Advice on home server upgrade or rethink, plus some questions

[realbosselarsson]

Hi,
I'm currently running a Ubuntu (14.04) server at home.
It's a Core 2 Duo CPU E4600 @ 2.40GHz on a MSI P6NGM-L with 4GB of ram.
1 SSD system disk
1 x 2TB
3 x 3TB
2 x 4TB
and 2 4TB Snapraid parity disks
The disks get bigger as they brake down but the number of disks is about the same. I am using sata expansion cards for the additional hdds.

I have it set up with Snapraid and Mergerfs for a storage pool and the following services:
Apache for a bunch of web pages
NFS for local file sharing (media et.c.)
Seafile "cloud" storage
Minecraft server
Terraria server (another game)

The system disk is starting to report smart errors so I'm thinking of replacing it with another one I have laying around and that made me start thinking about virtualization and whether there are any advantages or at least not enough disadvantages to use for instance Proxmox over running the server as it is.
It seems the CPU does not support virtualization but I could upgrade to something that would.
Putting down the work and cash to make it work is not really a problem as I like to dig in to stuff like this but the budget is not infinite. I am working as an electrician and this is merely a hobby.
I can see benefits like ease to replicate a running server/service or even the "system disk. And to try things alongside the running server without braking it but how would one set this up?
One machine per service? Or one machine running several services but still virualized?

If virtualization, what hardware would you recommend?
Cost and energy usage are points to consider.

 

[ttabbal]

With the existing hardware, I don't think virtualization is a great way to go. You would want more RAM at the least, even ignoring the CPU. If you're going to upgrade anyway, it might be worth looking into for you.

One thing that's nice about Proxmox and some of the other systems is containers. They are like virtual machines, in that they separate processes, but they share the same kernel. So they are more efficient, needing fewer resources. The down side is that if there is a security bug, an attack could breach the host OS easier. For a home server, it's probably not something to be too worried about, and I'm not aware of any current attacks. Proxmox also supports KVM based VMs, which work very well.

Ideally, I like to separate one container/VM per service or sometimes a set of closely related services. This allows you to upgrade or do other maintenance on one service without affecting the others. For your list, I would run each in it's own container, possibly running NFS on the host.

My setup runs Proxmox with ZFS. I have the host handle the file sharing services with NFS and SMB. I could pass that into a container, but that's about all the host is doing, so I don't mind it. I just manage the shares via command line. Then I run services in containers on top of that.

As for hardware, around here used enterprise gear is really popular. You do get a lot of bang for your buck, but it can be more power hungry and noisy than more modern gear. If you don't see needing much more CPU soon, you could use a single processor board, that would save some energy. A bonus is that you get things like IPMI and remote control that you can't really do on consumer gear. It tends to be a bit of a balancing act, more power efficient hardware tends to be newer and thus more expensive. I went older as the next bump up cost enough to make buying power for the difference not matter. Generally speaking, more RAM is better. For what you mention, I would say 32GB would be a decent starting point. Not because your jobs will need that much, but to give headroom for more cache and future expansion. If you do enterprise gear, you can generally use ECC RDIMMs, which are often less expensive on the used market as most consumer motherboards can't use them.

The group might be better able to help you find hardware if you give a target budget. Browse the for sale and deal forms here as well, some really great deals pop up in there.

 

[realbosselarsson]

Thank you for your answer, very informative

The budget is adjustable and if it has potential to grow or if I can start low and build on it to reach a goal later on that would also work.
I find I have a hard time to describe my thoughts in here in english.

Lets say the budget is somewhere between 400 and 600 dollars, trying to translate it from my currency (Swedish). That is what I think I could get a new consumer grade motherboard, cpu and memory for at least.

Noise is not really a problem, the current server is located in a room with our house fan (don't know the real word) and if it's to noisy for that I could always move it to the garage.
A higher energy cost would look worse to the spouse than an higher initial cost for the gear would, but I think new enterprise gear is way out of budget so that's not really an option.

There is an online store here in Sweden selling used enterprise gear but I don't really know what to look for.
www.mullet.se

 

[T_Minus]

If that was my setup and I was wanting more containers, VMs, etc... I would def. go with Proxmox.

I would also go with an E3 based system, the V3 lineup are very good deals on ebay if you watch. ~$100-150 for a motherboard depending on features, 32GB MAX RAM is limitation.. v5 and v6 can do more but cost 2x or more to build excluding additional RAM. Add 2x Intel S3500 300GB ($90-120 on ebay) mirrored for OS/Containers, and off you go. E3-1230 V3, E3-1231 V3, E3-1270 v3, etc... CPU should all be available for less than $200 each, some down to $115 to $130 if you watch for deals.

