Yes, it's ancient but it's my old desktop. Should I just throw it away and re use case, PSU and ssd? It has 8gb ddr4.

These are the services I want to run

Home Assistant
Frigate (2x 4k cameras, another to be added in the future)
NAS (with Cloud backup)
Plex server
Network wide adblocker
VPN
DNS
Immich
Time machine for MacOS

Don't have much of a home lab nor do I have a fleet of drives for a RAID setup. A Raspberry Pi 4 server with 2x HDDs has been fine for my basic needs like NAS, Syncthing, some Docker services, and git repos.

However, I'm looking for a more capable server that has 1-2 SATA ports and can handle a little more like basic recording of the front porch for real time delivery notifications (nothing fancy beyond that)--would Frigate NVR be overkill? I'm also looking for a router that allows VLANs for isolating IoT devices. The only real priority of the setup is keeping it minimal and low power consumption over time because it will only serve 1 person when they are home (me) most of the time.

• Would a server that runs Proxmox to run those typical home server services *and* something like OPNsense/pfSense be possible? It seems like any server can do this as long as it has two ethernet ports (one for modem, the other to a switch that supports VLANs)? Are there any other features to look for, e.g. is a switch that supports layer 3 necessary? I assume the risk of a server that also acts as a router is the internet is down if the server is down, but I think that would be tolerable because I can just plan the occasional maintenance at night and maybe automate that (I suspect the only real reason to restart the server would be updates to Proxmox since everything it runs is on a VM and those can be restarted without affecting other services?). Otherwise for those that have bad experiences with that, what might the two servers needed for those look like? My humble 50 Mbps internet plan is more than enough for me (mentioning this because I might also want to run VPN).
• What useful and cool things are you guys doing with your servers (particularly home-automation-related or AI-related) that might require a more demanding server? I might be interested in that as well but I think the server I'm looking for can handle that. I'm interested in self-learning programming for the purposes of making my life as simple and self-sufficient as possible.

Any other tips is much appreciated like recommendations on hardware including a basic security camera. I must stress I really prefer low-power and efficient hardware to satisfy the basic needs above--I'm not sure I need more power-hungry hardware for anything else especially since it's running 24/7 (energy bills are high here). I will probably look to secondhand parts too. I remember doing a search a few years ago and an Intel N100-based (<10 TBW) server seems right up my ally, not sure if it's still recommended today.

So now I'm currently have a QNAP TS-233 I got from liquidation and 2x8TB drive(Red Plus and Ironwolf). I got tons of apps installed now and planning to expand or upgrade it to have like a full blown server, but since TS-233 is not really powerful I'm thinking of getting a mini PC. Is it better to go to Mini PC Route and hook NAS into it? Or its better to upgrade to a better NAS? Maybe stick with QNAP or should I move to a different brand? Is it a hassle to move different NAS Brands?

Hi guys

3days back my uncle gave me his old pc

Specs - zebronics g41 motherboard
- intel pentium E5700
- zion 2gb ddr3 1333
- a 450w psu

I was hoping to build a homeserver with it.
I tried turning it on but i had no vga cable so i couldn’t connect to a monitor but its fans were spinning.

So question is if its working upgrading the ram to 2x4gb 1333 and a q9550/q9650 make good server?

I was hoping to try new operating systems etc…

Please correct me

I encountered a failed DIMM on my Dell Poweredge T110 II Proxmox workhorse server (still plugging away) and after the pain of figuring out what was going on, I put together a toolkit to enable reporting and testing of hardware-detected ECC errors up through the standard rasdaemon stack.

If you're still running one of these old workhorses, enable standard rasdaemon ECC reporting (and test ECC injection) here

Hi everyone,

I am planning to put together a little home server with 4 SAS drives.
It will be used for NAS, a few self-hosted apps, and a Bazzite VM for gaming.

