Planning on setting up a home server soon and want to see some of your examples!

[TylerJ]

So I'm moving into a new home that is about 4x the size of my current residence (a small apt. in the city). I am planning on dedicating a space in the new garage to server and networking equipment for the whole house. Part of this is to provide backups, media, and document sharing to the whole house - the other part is so I can gain experience configuring Windows server environments.

This got me thinking: surely many of you folks have home servers setup as well, so I thought I would come here and request some pics/descriptions of your current setups. I've looked through some of the Networking Pics threads, but they're a bit too broad for what I'm looking for. Primarily - what kind of hardware do you have, which network configuration, how you use your home network, total costs involved, etc....

I hope this thread attracts some attention as I'm sure there are a lot of sweet home networks out there!


Thanks [H]ard Community!

TylerJ

 

[C7J0yc3]

Well instead of a picture how bout some video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhuFLigxnq4

That is even pretty out of date as since I have changed my switches, virtualized my firewall, and added an NFS server.

But I run my home network like I run my office and client networks. Virtual server platforms, both ESX and Hyper V (soon going all ESX), Windows AD to run my domain (DC on each hypervisor), RADIUS for wireless, L2TP / IPsec VPN with RADIUS auth, all workstations and laptops on the domain, GPOs for just about everything I need in place. Printers all controlled through a print server, all backups handled by a combination of windows server / 7 backup and Acronis. Snort for IDS, guest wireless on DMZ with a captive portal.

Lots of good stuff!

 

[TylerJ]

Well instead of a picture how bout some video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhuFLigxnq4

That is even pretty out of date as since I have changed my switches, virtualized my firewall, and added an NFS server.

...

That's great man! Exactly what I was looking for. In the process of setting up my network, I will be trying to take detailed notes on the hardware, reasons for selecting it, and how to setup a home network from start to finish. Might even post it to the [H] Forums if it is worthy.

I appreciate the extra details in your video; it's important to adequately explain things for people hoping to learn something in the future.

 

[adam30k]

That's great man! Exactly what I was looking for. In the process of setting up my network, I will be trying to take detailed notes on the hardware, reasons for selecting it, and how to setup a home network from start to finish. Might even post it to the [H] Forums if it is worthy.

I appreciate the extra details in your video; it's important to adequately explain things for people hoping to learn something in the future.

I totally agree.. it's great to see a walkthrough like this even though it's such beginner topic most people just have a list of acronyms when they talk about their setup. Would be great to see a new video too.

 

[dashpuppy]

Great video! Needs a rack tho

 

[prestonrichmond]

what kind of hardware do you have

Server Home Built:
Supermicro X8SIL-F (IPMI = a Must for me. My previous server an Intel SS4200E Storage would freeze about once a week, and the only way to reset it was to manualy go downstairs and unplug it)
4GB Crucial DDR3 (2x2GB) (Carful thou the Supermicro boards a sometimes picky about there ram)
500gb Samsung - OS Drive
1TB Samsung - Data (Shares, Documents, Music, Pictures, Home Vids)
2TB Seagate - DVD Movies, and BluRay Movies
2TB WD External Drive - Backup of Movie Drive
1TB WD Old External Drive converted to Internal Drive and holds my TV Episodes, and Computer Backups
(I know I should have these into a RAID but but I havent got around to it yet, funds are kinda limited right now)

Rosewill RSV-L4000 4U Server Case (The Reason I Chose this case was that it was a cheap server rack mounted case, and that the two HD drive bays inside of it and the 3 External Drive bays can be converted to hot swap 4in1 which at the time I bought it, I was thinking about doing, but havent really looked to heavily into it)

Network Gear

HP ProCurve 1800-24G (Now i kinda have to admit this is kinda overboard for the price for a home use I paid around $200 on fleabay for it, but everyone said it was a good switch. What i was looking for in a switch was Managed one, and supported Link aggregation to support the dual nics on my X8SIL, and maybe vlans in the future. Im looking at setting up an asterisk pbx server with google voice in the near future

Asus WL-520GU Router loaded with DD-WRT Iv had this router for years. And have had DD-WRT ever sense it came out on actual wrt54g's. Reason I bought at the time was that it could support DD-WRT, and had USB Functionality, and was going to hook up a Hard Drive to be shared out, this was of course before I had all my server equipment......Come to find out that DD-WRT didnt have working usb drivers, or barely working usb drives for it. So ended up just being my router, and a very good one at that...But It too will soon be replaced with a pfSense box im thinking of building (or Untangle havent quite decided, but I think il like pfSense Beter)

