Hello!
Recently i’ve been planning a home server with proper storage ability, but I got stuck at the details. I hope the experience in this community can help creating a proper plan on how to create my own (first) home server.
Motivation I’ve been using Cloud Services, especially Google Photos, for years now in order to store and share what i needed. However recently i’m trying to remove my dependency on cloud services and companies significantly, also with data privacy in mind. Therefor i’m planning to self host what i need.
Requirements
Energy Consumption I’m from a country where the energy prices exploded compared to the average salary. So the enegery consumption of the whole system, including storage and others, should be very low. i’m thinking 10 Watt or less in idle. I know it is challenging, therefor i’m asking for support.
Storage I actually do not need much. I estimated that 2TB are sufficient at a minumum. It should be redundant at least 1x, maybe with an additional cold storage added to the mix.
Compute Once i have a home server, it will not end with just storage. i’ll probably have to run services like NextCloud or maybe some in direction of Home automation. I also might want to add security cameras to the mix (not long stored, just in case of incidents)
Initial Thoughts and Ideas
My initial idea was to use the Intel N300 with 8 cores and 6W TDP, however that chip does not seem to be released anytime soon. Therefor I was looking at the N100 with 4 cores and the same TDP. The N305 from Intel is interesting, but has higher energy consumption.
Next i looked at the mainboard options. There are some interesting MIni PCs with the N100, including some passive options, but they would only enable me to have max one M.2 and one SATA 2,5" drive, so I would need to see how i can add redundancy to it (or simply use both of these as SSDs with sufficient storage and call it a day, while adding a slow usb drive for additonal storage) There are also new mainboards from Asrock with N100s coming out, which look interesting as well, but would add costs for all the hardware required to run it.
Price wise HDDs would be the better option, however they since they use more energy, they might not be the ideal way for this build. I thought about it and if i add an SSD as the main storage which acts as a cache, i can use the hdds as simple backups. As i do not need them most of the time (once a day backup update would be suffficient) I could in theory power them off most of the time and only power them on for backup updates when needed. Do you know of any ways to handle this automatically for example via shell script? Most of what i found would require me to manually plug them back in via USB.
As for operating system etc. I’ve been thinking about Proxmox, TrueNas, NixOS and others. as i do not need VM’s, most of my services will be available a container, the TrueNas with Docker / Podman Containers might be ideal. Adding full VMs to the system with only an N100 seems insufficient.
RAM: Most systems with the N100 go up to 16 GB. However I think 32GB would be better with many containers just to be future proof. It might be overkill.
Wake up on LAN support might be interesting too. I’m not sure if that would be supported by my choices so far.
Usage
Initially, the system would not be used most of the time. The most often action would most likely be syncing photos from iOS or Android automatically to storage (any recommendations for that?) as a picture or 2 migh be added daily. Everything else is infrequent, which the highest traffic on the system due to looking at the pictures.
Once it’s running, this might change of course.
Summary
In summary, i’m just starting to plan this server and I would appreciate it, if you could give me some guidance on how to implement it the best way or point out mistakes i did in my thought process so far.
I also have a Raspberry Pi 4 that i can add to the mix, however it only has 4GB RAM, so it won’t be able to do much alone.
Use a cheapo laptop, a small factor one, that runs on low power. Thats what i do. I added a usb3 huba and a nice jbod usb3 box with 4 4tb SSDs inside.
My laptop has a broken keyboard and smaller niusances, but runs on very low power and has just the right cpu power.
Also, dont need much bandwith from the nas so usb3 jbod is more than enough for streaming 4k movies at home over hardwired 1gb ethernet. I
Might not be a good deal, usally HP Mini or Dell units have better prices and better specs. You can get those for 100$ with decently modern CPUs, USB 3.0 , USB-C etc. You can find mode models with dual NVME slots, other with 1 NVME + 1 SATA that might be enough for the OP’s use case.
Can you recommend some devices? Most of the ones i saw had good prices, but not performance relative to power usage. The N100 with its 4 efficiency cores is actually quite good for the price and power usage. Unfortunately most mini pcs with it have limited ports.