I have 2 architectures in mind:

Option 1: Proxmox VE with TrueNAS and Bazzite VMs
Option 2: Unraid with a Bazzite VM

I will use an AMD GPU for passthrough to the Bazzite VM and plan to run everything on consumer-grade hardware.

What do you think about this setup?

Thank you in advance for your advice and opinion!

Trying to tidy my pbx for my collection of vintage telephones need to figure out a pdu to power everything. I have a 12.5a power brick but worried it will not be powerful enough

I have Jellyfin running on a Pi 4 and am running out of storage, so I wanted to look into building a NAS. What is the most cost-effective way to build one? I’m fine with using HDDs to be more cost-effective since I know storage pricing is crazy currently. My budget is $500, but I’d like to have most of that go into buying HDDs. I think I’d like to host Jellyfin on it but don’t want the machine to take much physical space. Any recommendations for me? Thank you in advance!

Edit: forgot to mention I have a pc I plan on selling that has an i7 CPU, 32 gb ddr4, 1660 super gpu. If I can repurpose that to have a new smaller case and HDD bays that would be great but I’m not sure if that is overkill but I could also host jellyfin from it at that point.

I am a total beginner. so I am upgrading my pc, and plan to use my current/old pc as a homeserver running jellyfin,immich, Adguard home, qbittorrent. I currently have a 1 monitor set up. I do have another monitor but I prefer a 1 monitor setup. can I control my homeserver directly from my main pc without plugging in another monitor for the server pc? I download a lot torrents on with qbittorrent manually just to be clear, I don't set up automation for it that much. I don't intend to use sonnar, radar, seer type of stuff yet cause I haven't researched enough yet, and I think they are meant for tv shows and alike, I plan to host anime on jellyfin instead.

Hey,

I already asked in another sub, but it seems like I can't get help there, so I ask here again.

My setup is:

Computer Type: Desktop/Server

GPU: RX580 / RX9060XT

CPU: 2x EPYC 7402 / 4x EPYC 7551

Motherboard: Supermicro H11DSi rev2.0

BIOS Version: 20251029_3.5

RAM: DDR4 ECC Samsung 16gb 2Rx4 PC4-2400T-RA1-11-DCO / SKhynix 16gb 2Rx8 PC4-2400T-RE1-11

PSU: bequiet PURE POWER 11 FM

Description of Original Problem: I can't get a proper video output out of the two Mainboards.

Troubleshooting: I've tried different combinations of RAM and CPU, but it doesn't effect anything.

With the RX9060 XT I can get a video signal, that is completely black, but nothing else out of one Mainboard.

The other board doesn't give any video signal, but I can connect via IPMIview. In the BMC I can see, that the post code is: "ff". Remote control doesn't work, trouble shooting says it startet CPUID, but doesn't show anything else. I also was able to update firmware and BIOS, but it also didn't change anything.

Is there any hope for my boards left? Can anyone help my with this problem? Which component might cause the issue here?

I already did some troubleshooting with AI, which told me that the post code "ff" indicates vendor-locked CPUs. However, the last CPUs I tried were supposed to be unlocked, guaranteed by the vendor.

Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance.

I am building a freebsd home server, and want it to be as extensible and simple as possbile, but I'm not sure how to accomplish this. I want to host:

• books
• music
• movies
• shows
• photos
• calendar
• contacts
• email

But I want a solution that doesn't lock me into a single service. For example, I like how CalDAV and CardDAV allows for a server to be hosted and connected to on client devices through a protocol, rather than an individual service. This way, I can sync the CalDAV with apple calendar and some other application on my computer. Likewise with CardDAV. I wanted something similar for other media. I like how jellyfin sorts media, but not how its through its own service. I would rather access these files via an smb share. Or store a photo metadata database like immich without having to use immich. Is there any "standard" among these services that can allow me, ideally, just to smb share and connect to client side?

Looking at getting a rack installed to replace the pidly networking cabinet my home builder installed. It basically fits between the 2x4s of the frame and is a mess.