Heres a Pic and Description of my gear
From Left to Right, Top to Bottom:
Asus WL-520GU Handles the PPPoE Authentication.
Westell VersaLink 327W FairPoint (Formally Verizon) DSL Modem (acts as a phone-line to ethernet converter for router)
HP ProCurve 1800-24G
2TB Western Digital External Hard Drive on top of Server (Movies Backup Drive)
And The Server


and another image:


and the wireing:

which network configuration

Heres my Network Diagram

how you use your home network,

I use mine for Movies (WD Live TV HD, and MediaBrowser for MCE), Central place for all my Music, pictures, vids, and and torrent box, and just a backup of files

total costs involved

Hah...Lots an it will keep growing, unless you know someone in the filed to get leftovers,which I dont, haha. I got rougly over $1000 invested in the current setup, but iv have spent im sure another grand or two in just plan computer parts over the years weather it be directly used for the network, or later on down the road be used for it, or vise-versa. But you cant look at it that way, you have to look at it as a hobby, and fun/learning.



This is a pic of my old Setup
from From Top Down, and Left to Right:
Asus WL-520GU Handles the PPPoE Authentication
Westell VersaLink 327W FairPoint DSL Modem
D-Link DGS-2208 8 Port Gigabit Switch
500GB Seagete External Drive (Used to be the TV Episode Drive. and Has Sence been taken apart, and is now a running Leapord MAC OS on another Desktop around the house.
1GB External Western Digital (Was my Movie Drive, Now is the 1GB Western Digital currently in my server as my TV Episode Drive, and Computer Backup Drive.
Intel SS4200E Storage NAS Currently Retired, waiting for me to clear off all the settings and going on fleabay.

 

[C7J0yc3]

Figure I should also give a list of my hardware and costs.

GlaDOS: Total Parts cost est $1500
4x WD Caviar Green 2TB
3x WD Caviar Black 1TB
1x Samgsung 80GB
Siig SATA + ESATA controller
OCZ Modstream 700W
Gigabyte EP32-UD3L Motherboard
Intel Q6600 @3Ghz
2x OCZ Reaper 4GB kits
2x add in Intel Pro 1000 CT cards
Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter license, SPLA from work (monthly cost instead of all at once)

Cortana: Total Cost est $450
Dell Poweredge 1850
12GB DDR2-667 ECC RAM
2x Intel Xeon 2.8Ghz 2x2MB L2 800Mhz FSB
2x 74.2GB 10k SCSI drives
8x intel 1000MT NICs (2 on the board, one dual port card, one quad port card)

Core Switch: Dell Powerconnect 5324 $175

NOC switch: Dell Powerconnect 2816 $140

Cable Modem Motorola Surfboard SB5101: Free (parents changed to FiOS, I took the modem)

TWC Business Class cable 15/2 $100/mo (Changing to 50/5 at the same price next month)

Monthly electric $203.

So all in all I paid about $2300 for all my gear, and and then pay about $375 a month for my power, internet and SPLA costs. I will be trying to replace my current servers with new Xeon E3 servers for low power draw and have figured out that doing so will save my about $1k a year on power.

 

[jdetmold]

ok I'll play

from the side:
I have a 24 port patch panel i need to add but currently only have the 12 port in use.
right of the patch is a POE injector for my Cisco 7941's and smoke detector access point.
below that a dell 2724
and below that a watchguard x700 running pfsense 2.0RC1 and works great!!!
to the right (little white box) is my old phone server a 1.6ghz plug pc.

from teh front:
tower to the left is my ESXi server an i7 with 16gb ram and 4tb storage
the small black box on top of the tower is my fit2pc (1.6ghz atom. was webserver not in use right now... but open to suggestions)
to the right is my htpc (to keep the living room quite i run all the cables up from the basement)
behind the keyboard is a supermicro server being used as an iSCSI target for ESXi on vlan
above that is my old dlink NAS 2 x 2tb drives in raid 1 used to backup photos music etc.
and at the very top is my old wrt54g as a backup/guest(captive portal) wifi.

I do run a domain controller on esxi and use it to authenticate pfsense vpn (great feature)