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I have always wanted a home server setup and over the last few months I have made that a reality. Some of the software is still a WIP but I finally feel like I have a good working setup. It has been a sweet journey to get here and I love nerding out over this. Forgive me if this is a bit verbose but I wanted to post my route to this home server not only to show off a little but also if it helps anyone else.
Network:
I started by running network cable, I ran a total of 10 runs, 3 to my living room, 4 to my Computer Desk and 1 to each of my bedrooms. Most of my network gear was purchased at Monoprice or Amazon.
Networking Gear:
Hardware:
Server Gear:
It took me some time to decide on a server to run, I had some very specific needs as I wanted to run a plex server with the ability to stream 4k as well as stream up to 4 1080p streams at once. I also really wanted to run VM’s and get backups going so it would be much easier to recover from problems. I decide to buy a refurbished commercial server. After a lot of searching I found SaveMyServer.com on e-bay. They did not have the exact server with the specs that I wanted on ebay so I contacted them and they were great with customer service. I told them what I was looking for and they put together a custom quote/build and sent me a quote on the price. Overall it was a great deal. They ended up creating a custom ebay sale just for me and sent me the link and I was able to purchase it. It took about a 1.5 days for them to build and ship the server.
So far the server has been great, under my heaviest loads I am only using about 50% of my resource pool.
Software:
I started off last year running ESXI free. But I ran into several road blocks and two months ago I switched to Xen server for my virtulization and I have been very happy with that choice, coupled with Xen Orchestra xen have been great and I have my server setup and I am backing up my VM’s every night with a delta backup and I keep 7 days of backups on my NAS.
Here are some of the VM’s I am running.
Future plans:
I would like to get a CCTV set up. Several cameras around the house on a separate V-Lan. I am having truble getting my wiki server to run in HTTP so I do not have it exposed to WAN just yet, but once I get this locked down I would like to have this available to WAN so I can access the wiki information on the go. I would also like to get an offsite backup solution up and running soon as well.
Network:
I started by running network cable, I ran a total of 10 runs, 3 to my living room, 4 to my Computer Desk and 1 to each of my bedrooms. Most of my network gear was purchased at Monoprice or Amazon.
Networking Gear:
- Monoprice 24 port keystone Patch Panel.
- Netgear Prosafe 24 port Gig Switch
- (3) Netgear Prosafe 5 port Gig Switch
- T-Moble Cell Spot "Cell Tower"
- Netgear R6400 Router running DDWRT
Hardware:
Server Gear:
It took me some time to decide on a server to run, I had some very specific needs as I wanted to run a plex server with the ability to stream 4k as well as stream up to 4 1080p streams at once. I also really wanted to run VM’s and get backups going so it would be much easier to recover from problems. I decide to buy a refurbished commercial server. After a lot of searching I found SaveMyServer.com on e-bay. They did not have the exact server with the specs that I wanted on ebay so I contacted them and they were great with customer service. I told them what I was looking for and they put together a custom quote/build and sent me a quote on the price. Overall it was a great deal. They ended up creating a custom ebay sale just for me and sent me the link and I was able to purchase it. It took about a 1.5 days for them to build and ship the server.
So far the server has been great, under my heaviest loads I am only using about 50% of my resource pool.
- Dell R710 Gen 2 - 8 2.5” bays
o (2) X5570 CPU’s
o 64 Gigs of Ram
o 400 Gig Raid 10 SSD Array for vm storage.
o 80 Gig SDD for Host OS and log storage.
Software:
I started off last year running ESXI free. But I ran into several road blocks and two months ago I switched to Xen server for my virtulization and I have been very happy with that choice, coupled with Xen Orchestra xen have been great and I have my server setup and I am backing up my VM’s every night with a delta backup and I keep 7 days of backups on my NAS.
Here are some of the VM’s I am running.
- Caddy Reverse proxy server
o Used to proxy my 1 external IP to multiple VM’s that need to be internet facing.
- PiHole DNS Server
o I run this to block adds at the network level.
- Nextcloud Server
o This hosts my family’s files as well as the family calendar that is synced to all of our devices.
o I have one touch scan set up to allow you to press a button on my printer and scan a document and it goes into the cloud. Used to save receipts etc…
- OpenFlixr Media Server
- Plex Server
- Couchpatato
- Sickrage
- Headphones
- Mylar
- SAbnzbd
- Ubooquity
- XWiki Server
o Used to document things around the house, ie hardware, family etc.
o WIP
o WIP
- OpenHab Server
o Used for home automation
o WIP
o WIP
- Xen Orchestra
o Management server for managing Xen from the browser.
- Tiny Tiny RSS Server
o News.
o WIP
o WIP
Future plans:
I would like to get a CCTV set up. Several cameras around the house on a separate V-Lan. I am having truble getting my wiki server to run in HTTP so I do not have it exposed to WAN just yet, but once I get this locked down I would like to have this available to WAN so I can access the wiki information on the go. I would also like to get an offsite backup solution up and running soon as well.
