Upgrading my home server

#1

Post by walterbell » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

Re: Upgrading my home server

#2

Post by gigatexal » Fri, Jul 19, 2019, 10:25 PM UTC

For my home servers I do everything I can to have as much redundancy and fault tolerance that I can afford and that means insisting on ECC ram to start. It’s not a server if it’s not toting ECC ram in my book.

Re: Upgrading my home server

#3

Post by p0d » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 8:53 AM UTC

I have been running an HP dc7800 sff, core2duo, as my home server for a number of years now. I run lxc containers for Gitlab, Nextcloud, several test environments and Plex. Highest power usage is about 60w, usually just on boot. It has an ssd and two metal disks in raid.

It’s cronned to reboot every night which from experience keeps performance ticking over. It cost me £25 on ebay. I bought another recently just for parts really.

I get a buzz making the most out of old and inexpensive gear.

Re: Upgrading my home server

#4

Post by bpye » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 9:43 AM UTC

I've been running a gen 8 microserver with a 4C/8T Xeon for the past few years. The servers got cheap like I still haven't found anything with a comparably convenient form factor and the remote management is pretty useful too. Can still saturate my 1G LAN, more or less, with Samba. Other than the power draw, which I'm sure would improve with a more modern CPU, I haven't really felt the need to upgrade.

Re: Upgrading my home server

#5

Post by close04 » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 10:01 AM UTC

gigatexal wrote: post #2

For my home servers I do everything I can to have as much redundancy and fault tolerance that I can afford and that means insisting on ECC ram to start. It’s not a server if it’s not toting ECC ram in my book.

Depends a lot on what you do with it. ECC might be overkill for Plex or some home automation. But for a lengthy Matlab simulation it’s more than recommended.

Re: Upgrading my home server

#6

Post by amelius » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 10:04 AM UTC

What is the best and cheapest way to make a home server available to the internet, using a standard "home use" ISP contract? Can you give it a domain name?

How do you deal with the asymmetrical upload/download speeds of most home connections?

Re: Upgrading my home server

#7

Post by odarriba » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 10:22 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #6

What is the best and cheapest way to make a home server available to the internet, using a standard "home use" ISP contract? Can you give it a domain name? How do you deal with the asymmetrical upload/download speeds of most home connections?

I cannot really tell you about asymmetrical speeds because in the country we leave now almost all fiber connections are symmetric.

The main thing use to be the dynamic IP assignation, which can be solved using some services like no-ip or using Cloudflare API to update a DNS periodically.

Re: Upgrading my home server

#8

Post by exhilaration » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 10:25 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #6

What is the best and cheapest way to make a home server available to the internet, using a standard "home use" ISP contract? Can you give it a domain name? How do you deal with the asymmetrical upload/download speeds of most home connections?

cheapest way is to sign up with a dynamic DNS service like http://freedns.afraid.org/ - choose a subdomain you like. Then run an agent on your server to monitor when/if your public IP changes - it will send the new IP to the dynamic DNS.

If you'd prefer a paid option that uses your own domain, then some providers like Digital Ocean expose DNS settings via API. Here's a google search to get you started: https://www.google.com/search?q=dynamic+dns+host+for+digital...

Re: Upgrading my home server

#9

Post by vbezhenar » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 10:27 AM UTC

bpye wrote: post #4

I've been running a gen 8 microserver with a 4C/8T Xeon for the past few years. The servers got cheap like I still haven't found anything with a comparably convenient form factor and the remote management is pretty useful too. Can still saturate my 1G LAN, more or less, with Samba. Other than the power draw, which I'm sure would improve with a more modern CPU, I haven't really felt the need to upgrade.

Same here. Another annoyance for me is that its fans are a bit loud unless I'm running it in fake raid mode which requires proprietary Linux drivers. But I've found nothing comparable.

Re: Upgrading my home server

#10

Post by polskibus » Sun, Jul 21, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

Has anyone experimented with BL-R for home server backup (or a backup's backup)? Are there tools for home use that help automate the backup, keep track of metadata, somehow handle delta backup to new discs, etc?