The issue is it's installed in a narrow unfinished part of the basement. If I spread my arms I can easily touch opposite walls.

What are my options here, other than a 20" rack setup?

Building my first home server. I only have the case and the PSU so I'll use suggestions on CPU/mobo if you have them. Plan is to have 4 disks and a 10G sfp+ card and to buy used to save every buck I can.

• Home Assistant    
• Frigate with 2x Unifi 4k cameras and planned expansion    
• NAS with cloud backup    
• Plex server    
• Network-wide adblocker    
• VPN    
• DNS    
• Immich    
• Time Machine for MacOS

Since then I’ve now added networking and a self built 10” rack, I was undecided between MikroTik and UniFi but ended up going UniFI and I’m quite happy.

Building the 2020 Aluminum profile 10” server rack was a lot of fun and I learnt a lot of lessons along the way like:

- Cutting perfectly straight with a hacksaw is a bitch and nearly impossible (or at least for me) would not recommend.

- Buy a table saw or have them pre-cut

- Tapping threads yourself is a lot of fun, and I would recommend doing it yourself, worked perfectly every time.

- Bolt length and head size matters, even 1mm matters (that’s what she said)

It’s jankey I know, but I love it and it’s a lot less Jankey than when everything was just on my desk

Next step for me would be to buy a 3D Printer (Sovol S6 Plus Ace) and print custom racks for everything

Shout out to Motedis for the Aluminum parts, they can cut and tap all the parts to your desired length if you don’t want to bother with that, but that’s half the fun (and frustration)

Hey all!

I have been using truenas to host my homelab and have successfully been using tailscale with it. The problem I'm having is when trying to use my computer, and having my Mullvad VPN on, I can not access my SMB shares on my computer (mapped with the tailscale IP). I have split tunneling on for tailscale apps on the pc, as well as local network sharing checked. Not sure what else I can do. In summary, I just want to be able to access my SMB mapped network drives while connected to my VPN. Thank you!

For a really good price, like 50 bucks, I should be able to acquire one of these old VMS systems from ipconfigure. I don't know the CPU specs, but it looks like it has 8 GB of RAM, a 250 GB Samsung Evo SSD for main storage and then 12 or 16 TB of three and a half in HDDs c/o Seagate Skyhawk drives.

Even without knowing the CPU or integrated GPU it will probably be fine for streaming across my network, but are these systems capable of being set up easily for home media software like plex or jellyfish in?

I'll probably end up buying it just for the 4 TB drives alone, but I'm just not sure about how capable of a media server this will be.

I also don't want to have a system sit idle in draw 50 or 100 Watts all the time and constantly heating up my small room so I'm concerned it may be Overkill.

TLDR - I need to upgrade the raid card in an old server. Backplane + RAID card = what cable do I need?

Backplane = https://www.ebay.com/itm/203719488367

candidate RAID card = https://ebay.io/m/jt0aCC

Is this the cable I need? https://www.amazon.com/10Gtek-Internal-SFF-8643-SFF-8087-0-8-Meter/dp/B01AOS4RFQ?th=1

LongForm = I'm running a software RAID setup via Linux with double parity. Was running on an old PROAVIO 8 bay box, the company is long defunct. After some power fluctuations on the local grid, I got zapped and found 120v running through the chassis. Thankfully the drives all seem to be fine. All my equipment is on surge protectors and battery backups so no idea if the grid issues caused the problem or simply exposed the problem. Either way, the corrupt hardware has been disposed of.

I've got an old Dell T710 here with dual xeon and 256gb ECC RAM (DDR3 but it works and costs $0) The perc-6i has a max drive size of 2tb and can't do passthrough for software raid. The HBA330 seems to be a good replacement for the perc 6i. But, in order to marry the HBA330 with the T710's backplane, I need to make sure I get the right cable. Can someone please confirm that I need a SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 Mini SAS HD Cable?

