How many Servers do I need?

[oldchachie]

I've been going around in my head for a long time as to what I want/need for home servers and security. Here are some of the things I want:
1. A place to store a bunch of files including media, general backups, photos, computer files etc.
2. I run a minecraft server for the kids
3. Serve up to all my home tvs and computers the media stored on the network.
4. I live in Charter cable company, which now requires HD and either a cable card or set top box, so something like a ceton infinitv looks like it is in order to minimize set top boxes
5. I have an ELK M1 system. It pretty much acts on it's own, but any integration I might want to do with it needs to be kept in mind.
6. I plan to toy around with a Raspberry PI and/or Beaglebone Black, and a few Arduinos to improve home automation, particularly with their IO capability
7. Serve my media to my devices via the interwebs and home wireless network. My thought is something like owncloud or PLEX Pass (without the fee). In particular get my audio files into ios devices without having to use iTunes. direct from my server to the device in iTunes.
8. Run a backup server for all of this as well as for my father to backup to.
 
Keeping it all broken up might suggest I should have:
1. A NAS
2. An Apache/owncloud server
3. An HTPC W/Ceton Infinitv
4. A server to run backups
5. A Minecraft Server.
 
Seems like a lot of hardware. I'm wondering which of these would "bundle" well. Seems an owncloud server could run on the same machine as the storage (either NAS or a normal windows machine), possibly the Minecraft server on this machine as well. The backup server, I'd kind of like to be in a physically different location to ensure file backups if there is a fire taking out one building, or someone breaks in and steals some stuff but not all, etc. Either way then it seems I should have a separate HTPC. Does anyone have any suggestions or maybe a neat network map of a good similar home network setup?
 

 

[fcwilt]

I run one server (Windows 2008 Standard) and 4 NAS units. The NAS units vary in size simply because I started with a 2 drive unit, liked it, added a 4 drive unit, then a 6 drive unit. The most recent is a 8 drive unit with a 5 drive expansion unit with the possibility of adding one more 5 drive expansion unit.
 
The 2 drive unit is slated for retirement as it is quite slow compared to the others.
 
With a decent CPU and adequate memory I think you would be OK with just one server to handle the things you mentioned and a roomy NAS for storage.
 
For example the 8 drive unit with two 5 drive expansion units could provide as much as 44 TB (appx).

 

[Desert_AIP]

I run one server (Windows 2008 Standard) and 4 NAS units. The NAS units vary in size simply because I started with a 2 drive unit, liked it, added a 4 drive unit, then a 6 drive unit. The most recent is a 8 drive unit with a 5 drive expansion unit with the possibility of adding one more 5 drive expansion unit.
 
The 2 drive unit is slated for retirement as it is quite slow compared to the others.
 
With a decent CPU and adequate memory I think you would be OK with just one server to handle the things you mentioned and a roomy NAS for storage.
 
For example the 8 drive unit with two 5 drive expansion units could provide as much as 44 TB (appx).

What NAS units are you using?

 

[fcwilt]

What NAS units are you using?

 
The 2 drive unit is an early Netgear ReadyNAS Duo.
 
The 4 drive unit is Netgear ReadyNAS NVX.
 
The 6 drive unit is a Netgear ReadyNAS Pro.
 
The 8 drive unit is a Synology DS1813+.
 
 
When the budget allows I think I will be replacing the 4 and 6 drive units with another DS1813+ to simplify things a bit.

 

[pete_c]

Here I have multiple NAS boxes and DIY'd my last one in a small footprint 8 drive case.  A DIY would allow for any OS to manage your NAS.
 
Price comparison is similiar except you would get a better motherboard (faster) than an off the shelf embedded NAS box motherboard.
 
1 - NAS case (< $200)
2 - server style PSU (<$100)
3 - motherboard with 8Gb of memory. (up to you on monies spent)
4 - IBM controller M1015 (which I modded with new firmware) ($75 refurbished and time involved to mod firmware).
5 - storage (SATA full size or SSD or whatever).
 
The modification here was adding an IBM 8 port raid card such that I have 8 SATA III ports plus whatever is on the motherboard today (which is another 6 SATA ports) which gives me 14 autonomous SATA ports.  I do have room and have installed SSD SATA drives in the little bit of space above the motherboard; except that they are not hot swap drives plus populated the 3.5" drive slots.
 

 
8 X 3.5" 4G drives would give you plenty of space for just about anything.
 
You cannot fit anything else in the case.   VM wise though you could do a lot with it and the motherboard.
 
I look at the device as pure storage and that's it.  I have two ZM boxes (CCTV) today in small footprint cases using 2.5" raid drive setups which work just fine.  Similiarly have a MythTV box connected to 6 tuners also using a small 2.5 SATA raid drive setup.

