Is this a good first homeserver?
(de.pcpartpicker.com)
from libewa@feddit.org to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 02 Aug 11:50
https://feddit.org/post/33518106
from libewa@feddit.org to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 02 Aug 11:50
https://feddit.org/post/33518106
I don‘t know if this is the right place to ask, but is this an OK build for a first start in selfhosting? Is there anything obvious I could improve? I‘d mainly run Nextcloud, Immich, some Docker containers and smaller web applications and cronjobs.
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Depends on the docker containers but it’s way overkill than you might think.
Since you’re starting it may be worth looking into used office PCs like the thinkcentre from Lenovo or other brands(no tiny or ssf since they don’t have to room for drives). They often offer good perfomance for the price and the power consumption is not too high.
I run a lot of containers in my homelab, which consists of an OrangePi (similar to an RaspberryPi 5). It works surprisingly well, and was only (at the time) $250 for the board, case, and emmc drive.
16GB of ram is a bit low for the load you’re planning. That can work, but Nextcloud and Immich are pretty hungry for memory. My immich instance right now is using 7GB of RAM and nextcloud uses a bit over 4. I have the hardware to give them pretty much all the memory they want, so those are not absolute minimum amounts, but I wouldn’t try to run either with less than 6GB allocated memory on my load (few users, about a terabyte of data on both).
With 16GB you can pretty much forget using ZFS, but that’s not a big loss. LVM works just fine and with thin provisioning you can use snapshots too just fine. Bigger SSD/NVME for drive cache would be good. And of course all-SSD setup would be nice, but that gets expensive pretty fast. Second ethernet port might be nice to have, depends on how you’re planning to build your setup. Otherwise that hardware looks pretty good, altough I’d search for something second hand. CPU is most likely a bit overkill for what you need, I have Xeon E5-2620 v3 @ 2.40GHz and it’s running on around 10% load most of the time.
7GB for immich is wild, my instance with 2TB of photos is currently using 811MB of RAM. What’s eating it all?
Have you checked while it’s running all the ML tasks on import? Mine uses a good chunk of RAM while that’s running.
It’s a full VM, so OS and docker creates some overhead, but before I upgraded the server it ran on far less resources and specially big imports were painfully slow. Also that’s just the number from proxmox console, so there’s likely some cache included, but stats show that the VM pulls over 10G every now and then with shorter spikes over 20GB of consumed RAM.
As I mentioned, it can run on way less, but it feels a lot more responsive when it has enough resources.
Yes it will be fine. Much will depend on what OS you will run and in turn how you want to do storage. NAS drives might not be necessary if you going to use software defined storage. If in your budget consider a CPU with more cores for virtualization and docker.
Overall nothing wrong with that configuration. But if you really get into all the awesome stuff you can self host your two constraints are RAM and CPU cores.
The NAS drives are here because they are from an old NAS which only uses a cheap dual-core Intel, has 2G of RAM, and boots from eMMC. So anything would be an upgrade…
FYI: I’m a noob myself.
Looks fine, but if you’re looking to mess around with a first build then you could go cheaper. Secondhand hardware would save you money, especially since older hardware is great for server use. At least you’re saving money with AM4 and DDR4.
Some thoughts:
This guy makes great videos, but you have to be careful to not overcomplicate things or chase specs that pro home server guys want that make no difference to noobs.
Note about the network: it really doesn’t matter how fast your server can go if the rest of the stuff connected to it can’t also handle it.
You have a server with a 10 gigabit network port, you also need the cabling, router, switches, and other hardware that can handle 10 gigabit.
Just about anything is OK for a server, I use whatever hardware I get from work thats being decommissioned.
The biggest limit I see is the ram. Depending on what you spin up and how, it’ll be the tightest budget per service.
I would probably go Intel with iGPU for the transcoding and acceleration for Immich. i3-14100 is fast and cheap.
Otherwise you definitely have far more CPU power than you’ll need for those apps so no worries there.
Your part list is extremely similar to my main home server. You’ll do just fine with the hardware you’ve selected. It is a GREAT starting point.
