it uses half the electricity. For every hour you run your new server instead of the old one, you're saving about 6c/hr.

Divide the cost of a new server by this number to figure out your break-even point ($500 / $.06/hr ~= 8300 hr, approx 347 days). Meaning if you run your new server for a year straight, it will have saved you money over your old server.

How does this suit your tastes?

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Xertez/saved/tdK4nQ

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EDIT: You'll need to add an adapter to power the remaining drives, but it'll run what you're looking for easily.

something like https://www.amazon.com/TxLove-6-Inch-15pin-Power-Splitter/dp/B01ESWZ4DI/ref=sr_1_4?crid=2U4D7L2GKI60A&keywords=molex+to+sata+power+adapter&qid=1557340313&refinements=p_72%3A2661618011&rnid=2661617011&s=gateway&sprefix=molex+to+sa%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-4

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Let me know if you don't like the build so i can change it to your tastes.

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Bonus:

1. Low cost parts
   
2. Low power consumption
   
3. Has an ethernet port and a vga port used with on board graphics
   
4. Motherboard and CPU are compatible
   
5. Has everything on your list

Router: Low power, low cost, fast, 3 gigabit interfaces, Linux, good WebUI, good forum support, no moving parts/reliable... http://www.amazon.com/EdgeRouter-ERLite-3-512MB-Ethernet-Router/dp/B00CPRVF5K/

Wireless: http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-UniFi-Enterprise-System/dp/B004XXMUCQ/

Let the router be a router, don't have 1 box try to do too many things. Keep your router/firewall separate from being a server, it's better that way.

Fantastic! I'll probably just buy the LSI SAS card you listed along with this cable then.

Most of my confusion stemmed from motherboards having "SAS support", but I'm assuming that's if you are hooking up directly to the motherboard opposed to a PCIE controller?

Thanks for the in depth information!

I'd suggest replacing it with a DD-WRT capable router. This will support hairpinning and you can knock that rental fee off of your bill.

Edit: If you want to really go all-out, pick up an EdgeRouter Lite and a UniFi Access Point. This setup will do hairpinning out of the box

The build you have is more of a gaming system without a gpu. On your note i would rather buy a dell r710 https://www.amazon.com/Virtualization-Dell-PowerEdge-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B01GW5S3I2/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1551068073&sr=8-5&keywords=dell+r710

if that doesnt have enough horsepower for you i would look into other dell poweredge products. Building a server isnt half as good as buying a prebuilt. It's a good experience but you dont get the bang for your buck

Here a dell r810 40 core all you need is better hdd's

https://goo.gl/P3ChD9

Yeah, those pre-made boxes from places like Synology and Qnap are horribly overpriced. Looking at stuff like this https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Bay-DiskStation-DS3018xs-Diskless/dp/B075N17DLY/ref=sr_1_13?qid=1555002306&refinements=p_4%3ASynology&s=electronics&sr=1-13&th=1

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It costs over $1,300 USD after tax, and it comes with no disks, a Pentium CPU, 8GB of RAM and a quad port GbE NIC, which I couldn't find who manufacturers the NIC - meaning it's probably crap. These things are worth well under half what they are asking for them. For $1,300 you can build a far superior system even after you've purchased HDD's.

Thanks to your recommendation I'm now looking at the roswell 12 bay hotswappable case. I quite like hotswappable cases as they make life easy.

Would I simply buy the optiplex and stick the hardware in there and it would work out of the box?

Sounds quite appealing, if it's the case.

Here is a link to the case: https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Rackmount-Computer-Pre-Installed-RSV-L4500/dp/B00N9CXGSO?th=1

EDIT: Would there be any problem in using 10TB HDDs? I know sometimes drives of high capacity create some problems.

I'm not sure what kind of RAID card you're going to end up with but if it's the norm around here you'll likely want one of these and then 3 of these little guys.

You could probably find those cheaper somewhere else but that would work fine. Then you'd just need one SATA power connector from your PSU and it looks like it would power all 3.

Yes! As long as the BIOS will support booting from USB. Some older machines might not.

You could maybe use an adapter to put a thumb drive inside the case: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000IV6S9S

Heck, it might also have an IDE controller, so you could run the OS off IDE and storage off SATA.

Ryzen 5 3600 is pretty much neck and neck with the Ryzen 7 1700 in multithreaded applications, even with 2 cores and 4 threads less.