 

[wkearney99]

There's a lot to be said for multiple devices.  Especially when things need to be rebooted or otherwise get hung up.  
 
I'm leaning toward using a standalone NAS for 'family stuff' and some media storage.  This to downside from a monstrously large and power-hungry 24-bay dual Xeon BEAST that's been doing the job.  It runs a VMware and while having virtual machines IS handy, it's likely out of the range of what normal people would be prepared to tolerate.  I don't know if any of the NAS products support online backup services like Crashplan but that's a good way to offer additional backup.   As in, in addition to using local backup also.
 
There's also a lot to be said for replacing old hardware.  New stuff has dramatically better performance while consuming CONSIDERABLY less power.  Tiny systems like the Intel NUC deliver quite a lot of performance at a bargain price. 

 

[tmbrown97]

I think a single Synology or QNAP NAS might fit the bill; maybe using another small footprint machine with the cablecard to fetch and feed the data to it; I don't know if minecraft can run on there but quite possibly.
 
I just redid my HAPC - a 1U short space atom-based machine that's purely for home automation; I have been running an HP MediaSmart (Windows 2003 Server based) and an HTPC - 4 drives in each one; but next on my list is to consolidate both into an 8-bay synology.  That'll do backups, newsgroup access, own-cloud-like services, etc.
 
If you love running hardware of course you can run a big box with VMWare - that's not terribly uncommon around here either; but I live in probably the most expensive price-per-watt area of the country so I'm pretty sensitive about adding any power consuming devices.

 

[pete_c]

Here just recently decided it wasn't worth the effort anymore to "collect" movies which utilized the most space on my one NAS box. 
 
While I like having a cloud service to back up documents, pictures as a secondary method; my preference still remains to stuff I can keep and see.
 
IE: I still prefer to keep stuff (archives) on CD, DVD, Blueray and USB sticks ...old fashioned in me.

 

[wkearney99]

Agreed, backup should never be just one type.  I burn periodic backups of home media (pix, scans, videos) to discs and send them to the in-laws.  Usually incrementally increasing the amount on the discs so there will be some overlap until the media is full.  That way there will be more than one copy should there be something wrong with the media over time.
 
Online services are handy, but if/when they tank you have to factor what you'd do if they tanked.  What's the chance of doing effective downloads when their ship sinks?  The rush of everyone trying to obtain content would no doubt swamp whatever bandwidth they could still afford to provide...

 

[pete_c]

Here like to play with hardware such that I do have close to 128 networked devices on the network.....off on tangent here cuz they are not all servers.  That said:
 

A server is a running instance of an application (Software) capable of accepting request from the client and give response accordingly. Servers can run on any computer or dedicated computer, which is also often referred to as "the server", In many cases, a computer can provide several services and have several servers running. The advantage of running servers on dedicated computer is security. For this reason most of the servers are daemon processes and designed by the designers in such a way that it can run on specific computer(s).

They are grouped in ip ranges depending on what they do.  I keep multiple lists.  IE: the microrouter Openwrt stuff is at 4-6 devices now.
 
Most of the new network devices are tiny things that do this and that.  The heavy stuff is split between Wintel and Linux.  The balance of the heavy stuff though is moving towards Linux.  IE: Playing with Windows 8.1 only to serve as a touchscreen console on my new dual capacitance wide screen monitor while concurrently doing similiar with Linux Ubuntu 14.04.  Made Win 8.1 lite modding it to fit on a 4-8 Gb SSD drive.
 
Not really paying attention to the managed switch adds nor the multiple network connections on the PFSense firewall other than where they sit on the network.
 
Bench testing has one Planar serial touchscreen and a capacitance dual touch USB connected touchscreen plugged into one computer to play with. (Planar is 4:3 and new one is 16:9)
 
While still recording stuff from DirectTV / MythTV box; starting to like the recording of TV shows in the cloud such that I can just stream whatever it is that is recorded.  The content though is not worth keeping or even making an effort to keep these days as its mostly just cooking shows and dr phil for wife (watch once then throw away).
 
Different with music.  I like my music such that I have replicated my entire music collection to two vehicles.  The vehicles can stream music from the internet and have satellite radio.  They are configured to autosync to the home.  Playing with something different these days....quickie 15 minutes news synopsis video auto syncing to the automobile.  (this from driving wife to grocery store and waiting outside sometimes). 

 

[Desert_AIP]

Right now I have a single Thecus N4100Pro 4 bay NAS for everything.
I'm building a stand alone server to run Plex and some housekeeping to take the burden off my office desktop machine.
Sounds like a second NAS may be a good idea.