Hi all!
I have seen many good things happening on this forum, so I am hoping I will be able to get some feedback.
Firstly, the setup I am currently running. I have a dedicated system running my Unraid OS with a Windows 10 VM. The main reason for the setup compared to a dedicated PC and separate NAS was experimentation and practice with using dedicated storage server and media server in one. Firstly, the server is meant to be used as a storage location for all me media. Secondly, the server is meant as a media server using dockers like PLEX (with SABnzbd, Radarr and Sonarr powering it). The Windows 10 VM on the server is used as my 'daily driver' for photo/video editing with a GPU passthrough for rendering and gaming. Though the system works fine, certain issues with specifically USB (many gaming peripherals connected to the MB USB controllers) made me decide to ditch the VM part as a daily driver, and go back to a dedicated PC with recycling some of the RAM and GPU I currently have. This will free up the server to fully work for storage and media.
My current systems looks like this:
Motherboard: AsRock X99 Xtreme4
CPU: Intel 5820k
RAM: 32GB G-Skill DDR4-2400
GPU: ASUS Strix GTX 1080 8GB
SSD: Crucial M500 240GB
HDD: 2x WD Red 4TB, 1x WD Blue 2TB, 1x Seagate 'something' 4TB (Parity)
PSU: Corsair RM850
For the future, I am planning the following things for my server:
1. Reduce RAM to 16GB and move to my dedicated rig
2. Move the GPU to my dedicated rig
3. Move the PSU to my dedicated rig and replace the server one with a 450 watt PSU)
4. Upgrade with 10Gbe PCI-E card (not sure yet to go with RJ45 or SPF+ yet)
5. Expand the SSD pool with another 240GB drive, and run the setup in RAID0 (current transfer speeds via my VM and Wifi max out at a 2/3 MBps)
6. Find a decent WiFi router to provide me better speeds than the crappy one I currently have from my ISP
My future plans for the server will be to store all my media, and run as a media server (hence I want to keep the 5820k in there). I also want to use the server on the side to run game servers (e.g. Minecraft) as well. In addition, I want to install a 1000/10000 Mbps switch to ensure that I could wire up all my regular gigabit devices (laptops, TV's, printers etc.), and my dedicated rig could get a 10Gb connection to my server whenever I need to do my photo/video uploads/downloads. Also, I don't really want to spend thousands of Euro's doing so. So my questions would be the following:
1. Would you go with RJ45 or SFP+ for the 10Gbe connection between my server/rig and the switch, and why? (I see X540-T2 cards for about EUR 100, and Mellanox SFP+ Cards for about EUR 50-75)
2. Which switch would be recommended for the proposed solution? (e.g. I am highly interested in going with the ASUS XG-U2008 due to the relative low costs of EUR 250 for 2x 10Gbe and 8x 1Gb RJ45 ports)
3. Which WiFi solution would you go with to get the best WiFi network and internet speeds? (e.g. hard wire multiple AP's to a router, or wire one high performance router to the router with potential range extenders)
4. Would it make sense to also build an additional router using pfSense to optimise network throughput?
Please feel free to let me know if you need any further information.