changes per year
A year ago, I wrote a short series of articles about my home server – how I got to this life, why I need it and what it is made of. A year has passed and I decided to briefly describe the changes, both hardware and software.
The server, of course, is no longer new, yet a year has passed. But, in order not to break the cycle, I will arrange it as the fifth part.
Past parts:
My new home server, part 1: hardware selection
My new home server, part 2: software selection
My new home server, part 3: a little about the build
My new home server part 4: using unraid
Hardware changes
It was – Ryzen 7 3700 / 32GB DDR4, 6 hard drives with a total volume of 33TB (two of which, 6TB and 8TB were tiled, SMR) and 2 SSDs for a terabyte. Everything was assembled in the Fractal Node 804 case.
Memory
It was 32 gigabytes of simple DDR4, now it costs 64 gigabytes of ECC memory. Despite the fact that the original memory was allegedly “tested” (it worked for a year on a home computer at an increased frequency without noticeable problems), one of the modules turned out to be buggy. I noticed this case on the fact that one of the disks with btrfs began to constantly switch to read only. I sinned on the system itself, on the disk, but then, on the advice of here, I checked the memory. It seems like nothing serious was hurt in the process, but it was unpleasant.
However, I did not switch to ECC immediately. First, I replaced the memory with one that passes the tests normally and slowly persuaded the toad to give money for ECC. While I was persuading the toad, I accidentally turned up a used 4 * 16GB ECC kit from friends – they increased the memory for their server, but the new memory was registered, which did not start in pair with the usual ECC. So for the price of 32 gigs I got as much as 64.
Disks
A 512GB nvme SSD appeared, although it is used like a satash one – for the array cache. I don’t have any tasks that require exactly nvme speeds. It was just free.
From the screws – added 8TB, replaced one of the 3TB with 8TB and changed the SMR 6TB to CMR 8TB. Then I think SMR 8TB should be replaced with CMR. And maybe I’ll just add another eight. It’s not that SMR is such a great evil, but they are annoying in the sense that you need to remember about them and separate disks by type of activity into “archival” and “active”.
And of course, it would be more profitable to take one disk for 16 instead of 2 by 8, but the architecture of unraid would set me up in this case – the disk would have to be set under parity, as the largest. And half would just disappear.
video card
Put in my old 1050Ti. There were plans to sell, but when the prices for video cards collapsed, I decided that I didn’t want to sell cheap and I needed such a cow myself – let it be on the server and encode the video.
UPS
I had a line-interactive one, but it messed up something. And he was not the first with such behavior – the batteries fly very quickly. That’s why I decided to put online. True, he eats more, but our electricity is still cheap. When the server is turned off, 35 watts is taken from the outlet – this is a UPS plus a router. When turned on at idle, all the screws are spinning and some dockers rustle there – 130 watts. According to my rates, it turns out to be about 400 rubles per month.
Software
1) OS – stayed on
. I like it here. I even upgraded my license from Plus to Pro to remove the limit on the number of disks. I have not yet resisted, but now there are already 11 disks, plus I periodically hook external disks. And yes, there was a discount.
2) With backups through urbackup it didn’t work out for me, he wants to backup too much and too often, he tries to pretend to be Time Machine. It was tedious to cut his wishes, so he returned to veeam. Just once a week, an image of the system partition is made, and file backups are made separately by other tools (syncthing, goodsync).
3) I tried to access my photo archive via the web. Looked pretty cute PhotoPrism. But it is single-user, there is no hierarchy in the collection (subfolders cannot be created), plus it generates very large previews (it generated a terabyte of previews for two terabytes of the photo archive). That’s why I slowed down, but I think now, after adding new screws, I’ll try again. The place will not be so pitiful (previously, I had half of the volume on SMR disks, and it is unreasonable to use them for active recording).
I’ll try to see other options though. Most of the software relies on AI, the search for faces and objects. And I don’t really need it. More precisely, it won’t hurt in the economy, but I would like more a normal hierarchical structure of albums – based on the file system, displaying RAW’s and supporting multiple users. For I don’t want to launch a copy of the same photoprism for everyone.
4) Set up tdarr, which squashed most of my video collection and freed up a couple of terabytes of space. At the beginning I tried to encode on two computers – on a server with 1050Ti and on a desktop with 3070. But the local 1050 encoded no slower than the network 3070, so I decided that it would be better to let the server work twice as long than keep the desktop on all this time.
5) I didn’t set it up sonarr, radarr and other *rr, which should automatically download everything, I just have to think about it.
6) Started tubearchivist, which buries YouTube videos from playlists and channels. Alternatively, you can use tubesync, it is easier to set up. But tubearchivist has more goodies – for example, there is a browser plugin. And tubesync in terms of viewing is sharpened for plex and it does not look very convenient.
7) Put Joplin to replace Evernote. Somehow already wrote about this separately.
8) To access files on the server via the web, I use filebrowser. A fairly simple thing that allows you to walk through the file system, view and download-upload files and give strangers a link to them so that you can download for free and without SMS. There is some basic user support. This option seemed more convenient to me than some kind of owncloud.
9) There was an attempt to start home assistant, but it didn’t grow together – it didn’t work to screw a bluetooth dongle to it to connect all kinds of buttons and light bulbs. I decided to put it on a separate raspberry, but I abandoned this business for now.
10) Home vpn – Wireguard. It is oaky, but easy to set up. As a frontend I use wg-easy.
There are still a lot of things to tie in – finally install pihole, make yourself a workplace on the server and cling to it from a thin client (there is a small computer on Celeron), still make some kind of replacement for Google in terms of calendar and address book, finish the web -access to the mirror of the filibusta, finally finish *pp, etc.
In general, a home server is not only a valuable fur, but also an interesting toy for an IT specialist. And I keep playing it.
