[SOLVED] Building A New Seafile Server for Our Small Office, Best Spec and Practices Suggestions?

[ijoin]

Hi, I’m building a file server to be used with Seafile, it's dropbox alternative which can be self hosted

So, after toying around with Seafile, I found it suitable with our office needs. It’s small office with 3 branches and total around 15 employees, around 4-5 employees for each branch
Every worker will get their own Seafile account and the admin will share the files to them, according to their needs

The file server which host Seafile will be located in our main office. So the main question is how to build it and maintain the best practices for this file server.
For the hardware build itself, I will be using an 11th gen i5, 4-8 gigs of ram, 3 x 1 TB HDD (2 for raid, so the total size will be only 1 TB), 1 SSD for the OS (Ubuntu 20.04), the seafile itself will be deployed via Docker

My question is

1. Which is the best practices for the RAID and deploying the SEAFILE?
2. Should I install it on Ubuntu 20.04 or is it better to use something like TrueNAS?
3. How to configure the RAID to be suitable for Seafile?
4. Best backup suggestion?
5. Is the spec enough for the usage?

Thanks

 

[mdd1963]

Document Storage is not all that processor intensive, but, I'd look at some sort of 6c/12t CPU just for longevity. Odds are, you internet connection between the branches will almost certainly be the weak point anyway. As this will be used for business purposes, I'd get (build or buy) an actual server vice a repurposed desktop running a Linux server OS (there are/were many 'starter Xeon' rigs with ECC RAM made with 10th/11th gen CPUs), and, if you are dealing with VERY small storage needs to where 1 TB units are actually suitable, you might consider SSDs...

An actual server with dual PSUs (one running from an UPS to prevent corruption from unscheduled instant power offs associated wtih occasional power loss on grid power) and running Linux or TrueNAS once set-up can be utterly reliable. New Dells are not cheap, and , can often suffer from massive cost bloat once you start adding enough ECC RAM, SSDs (think $900 each!) , and/or any CPU above a Pentium or quad core, etc. If the budget is limited, I'd look at used servers from one or 2 generations ago

Dell stuff: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/sho...r?page=2&appliedRefinements=35986,35167,39288

HP stuff: https://www.hpe.com/us/en/servers/tower-servers.html

https://www.servermonkey.com/used-servers-cheap


RAID should be RAID 1 or 5 (if SSD-based), or RAID 10/6/RAIDZ2 if utilizing spinning drives. (RAID5 not considered acceptably safe for large spinning drives due to high possibility of losing another drive during lengthy rebuild of a single failed drive, which would result in loss of all data.)

As today was the first I've heard of 'Seafile', I can obviously not offer advice as to it's deployment methods.

Good luck with your server, however.