£190 gets you a brand new one from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AMD-Ryzen-3600-Processor-Cache/dp/B07STGGQ18

For that kind of use, almost any kind of low-powered home server would be suitable - just shop around based on price and power consumption. Even a fanless, Atom-based, NUC-sized unit would suffice.
e.g. This one: http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-GB-BXBT-2807-Barebones-Celeron-Included/dp/B00KR0QHXW

Same goes for disk performance - any modern HDD will provide more than enough throughput for your needs. Put a small SSD in the machine for the OS to boot from and use for swap and temporary processing, 120gig would be more than enough and that size SSDs are dirt cheap now.
e.g. This one: http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Digital-SSDNow-SV300S37A-120G/dp/B00A1ZTZOG

A simple external 3.5" USB connected drive would be fine for your actual files. You said 6TB would do so this would seem to be a decent choice: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Desktop-External-Storage-STDT6000100/dp/B00R1P2WDK

You don't need a RAID array either, just get a second external drive of the same size as the first and sync to it on a regular basis to keep your main media archive backed up.

Just make sure to put a decent amount of RAM in there (4GB min, preferably 8GB) - http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Technology-1600MHz-PC3-12800-KVR16LS11/dp/B00CQ35HBQ - and you're set.

That's about $350 (based on Amazon prices) to get started with another $175 to get a backup solution (second 6TB drive) in place, which you could do at a later date.

Here's a trustworthy cable to try: https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-SFF-8087-Breakout/dp/B018YHS8BS?th=1

I may be late to the game but this may help as long as AHCI is enabled.

You should hardwire the server even if its the only thing hardwired. If your house does not have Ethernet installed and you do not want to run cables i have used the MoCA devices and they are pretty good https://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Adapter-Ethernet-2-Pack-MM1002/dp/B078HMDDVS/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=mocha+ethernet&qid=1555094926&s=electronics&sr=1-4 . Don't confuse MoCA devices with those terrible power line networking devices.

Where are you located at?

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I recently got a brand new LSI 9211-8i for $79 USD https://www.amazon.com/Sas9211-8i-8port-Single-Sata-Pcie/dp/B0056FIJP2

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Also on ebay you can get a used one for around 20 or 30 bucks. Flashing is really quite easy to do. Here's the guide I used: https://www.ixsystems.com/community/threads/how-to-flash-lsi-9211-8i-using-efi-shell.50902/

/u/clickwir has basically summed it up. The "header cable" that you are describing is actually a board known as a backplane which your HDDs will slot into and on the back are the SATA connections. Hot swap is fancy terminology describing harddrives that can be easily accessed and replaced without shutting down or stopping the machine.

The reason why a SAS addon card is good is because each SAS port can take on 4 SATA connections making your wiring look very sleek. The downside is that you will likely have to buy the card and won't be able to take advantage of all your motherboard's SATA ports.

+1 for two different machines. Especially if your desktop has a nice video card and pulls a lot of power. Your Core2Duo machine sounds similar to my Plex server and it uses about 40W. You can get a Kill-A-Watt if you really want to measure the usage at idle and load and do the math.

Okay cool. In that case, get a nice board that can use your CPU and RAM, and slap it into one of these cases. They have a version with all hot-swap bays too, but you can swap those out later on since they're modular.

I don't know where this info is coming from. From what I recall there were settings for Fan Control like: Standard, Heavy IO, Optimal. I use these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NTUJTAK/ as case fans and Dynatron Heatsink/Fans with X9/10 boards in standard ATX cases and have no problems. The case fans can go down to 5-600RPM but hovered around 1000 when I just left the settings in IPMI set to "Optimal". The command-line tool "IPMItool" will allow you to set a lower "alert" RPM speed if the hard coded amount either 800 or 900 RPM is too high and causes fan flapping.

For the chromecast option, look at VideoStream (an addon for chrome).

Because your NAS is essentially just storage, it's just storage space so will of course need compute resources (CPU/RAM) etc. for the webserver to run.

Stick to the 1Gbps switches, but you will also need a NIC that can run at 1Gbps. You can use two NICs to aggregate for redundancy or use MPIO for more throughput.

The cluster solution; it is possible (stick to the same hardware).

Do yourself a favour; don't go out and spend too much money right now. You will regret it if you purchase something that will be made redundant 2 months later because it doesn't fit in with your setup.

Have a look at this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/HP-G1610T-ProLiant-Micro-Server/dp/B00DDIC1DA/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427034818&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=dell+gen+8+microserver

Yeah I have these just have to hook sata power to them. I'm also using these converters to go from the 8080 to 8087

I've heard generally good things about Kingsington SSDs but you're gonna run out of space on that 30GB way too fast.

At least spend the extra £5 and get 4x the storage (120 GB) http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00A1ZTZOG/ref=mp_s_a_1_5?qid=1450887459&sr=8-5&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=ssd+drive&dpPl=1&dpID=41ZfguPSNoL&ref=plSrch

Also any modern reputable drive will handle wear just fine. There was an SSD torture test sticks a year or so ago and they said unless you are rewriting the full capacity of the disk as fast as possible (many times per day), any brand name SSD should last the better part of a decade.

