Home Server (& Network) Setups

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iDOL

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Greetings Fellow Forumites ( apologies for the massive wall of text)

(ps. I am just trying to get this post up there, so that everyone gets the gist of it and maybe we can foster some more discussion on this - I will update this very OP, as the discussion continues, I am also hoping to expand it to the local sites.)

This is a problem that I struggle with quite often. How to configure my Home Server & Basic network setup. I am moving into a new place in the next month, so I am hoping to gather some more input from the the knowledgeable peeps. I want to configure my basic network in a correct and optimised manner first up, no rework.

I currently have :
BiPAC 5210S RC in Bridge Mode,
(connected to the bipac) Asus RTN66U - it handles the basic dhcp functions, all wifi connections and wan connection duties (running stock asus firmware - I know that it is DD-WRT compatible, so will look at flashing it as well)
(connected to the rtn66u) DLink 16 Port Gigabit switch to handle all the cable connections.

Ideally I am also looking to get me a physical appliance style firewall(smoothwall-just as an example-to provide me usage stats, grab and distribute updates) in place when I do.

At this juncture, I am also in the process of rebuilding my main "home server" I went from a single server(windows home server v1 based ) through the initial data corruption bug, recovered and then 2 other catastrophic failures - to where I am now across 3 microservers(sold off a few from my once 10 strong elite unit) (running windows server essentials 2012 & whs 2011)+ 2 dedicated NAS (seagate NAs440 & Lacie ) devices and a dedicated 24/7 download box.

Things I have learnt the hard way -
was the basic requirement for backups(proper dedicated) as well as some form of redundancy. (I never had these as I also aimed for max storage first)
Because I always felt comfortable with windows and the windows environments, I never ventured too far out. Windows is not the bees knees, WHS (that I believed in and was an early and longtime adopter taught me that little hard life lesson.

So now I am in the process of rebuilding my home server and multimedia setup.

I've received friendly input and advice from a few forumites over time.

As a result, I am totally clueless right about now, how I want to employ/deploy my new setup. I am hoping to garner some additional input and insights from the peeps on this forum and I will venture out, to get some more in the interwebs at large.

Basically what do I intend on using it for :

Storage of my media collection and serving the media to my various connected devices throughout the house. Not limited to but including, itunes, dlna compatibility
Handle the backups of the various family members computers on the network.
Provide storage space for family members on the network.(it would be nice to integrate some of the cloud based accounts)
- I will add to this as more of it comes to mind.

Hardware:
Chassis/Case : - RPC-4224
Motherboard : Gigabyte Z77 Mobo
Processor : 3470 i5
Memory : 4 x 4gb / 4 x 2gb
HardDisk : 20 x 3tb's and 4 x 4tb's
Cards : On its way to me hopefully - HP 24 port SAS Expander.
OS : the big question, dedicated/virtualized or hybrid of dedicated plus virtualized portion

Single or multiple.

These were some of my ramblings ;
Main Server(OS dependant) just pure storage based - no media or that type of functionality ( files shared across the network)
A dedicated NAS device to backup the essential information from the main server,
1 x Unraid box to handle the multimedia and download duties - it will access the files on Main Server and serve them to the multimedia devices. The downloaded files will be moved to the main server.

Multimedia Devices :
2 x Apple TV
2 x Apple Ipad Mini
1 x Apple Ipad
3 x Roku 3
Also occasionally serving to the 2 x X360's and 2 x PS3's

With this in mind, I would like to see what the peeps in the know have to say - I am really desperate for some guidance and input.

As I have given this quite a bit of thought, but I am undecided. (typically this follows on from my past threads as well : NAS OS - recommendations, inputs and opinions

Also please let me know what your home network including server(storage/media) setup is like.
 
Openmediavault is great, I used it on one of my nas boxes at work(microserver with 4x2tb raid5) and it was great.
I wanted more control so I installed ubuntu server and setup things the way I like them to be, but I am a linux admin so it was easy for me.
 
