Hi guys, Looking for some advice on re-purposing my servers over the next few months now I'm done with my dissertation. Spare kit I own: 2 x HP Microserver NL40 10 GB Ram each HP ML115 G4 8 GB RAM (DDR2) 2x Intel Desktop PCIe NICs 4 x 2TB Hard Drives (2 WD Greens, 2 Barracudas) 4x 250 GB Drives 2 x 150 GB Drives 2 x 750 GB Drives 2 x 8 port 1Gbps unmanaged switches 1 x Net geat Wifi access point What I would Like: Web Server (ASP.NET or PHP) File Server (SMB) Plex 2-3 streams at max, normally 1 stream Own Cloud Now VPN Proxy with Cache Maybe DNS and DHCP So basically I want some advice, will be on while people are at home (planning on using a r-pi with a wol script to sort that out) For OS I'm not fussed, still have student licensing so can access all MS stuff for free or go Linux whatever is better. It will be holding all my music (50 GB currently) DVDs in MKV (No idea on size, but about 50 movies and 100 30 min shows?) photos (10 GB currently) and all my files and programming stuff. Advice would be very much appreciated, even if it is a sell it all and build a bespoke server, just a note though, would prefer to keep power to a minimum where possible. Thanks DT.
I would use virtualisation to split the server up and install a couple of different VMs on it to handle different tasks. The file server, plex and own cloud could easily reside on one OS. VPN, proxy and DNS/DHCP would fit on a firewall type distro and then your web server on another. Your NL40s won't be much good for that but I do have a Quad core ML115 doing my own home server role and it works well. The onboard raid won't work with Vmware which is what I use so I purchased an old Dell Perc raid card with battery backup and have it doing RAID 10 with 4 drives for me. Running Plex it handles streams no problem but would probably struggle to transcode more than one or at high bitrates. If that isn't acceptable then I would sell the servers and buy a new case/mobo/cpu which would have enough grunt.
So long as the clients can handle it and you have the bandwidth, you can direct stream plex and not transcode. Not sure if my phone will direct stream off 3g/4g though, might only be on wifi. This would solve the issue of needing a good cpu.
You're right and while I don't transcode I think if you wanted to use a mobile client or certainly a remote client you would. The OP would need to clarify.
Thanks for the replies so far. There will be minimal transcoding as the only clients will be 2 x now TV boxes (roku) so files will be specifically ripped for these machines other PCs will use xbmc to access files. As for the ML115, I am aware of the bad raid built in so a little worried about using it. Are the NL40s not good then? I currently have them running a few dissertation vms and they only struggle with an exchange server from what i have experienced
The raid is software raid so not supported by VMware and not worth using at all but supported cards aren't that expensive. Look out for dell percent 5i and 6i cards on eBay going cheap. The Turion processors in the NL40 could do any one of the tasks but I think they'd struggle as a one box solution. Personally I wouldn't want 3 physical servers for the tasks you listed.