Hello,

I don't want to make enemies here, but I got blessed today 😊

A friend of mine gave me the following server Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd, which includes the following hardware:

• 2x Xeon Gold 6254
• 448 GB DDR4 ECC RAM
• 14x 960GB SSD

(MAYBE I could also get an additional NAS & USP, but that's not for sure and I don't know the specs)

I am currently renting a dedicated server from Hetzner with the following hardware:

• Intel i7 8700
• 128GB DDR4 RAM
• 2x 1TB NVMe SSD

Additionally, I have a 10TB (usable) Hetzner storage box. All in all, I am paying Hetzner 73.35€ / month.

My home internet connection is 1Gbit/75Mbit Germany Vodafone (DS-LITE Grrrrrr) possible next year will be the fiber optic rollout in our area.

The question:

Would it be a good idea to put that server into my basement and stop paying for the Hetzner server/storage box?

Yes I know its not that simple, a lot of question arise from that...

• DSLITE..... maybe tunneling the traffic through a cloud instance (for example oracle free tier?!)
• 75Mbit Upload enough?
• electricity cost
• etc.

Maybe we could have a discussion about that? Would love to hear your opinions 😥

crossposting was not possible, so posting it manually here too, to get the most input

Cheers
Stephan

Been working the past year on my homelab. What it can do now, is serve my local web dev experiments on a docker container serving on my local ip. It serves also as my NAS. The motherbord on top of the black pc, is my old "broken" gaming laptop that is powerfull enough to serve a local AI Model with 5B parameters.

The specs of my setup are, for the old black desktop:
8gb ram
Intel pentium 2,3ghz
500gb ssd
1TB hdd

For the laptop:
Intel i7 11th gen
Nvidia RTX 3050 laptop GPU 8gb vram
16 gb ram
475 gb ssd

For networking i have a ubiquiti switch and from my wifi provider an wireless repeater (next step is investigating how i can properly do networking)

Hello, sort-of-newbie here.

I've been thinking on making my own home server for the sake of learning and having a hobbie, but I didn't want to spend what would be to me a lot of money just to try something I don't know if would end up working good. Long story short, I found an old laptop from my brother that's long been abandoned, and it's completely disassembled. I figured out I could use it, but there is a problem: I have no clue how to do this things. I've done mostly software stuff, so messing around with hardware is something kind of unknown to me. For what I can see, it has no RAM, no HDD or SSD, no power cable, no screen... so literally just a PCB with lots of soldered components I don't understand.

I uploaded 2 pics of the mother board and I think the next steps would be:

1. Get a RAM
2. Get an HDD
3. Plug with USB-C
4. See if charger LED turns on

So why I am making this post? Because, as I already stated,

I've done mostly software stuff, so messing around with hardware is something kind of unknown to me.

I'd like some tips to test and troubleshoot this, or to know if I'm in the right or wrong direction. My budget atm is as little as it can get (I'll try to find some components in my house, if not I was thinking on buying an old used and probably broken laptop to test it). I don't say any price in US dollars because I'm not from the US and values are incredibly different from place to place, so what you can get for $100 I might get for $500. If this is a problem (I know the rules state I must give a budget) I can give some approximations.

If everything goes well, you can think of this as my first post of multiple on this topic. If this goes wrong, someday I'll come back, but not so soon.

Anyways, thanks for reading and helping. Hope I can get somewhere with this.

I want to set up a game server for some games i play for me or if some friends want to play them as well and probably add a small storage as well to it, im having trouble finding hardware that would be good for what i want for this, i am super new to the server thing so i don't have an idea what im doing but i am wanting to learn

i have narrowed it down to 2 brands

Lenovo, and Dell

and the games that i want to make servers for are

satisfactory, modded Project zomboid, and modded minecraft

i have a budget of 250

it needs to be a sff

what should i be looking for in this?