Maybe have a look at UNRAID if you want to go the RAID route (you'll be able to recover data if a drive fails). UNRAID lets you use different sized drives and add and remove drives, also any drive failure is isolated to the drive that failed because UNRAID is non striped RAID.
 
Interesting, I'm also looking at maybe a cloud based storage system. Have a nas server and basically just want to add HDD's with full redundancy (if one fails I will have a spare to swop)

Any suggestions? Freeness is pretty cool

Edit: I see with unraid you have to pay with more than 3 hdds
 
Last edited:
Without hi-jacking your thread, I've been doing this for some time now. This is what I've ended up with:

UPS = APC Smart-UPS 1500i (overkill but I bought it for R3k long time ago so why not).

NAS = Normal desktop Intel 2300T with 16GB RAM and an IBM M1015 which adds an extra 8 SATA ports (got that off eBay for R800). Currently my NAS features 9x2TB drives in RAID-z1 configuration (Single disk failure redundancy). Have had two disks fail thus far but no data loss yet :p
Running FreeNAS on the NAS. FreeNAS has kernel level virtualization (essentially it creates a virtual OS that runs FreeBSD but with little overhead). This virtualized instance features SabNZBd, CouchPotato, Sickbeard, Headphones and various other apps that I use on the local LAN for convenience.

LAN = 1x 5 port Gigabit layer 2 switch, Netgear ProSAFE Gigabit (GS105), I've had this for about 10 years now. They still sell them, with lifetime warranty now. Rock solid switch.

Wireless = Every single router I've bought or tried was sh#t. With the exception of the Linksys WRT-54GL running DD-WRT (rock solid). Unfortunately that router is getting a bit slow (54mpbs).
I've tried so many other routers. Not a single one is stable enough for me. Stable meaning I want to turn it on an forget about it. I HATE hardware that needs a restart. That just isn't on for me. So yeah that you simply cannot get in consumer devices.

So I've done what I always do when I have no luck, bought a enterprise device to see what it'll do for me. Lucky for me Netgear released such a device just recently:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D7GH7O6/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I brought that router in with Postbox-courier. It is only an access point and because it is geared toward business I'm not having stability issues. There isn't much to configure apart from the wireless settings. Device didn't cost much (about R1k or so).

This thing finally doesn't have stability issues and runs at 300mbps which is decent.

ADSL = D-Link 2500u -> Rock f#$king solid router. Features 1 LAN port, 1 RJ11 port. Simple interface and I run it in bridged mode (so not using as router). Never needs a restart, deals very well with bad ADSL line, dirt cheap. Ultimate ADSL router and the only ADSL router I've ever owned where I said, this is a good router.

Router to bring it all together = Like I said consumer devices failed me here so I went with something I've used before. PFSense.

PFSense is an enterprise class software router for x86. I bought an Intel 2500cc motherboard, 8GB of RAM, PicoPSU and M350 Enclosure (some of this stuff was from Amazon.com forwarded here). Cost about R2.2k but was R2.2k well spent IMHO.

PFSense by default is pretty much better than any router I've ever used. It features a seriously powerful web-GUI (unlike RouterOS which sucks in that regard). The Web-GUI allows you to install add-ons. This is what is referred to as a layer 7 router, pretty much as good as it gets.

I installed SNORT (a powerful intrusion detection application) and Squid (transparent caching proxy). SNORT checks traffic for suspect activity and blocks if the activity starts looking dodgy, updated lists of dodgy IPs, pretty long list of features. It is considered one of the best security applications around for network security.
Squid is invisible to the network but if caches every web-site the household visits. So if someone else visits it loads immediately from the cache. I also set it to cache downloads. The proxy does actually test if the web-pages are out of date (cache miss in other words).

All in all my network setup is pretty expensive if you had to buy it now. But this has been over the years. Setup is seriously rock solid. Nothing needs restarts, nothing has performance problems. Very happy with it.