For context I have been running an AMD 5600g alongside 32gb gskill ddr4 RAM since covid, tho back then it was a 2600x paired with an ancient FirePro for graphics. Boot drive is m.2 ssd and I have 4 hand-me-down enterprise HDDs for storage. (I originally was using whatever spinning rust I already had on-hand at that time, but I have replaced them since)
Massive overkill!
That’s a great Home Theater PC. Hook it up to your TV and install KDE Plasma (distro of your choice 👍) then just crank up the global desktop zoom to like 225% and get:
Now install Docker and all the containers/servers you want!
I have a ~14yo HTPC with a mostly modern GPU (8GB) that only has 8GB of RAM and four cores on some old AMD CPU. It’s running four separate servers for my self-host purposes and it doesn’t break a sweat.
Follow up question: Do I need a separate CPU cooler, or is the boxed Wraith enough? And how loud is it? I can’t really find info on that.
Wraith is fine. I have mine installed and it’s dead quiet. If you don’t like the noise, you can always get a 15-25$ USD aftermarket cooler, brands like ThermalRight and Cooler Master come to mind.
So long as you’re using the spinning rust hdds, the noise of the CPU cooler won’t make much difference. Mind you, this PC will be a bit too loud for the living room like this.
Your server looks fabulous, and I’m not discouraging you from pursuing it in the least. However, if I may draw from my own personal experience and what I am currently running, it may give you some ideas. Currently, I am running 53 containers on a Optiplex 7020 SFF with the i7-4790 and 32 GB RAM. Just checked and it’s load average at this moment is: 0.47, 0.60, 0.73. Meaning it’s pretty much in an idle state except for logging in just now. Grand total cost was less than $200. It consumes about $8 USD/month.
Unless you’re going to get into selfhosting heavy AI models, most stock PC, office discards, etc built in the last 10 years will do just fine for a homelab, with a little love like some additional RAM or a dual nic card. Immich and Nextcloud will probably require a bit more than 16 GB RAM running together. I don’t run Immich, but I do run Nextcloud and it does just fine with the above set up. No lags, stutters, etc.
One thing you may want to explore is your OS. If you want to do what you suggested with a NAS OS like TrueNAS or Unraid. They can take advantage of a ssd cache. One small regular ssd for your OS, storage on your hdd array, and a NAS quality ssd that essentially runs your docker containers that gets backed up to your array.
It’s not nessesary. But if it’s something you think you might want to do in the future, you’ll want a plan for it now. Make sure you have enough mobo connections, and space in your case or an idea on how you would want to expand.
If you’re already going for spinning rust hard disks, why limit yourself to the 3 TB ones? IMHO, these days, spinning rust only makes sense at 8 TB+ per disk.
I have them at home and as such don‘t need to spend money on them.
Story of my life
I have used a laptop without a screen as a server, raspberry pis, 10 year old laptop, proliant server, something with a via itx motherboard and a cheap cpu, like literal trash. So yeah your build is more than fine. Don’t stress your budget too much, but if you can afford this you will have better than my first “server”. Remember to have fun with it!
16GB RAM may be a bit low for the setup, as others have suggested, but I’m currently running Immich and Nextcloud and a handful of other small services (like FMD) dockerized in an 8GB Raspberry Pi 5. I’ve experienced very few issues. In my opinion, you could find a used Ryzen 3600 or even older, and 16GB will probably serve you just fine. You could save yourself a hundred bucks or more.
That said, what you’ve got here is nice and future-proof for quite a while, even if you end up going down the rabbit hole. You might eventually need another 16GB of RAM, but maybe not until after the AI bubble pops 🙂
I have a similar setup with the same case haha recently built as well. Your use-case will be more than fine. My only suggestion, aside from try and get more RAM. If those hard-drives are in a redundant raid setup, and you don’t already have one, get a backup drive too. Especially if the price for the drive IA decent. Last thing you want to do is to buy a replacement drive later when prices are jacked up or have to do the RMA process with only 3 drives running your data.