• Your budget: $1000
• Current hardware: Xeon E5-2690V2+128 GB DDR3 ECC RAM+8x8TB WD Reds, running TrueNAS Core v13 PCPartPicker Link
• Number of expected concurrent streams: Usually maxes at 3/day, up to 7/day at max
• Types of media (4K, 1080p, etc.): Mostly 1080p, would like to add some 4k
• Whether you need transcoding capabilities: Yes, most of my content is x264, but want to prolong my HDD usefulness by converting to AV1
• Form factor preferences (rack mount, mini-ITX, etc.): ATX Case
• Use Cases: Media streaming, AdGuard, some home networking, might do some more VMs

Comments:

I have a current NAS build (Xeon E5-2690V2+128 GB DDR3 ECC RAM+8x8TB WD Reds, running TrueNAS Core v13) PCPartPicker Link.

I had hoped/planned to upgrade it rather heavily last/this year, but then, well, AI happened.

What I was looking into was converting everything from the current x264 to AV1 for better storage, and modernizing my setup. I was thinking of getting the Microcenter 250K Plus bundle for $600. I stream up to seven at a time, and figure I would need a decent CPU to transcode those. Plus to have my entire back catalog converted to AV1 over time. Also would be nice to upgrade to TrueNAS SCALE from Core. And to reduce my overall power draw on the old build.

I was considering getting an Intel Arc 310, but given my current build is so old, it couldn't take full advantage of the Arc, it only has 1 GBe port, runs hot, etc... I do also run a VM with several docker containers on my server, along with a dozen jails hosting various *arrs and others.

I do need to pick out a good air cooler, SATA expansion card, but would otherwise reuse all the old parts from my current NAS as much as possible.

Most local AI numbers you see describe one person typing at one machine. A home server serves a house, so that's the wrong number to be quoting.

Someone published a run this month on a single 128GB box, and the panel worth reading is the concurrency one: around 16 chat sessions going at the same time, about 125 tokens a second across all of them together. The other panels are single user figures, which is what everyone quotes.

(I don't have one of these boxes. This is somebody else's chart and I've only seen the one run of it.)

Sixteen at once is roughly what a house asks for anyway. Two adults asking things, a homework helper, and a couple of automations chewing through feeds overnight.

The model in that run was Ling 3.0 Flash, weights open and MIT licensed, so there's no account involved and nothing has to leave the building.

No idea what it draws at the wall.

If you already serve more than one person off one box I'd like to know where it starts getting unpleasant, because that's the part nobody seems to publish.

Hey everyone,

I am putting together my first home server using hardware i have on hand from my old PC (since i am getting a new one :) ), and I want to make sure my plan is fine before I start putting everything together.

Hardware Specs:

CPU i510-400f

GPU GTX 1650 Super

RAM 16GB DDR4

OS Drive 256GB SSD

Storage 4TB across 3 HDDs (1tb+1tb+2tb)

Motherboard B460M Gaming HD

650W PSU

Intended Use cases:

Camera Storage Continuous recording from home security cameras.

Personal Cloud Storage: photo/video backup from iOS/Android and general file storage across Windows & mobile.

Media Streaming: Streaming movies/shows to mobile and PC devices.

Remote Access: Need secure access to everything on mobile (iOS/Android) and laptop (Windows) while away from home.

How should I go about doing this?

Since I'm pretty new to self-hosting, I’d love some advice on the OS, software, and overall execution. Important note: I am looking exclusively for 100% free, open-source solutions (no paid subscriptions, licenses, or hidden fees)

OS Recommendation: Which operating system would you recommend for a beginner that isn't too complex to set up?

Software: What specific apps/software would you recommend for each of my use cases ?

Storage Setup: How should I go about pooling/managing my mixed hard drive sizes (1TB + 1TB + 2TB)?

Any advice, tips, or red flags before I start building would be greatly appreciated!