Edit: found the article: http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

Not sure how much power your specific machine uses as there are many factors including but not limited to CPU model,hard drive count,quality of power supply(don't forget to enable power saving options for CPU,hard drives,etc). Also, load makes a difference too.

You can check your power consumption by getting a power meter such as a Kill-a-watt .

You want 8087-to-8482. You'll also need SATA power splitters; there are some linked in Amazon's "frequently bought together" section:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013G4FEGG/

I am looking at rolling my own. Here are the components I am thinking about using.

Cables
https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Internal-Mini-SAS-Breakout/dp/B012BPLYJC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1483843852&sr=8-3&keywords=sas+to+sata

Case
https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Rackmount-Computer-Pre-Installed-RSV-L4412/dp/B00N9CXGSO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1483843870&sr=8-3&keywords=rosewill+12

SAS Multiplier
https://www.amazon.com/HighPoint-16-Channel-Port-Multiplier-Rocket-EJ340/dp/B00DWV4SKM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483843893&sr=8-1&keywords=sas+expander

It has 2 mini SAS ports, but you can use a breakout cable to connect it to 8 SATA drives.

This is one example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013G4EOEY/

Grab a killawatt meter, and find out. They're cheap on ebay, and super-useful for everything.

The upside is that you can use it with any equipment you have, or multiple things if you plug a powerbar into it.

Takes all the uncertainty out of the equation. See: https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1538330960&sr=8-3&keywords=killawatt+meter

Eeek... so that budget is going to be eaten up by just drives. NAS can use consumer drives... but it is far and away better to use drives designed to be in RAID. Otherwise you might spend more as multiple consumer drives die over time.

12-bay hot-swap 4u case: https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Rackmount-Computer-Pre-Installed-RSV-R4000/dp/B00N9CXGSO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1504592127&sr=8-2&keywords=rosewill%2B4u%2Bcase&th=1

15-bay non-hot-swap 4u case: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0091IZ1ZG/ref=psdc_572238_t1_B00BQY3916

You could look for craigslist deals for NAS - but they usually use SFF (2.5" 10-16k rpm) SAS drives. Also can be loud.

> Do you mind sending me a link to that memory? I can only find PC sticks for twice the price.

Sorry in my haste to reply I overlooked the fact that the T20 wants unbuffered ECC ram, which holy crap that jacks up the prices - the registered stuff is cheap, and would be awesome for say a Dell Poweredge server.

My apologies yo.

You say you have 24 gigs of RAM - so you're running 2x8gb & 2x4gb (I'm assuming ECC unbuffered here)? if that's the case, then while it may not be $100 for 32gb Newegg has a 3rd party seller showing $62 per 8GB ecc udimm here.

>Also have you looked into running SSDs? My dilemma is do I get the Samsung 850 Evo or the 950 with a PCI adapter

It looks like you can remove the optical drive and place 2 x 2.5" drives in its place. Me personally, for what you have listed above, I would just install 1 or 2256/500gb 850 evo's in its place and call it a day.

My home server runs all my VM's save for 1 on multiple 120/80/256gb SSD's (basically whatever we had laying around from work after upgrades - that 80 is an old Intel SSD from 2008 or 2009 I think).

So, what I personally would do is:

• upgrade CPU to model with higher clock speed/thread count
  
• upgrade the 4gb sticks of ram to 8gb sticks
  
• remove optical drive, install 2 SSD's connected to motherboard SATA ports
  
• Move quad port ethernet adapter down to the x16 (but 4x electrically) slot
  
• Buy RAID/HBA adapter, install it to top x16 slot
  
• buy 4 of the biggest hard drives I could afford and RAID them (hardware or software)
  
• reinstall pfSense and enjoy full speed internet ;)
  
  For our T30 server on Oahu, we used a 500gb Evo SSD for the 3 VM's, an LSI SAS9260-8i RAID adapter, these cables, and 2 6TB Seagate Ironwolf drives in a mirrored config, and 16gb of NON ECC DDR4 memory (it's not a super mission critical server).
  
  According to this thread you don't need ECC ram, and if you're data isn't suuuuuuuper important (like life threatening important), then to the ebay you find 32GB of non-ecc ram for $145.
  
  FWIW I don't run ECC ram at home, but my home server is mainly for Plex, a single Active Directory server, pi-hole, and pfSense. Not super mission critical, and if one of my Linux ISO's get's corrupted, no big deal.
  
  Our servers in our main office, they get the ECC ram, because that shit's critical - we do electrical engineering w/ AutoCAD, I don't need hours of work down the drain.
  
  Errrrr shit sorry I kinda rambled on and brain dumped. I hope something in that wall of text is useful. Aloha :D
  
  EDIT: forgot a word and a letter :/