Thought I'd share :)
 
Gnome said:
Without hi-jacking your thread, I've been doing this for some time now. This is what I've ended up with:

UPS = APC Smart-UPS 1500i (overkill but I bought it for R3k long time ago so why not).

NAS = Normal desktop Intel 2300T with 16GB RAM and an IBM M1015 which adds an extra 8 SATA ports (got that off eBay for R800). Currently my NAS features 9x2TB drives in RAID-z1 configuration (Single disk failure redundancy). Have had two disks fail thus far but no data loss yet :p
Running FreeNAS on the NAS. FreeNAS has kernel level virtualization (essentially it creates a virtual OS that runs FreeBSD but with little overhead). This virtualized instance features SabNZBd, CouchPotato, Sickbeard, Headphones and various other apps that I use on the local LAN for convenience.

LAN = 1x 5 port Gigabit layer 2 switch, Netgear ProSAFE Gigabit (GS105), I've had this for about 10 years now. They still sell them, with lifetime warranty now. Rock solid switch.

Wireless = Every single router I've bought or tried was sh#t. With the exception of the Linksys WRT-54GL running DD-WRT (rock solid). Unfortunately that router is getting a bit slow (54mpbs).
I've tried so many other routers. Not a single one is stable enough for me. Stable meaning I want to turn it on an forget about it. I HATE hardware that needs a restart. That just isn't on for me. So yeah that you simply cannot get in consumer devices.

So I've done what I always do when I have no luck, bought a enterprise device to see what it'll do for me. Lucky for me Netgear released such a device just recently:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D7GH7O6/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i02?ie=UTF8&psc=1




I brought that router in with Postbox-courier. It is only an access point and because it is geared toward business I'm not having stability issues. There isn't much to configure apart from the wireless settings. Device didn't cost much (about R1k or so).

This thing finally doesn't have stability issues and runs at 300mbps which is decent.

ADSL = D-Link 2500u -> Rock f#$king solid router. Features 1 LAN port, 1 RJ11 port. Simple interface and I run it in bridged mode (so not using as router). Never needs a restart, deals very well with bad ADSL line, dirt cheap. Ultimate ADSL router and the only ADSL router I've ever owned where I said, this is a good router.

Router to bring it all together = Like I said consumer devices failed me here so I went with something I've used before. PFSense.

PFSense is an enterprise class software router for x86. I bought an Intel 2500cc motherboard, 8GB of RAM, PicoPSU and M350 Enclosure (some of this stuff was from Amazon.com forwarded here). Cost about R2.2k but was R2.2k well spent IMHO.

PFSense by default is pretty much better than any router I've ever used. It features a seriously powerful web-GUI (unlike RouterOS which sucks in that regard). The Web-GUI allows you to install add-ons. This is what is referred to as a layer 7 router, pretty much as good as it gets.

I installed SNORT (a powerful intrusion detection application) and Squid (transparent caching proxy). SNORT checks traffic for suspect activity and blocks if the activity starts looking dodgy, updated lists of dodgy IPs, pretty long list of features. It is considered one of the best security applications around for network security.
Squid is invisible to the network but if caches every web-site the household visits. So if someone else visits it loads immediately from the cache. I also set it to cache downloads. The proxy does actually test if the web-pages are out of date (cache miss in other words).

All in all my network setup is pretty expensive if you had to buy it now. But this has been over the years. Setup is seriously rock solid. Nothing needs restarts, nothing has performance problems. Very happy with it.

Thought I'd share :)
Click to expand...

Very nice setup, i use windows defender.
 
Having gone through symilar pains, I have now ended up with the following...
HP 54L microserver running Windoze. It is for file sharing and DL stuff.
Installed a 8 bay SATA extender onto it.
Did use a desktop before, but it was too power hungry.
ADSL in bridge mode.
All routing and DHCP and firewalling and remote dial-in via Microtik RB750.
Was easy to set-up myself without calling in the help of all my Linux friends.
Advantage is I can manage everything myself, so do not need to call anybody when something does not work.
 
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