I also think, that 2 ssds might be sufficient for the beginning. I’m even thinking of just adding 2 external ssd’s and call it a day for the beginning (one as backup), but that does not scale well.
Im using a couple HP T730 thin clients. It has a 4 core ryzen cpu, up to 32gb RAM, and a PCIE x4 port (physical x8). One of them is my firewall, with pfsense and a 4 port i310 gigabit ethernet card. The other is a work-in-progress NAS. I’ve got a 8 port SATA/SAS card and I’m planning on printing a HDD enclosure with my 3d printer.
I haven’t measured the actual power consumption, but I’ve seen claims of 10-20W.
If you’re trying to for 10-15W targets you might as well wait about a year so you get those options cheap on the market. Even if you pick something like a 35W i3 system today from 10th gen or so it won’t waste more than 10W while idling.
Head over to https://www.servethehome.com/introducing-project-tinyminimicro-home-lab-revolution/ and check their reviews on those machines. They’ve a ton of information.
If you’re okay with spending a bit more power both the HP EliteDesk 800 G6 and HP EliteDesk 800 G4 as they have two M.2. slots. There are currently very good prices for those second hand in 35W configurations.
Read my other comment for other options or an upgrade path for more hard drives on those systems.
Thank you! i’ll look into it.
The jbod idea sounds good to explore further, as it tha home server and storage would be separated. However it would add an additional device to the power bill.
However i don’t need the full amount of all disks at all times. If i’d want to unplug via shell script, i’d need to plug it manually in person back in for storing things. I actually do not need it running all the time, as the home server ssd can cache most of what i need recently in access. The jbod is then more an archive.
i’m mainly looking for a way to power down the inexpensive hdd’s. I could use the raspberry pi as the jbod controller, but it does not properly support wake on lan, so thats also not an option
Quick Update:
I’ve been evaluating the best options and decided to wait a few months, until more devices are out and the ones i am looking at become cheaper.
I have decided for a proof of concept or intermediate solution by using the raspberry pi with openmediavault and 2x 2TB SSDs connected via USB, as well as SnapRaid to sync them. This should suffice for storage and test in shortterm. However i ran into an issue with the connection to OMV here:
OMV not reachableMy options for later:
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The Beelink S12 Pro with 16 GB of RAM and 512GB storage. Unfortunately this will be a limited option, as most sources state that 16Gb is the max for this model. (some say 32GB). However it is cheap, a good start and in the long run i could buy more powered by solar to create a highly available mini cluster via k3s.
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Morefine M9, slightly more expensive, but with a 1TB SSD and can be upgraded to 32GB for sure. Unfortunately it’s not directly available in my country, but i’ve found a reseller, who seems to have it under a new brand name.
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Passively Cooled Firewall appliance with no ssd or ram, also N100 or N305. Has good reviews on the common yputube channels, in the end more expensive, but better ports and 4x 2,5GbE. It sounds interesting, but its only sold via a chinese trading company on amazon.
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An older i3 1120g4 or something similar, which would allow me to use 64GB of RAM. Unfortunately i found literally no devices with it being sold at all.
Generally i’d prefer 64GB and 6 to 8 Cores, but in the low power area that is tough to find. The N305 has 8 cores, but max 32GB RAM, the i3 allows 64GB but nothing is being sold, as for the N100 is cheap, but only 4 cores (might be sufficient, if i later extend to a mini cluster powered powered by solar), but also limited to 32GB.
In general, nothing really ideal, so i hope that later this year either more devices drop in price or become available (like anything with the N300 would be interesting too).
What do you guys think of these choices for a mini beginner budget low power homelab ? (the description becomes longer over time…)
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I personally just started with homelabing, but there are adapters for M.2 to SATA, so if you go with an Laptoplike motherboard, this could help expanding the storage.
From what i saw, asrock announced 2 N100 boards, but they only have limited ports, not much different to the common mini pcs already on the market.