That system would be huge perf. increase over what you have, cost under $600 or $400 even depending on the deals and allow you to run more allw hile keeping power low, maybe even lower than what you have now.

 

[ttabbal]

Your English is better than my Swedish!

For what you are trying to do, I think T_Minus pretty much nailed it. A bit older, but still decently power efficient and more than enough resources. And it's newer than my gear!

 

[realbosselarsson]

Ok, thank you both.
So, knowing nothing about this kind of gear, E3-1230 et.c. are CPUs right? What motherboard/case is a suitable fit?
Can I use my hard drives or is there another standard for enterprise gear?
I saw a rack mount case with room for only 2 drives.

 

[T_Minus]

Ok, thank you both.
So, knowing nothing about this kind of gear, E3-1230 et.c. are CPUs right? What motherboard/case is a suitable fit?
Can I use my hard drives or is there another standard for enterprise gear?
I saw a rack mount case with room for only 2 drives.

You're correct.

- Intel E3-1230 V3 (the v3 is the generation, and is VERY important)
- SuperMicro is a brand of motherboards (among many others) that are very common and high quality, just need to make sure they're the ones specifically for Intel E3 V3 generation of CPU (V3 or V4 work in same). @ShepsCrook on STH has E3 V3 motherboard for sale last I recall, he's in USA but even with shipping it may be cheaper than buying local.
- RAM: Make sure you get ECC UDIMM that is compatible with the motherboard you buy
- HDD/SSD - YOu can reuse your hDD for storage/etc, but I would buy the Intel S3500 (at minimum) for your operating system/Proxmox and VMs/Containers to live on. You can go with Intel S3700 or even higher performing drives but coming from where you are I don't think they're needed.
- There are TONS of Rack Server configurations and sizes. Rack mount can be very loud if you're thinking of going that route and sound is a concern be aware not all rackmount chassis are the same in regard to sound level.

 

[realbosselarsson]

Ahh, I see now, I could just put the stuff in my current case (Fractal Define R5) and just get motherboard, cpu and memory right?
Use the SSD I have now and upgrade it to a S3500 later, or are there problems with cloning the host os in this type of application? I have done that before, last weekend on two computers

 

[realbosselarsson]

Like this?

Supermicro motherboard X10SLM+-F Intel Xeon E3-1230v3 3.30GHz 16GB | eBay

 

[T_Minus]

Ahh, I see now, I could just put the stuff in my current case (Fractal Define R5) and just get motherboard, cpu and memory right?
Use the SSD I have now and upgrade it to a S3500 later, or are there problems with cloning the host os in this type of application? I have done that before, last weekend on two computers

Yep, I run a handful of E3 systems in Fractal cases, I use that one for my home server myself I believe even.
Consumer SSD would degrade performance rapidly, you could try it with backups/etc so you can just start over on S3500/etc if it crashes completely.

I don't know about cloning proxmox and how it works, sorry.

 

[realbosselarsson]

Link from phone didn't work, maybe this one will?
Supermicro motherboard X10SLM+-F Intel Xeon E3-1230v3 3.30GHz 16GB | eBay

 

[T_Minus]

That'd work. I suspect it to jump in price very soon/toward end of auction.

 

[realbosselarsson]

Yeah, the downside of auctions

 

[ttabbal]

Cloning proxmox isn't bad. I just add the new drives to the existing rpool mirror. When the sync is done, install grub's bootloader on the new drives, detach the older drives from the mirror, shutdown to pull the old drives if they aren't in a hot-swap setup, then boot up. Never had a problem.

Proxmox has some info about installing grub on new drives if you need it. You can also just do a fresh install and copy some files from the old disks.

 

[realbosselarsson]

What I have done on three systems so far i to clone the disk. First it was Windows alone on one drive for a relative, I used gnome-disk-utility. That worked flawless right away, I expected trouble but there was none.
Then there was my own computer with Arch, Xubuntu and Windows spread over two SSDs.
I used Clonezilla to but those on one SSD and had som problems with Windows at first and then some with with the Arch system not using the same grub.
And then with Windows again on the last system as there was Windows and Ubuntu.
I think I would sort this out as well if it comes to it, can't see why it wouldn't work with Proxmox as it's running on Debian (right?).

Anyway, I did bid on the Ebay item mentioned above with a minute left, then raised again and did not have time to react again with seconds left when I was bid over

Could you please explain this, why would it degrade rapidly?

--- snip---
Consumer SSD would degrade performance rapidly
---snip---

Is it better to run a spin disk instead? The plan now is to get the S3500 a bit later.

 

[realbosselarsson]

Is 1220 V3 a bit on the cheap side? It has 4 threads instead of 8 that all the others T_Minus mentioned, and of course a lower clock frequency.