Home server components

[Kim_73]

Hi All,

Long term lurker, first time poster and hopefully I'm posting in the right place.
I'm about to build my first home server as a learning process and what I'm hoping and intending to do with it something along the lines of:

- Internal network switch and firewall(?)
- Media server internal and external network with transcoding for probably no more than 2 or 3 devices at 1080p
- Couple of VM's for game hosting, probably csgo and definitely 1 android game for maybe 10 to 15 ccu's on each
- File server

What I already have and intend to use:

Thermaltake core v21
ASRock b75m rev g/a 1.02
i7 3770
Arctic freezer 7 pro cooler
2x 2tb seagate hdd's
Choice of 8 500gb drives to choose 2 or 3 from
240gb Kingston ssd
loads of 120mm fans
Kolink 80+ Bronze 600W or if necessary for quality a Corsair RM850 80+ Gold
Talktalk DLink DSl 3782 router
30 to 40 mbps up, 80 down internet

What I think I need but don't really know:

Quad Gb Nic or managed network switch
PCI sata 6 card
Things you think would be necessary or beneficial

Internal network has 3 pc's and seagate 4tb personal cloud connected to ethernet, then a laptop, 3 tv's, 1 xbox one, 3 tablets, 3 phones and a partridge in a pear tree connected to wifi.

What I'm hoping you all can help with is:
Are my aims achievable with this cpu and motherboard? Especially regarding the network switch/firewall thing.

I'm not adverse to buying a different cpu/motherboard combo as long as it's non ecc ddr3 and mATX. I'd spend maybe £150 on this and have been looking for LGA2011 mATX boards that aren't £300 or generic chinese and 6c/12t cpu's. Any suggestions would be appreciated

If my intended uses and expected ccu's/transcodes etc all happened at once, would the i7 handle it? Or where would the bottleneck be? (edit: seems the bottleneck is my knowledge from the reading I've done haha!)

Is there anything glaringly obvious that I haven't understood about my aims and the system?

Cheers

 

[USAFRet]

You don't need the quad port NIC, nor the managed switch, nor the PCI SATA card.

Other than that, you just need a standard PC type thing. A "server", in this context, is the software, not the hardware.

If you're going to have this server do the DHCP and firewall duties, you turn that OFF on the router. You don't want 2x DHCP servers in the same little network.

 

[Kim_73]

You don't need the quad port NIC, nor the managed switch, nor the PCI SATA card.

Other than that, you just need a standard PC type thing. A "server", in this context, is the software, not the hardware.

If you're going to have this server do the DHCP and firewall duties, you turn that OFF on the router. You don't want 2x DHCP servers in the same little network.

Thanks for looking at this and your advice with the cards I don't need, it's much appreciated. Hopefully you don't mind having your brains picked again to point me in the right direction for my next bout of reading; Considering I've already got quite a bit of learning to do I'm thinking, with very little reason, of using some version of windows server. Would you say that is the right thing to do for now or should I melt my brain by adding linux into the mix too?

Cheers

 

[USAFRet]

Depends on exactly what you want this thing to do.

If only for the firewall/DHCP stuff...there are several Linux type things that will do it.
Free, and reasonably easy.

If you want to host data, possibly Windows Server2016 Essentials.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/get-started/get-started
Not inexpensive, though.

But.....you really don't want to use the same hardware for both those things.
You don't use your firewall box as the data repository.

 

[Kim_73]

Depends on exactly what you want this thing to do.

If only for the firewall/DHCP stuff...there are several Linux type things that will do it.
Free, and reasonably easy.

If you want to host data, possibly Windows Server2016 Essentials.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/get-started/get-started
Not inexpensive, though.

But.....you really don't want to use the same hardware for both those things.
You don't use your firewall box as the data repository.

I think I'll be expanding my uses for this as my learning increases so I'm still leaning towards a windows environment for ease. I'll go back and continue reading the docs on the link you provided today.

Separating the hardware makes perfect sense when you say it. I've already had a cursory look at some firewall/Gb switches but I'll go do some more reading.

Thanks again for your advice

 

[USAFRet]

In the past, for firewall duties, I've used:
pfSense
untangle
IPCop

All Linux, but relatively easy.