Home server consolidation

[Johnny G]

Hi, I'm a new user on these forums, but I've been watching the Linus Tech Tips videos for a long time now and I want to migrate to unRAID. But, I'd like some advice, pointers or alternative suggestions.

 

So, my current setup is:

1x QNAP 4 bay NAS with 4x 6Tb disks.

1x Video editing/converter machine (i5, 32Gb RAM, GTX 960)

1x Torrent downloading instance (i3, 16Gb RAM, integrated GFX)

1x TV Media & Plex server (4x 4 DVBS tuners, 2x 4 DVBC tuners)

 

So, I want to effectively put a 4U machine together in my garage that could virtualise the above machines and in addition, run a pfsense instance. My broadband cable feed comes in from the garage, my satellite feeds come in through the garage as well, so housing it in there, in a wall mount rack cabinet.

 

I'll be mostly buying new hardware, so I need advice on what case would allow full height PCIe cards. I need 1, maybe 2 GFX cards, and 6 PCI TV tuners, I could go down to 5, maybe). I would like to increase my storage capacity significantly.

 

Happy to hear your discussion and recommendations. Budget is around £4,000 GBP

[meep]

Good luck with the project - it sounds like unRaid would be a great solution.

 

On the tv side, I use the octopus system from digital devices;

 

http://mobile.digitaldevices.de/produkte/dvb-komponenten/octopus-classic-pcie/

 

This allows for up to 8 dvbs, dvbt and/or dvbc tuners to run from one PCIe slot. The base card allows for 4x daughter cards to be attached. Each daughter card has 2x tuners so you can build up your tuner compliment over time and mix and match tuner types.

 

The ability to fit so many tuners in a single PCIe slot is a great bonus in an unRaid system running multiple VMs and where expansion slot space might be at a premium.

 

I use this set up with the tuners passed through to a Windows 7 vm which acts as my whole house to server. It runs media portal to server, serving Kodi clients. I ran argustv on the same vm previously and even played around with jriver media centre as the to server. The hardware and vm has been rock solid throughout.

 

Good luck!

 

 

[Johnny G]

Thank you! That Octopus system sounds pretty good. I'll look into that a bit more.

 

Just need to find a good motherboard and CPU combination that'd work in a server case, with as much RAM and storage as possible.

[Johnny G]

Thread resurrection!

I finally took the plunge and went unRAID. I went in at the deep end, and whilst it's a learning curve, it's a good one and I've learned a great deal about disk setup, Docker (love it!) and the whole subsystem within unRAID.

 

Managed to snag a Supermicro 846, 2x E5645, 48Gb RAM, 48Tb storage. I've put some GFX and TV cards in, built a VM and I'm building it up, will be decommissioning my existing hardware soon. Still have a couple of PCIe slots to fill, so I'm looking at options

 

I've also bought an 847JBOD setup for playing around in, it's a bare chassis which I'll get a 1U server to run via DAS. That's a new build and new thread though.

[CHBMB]

Just a quick note about TV tuners, if you wish to use the tuners in Linux natively, rather than passing through to a VM then research carefully.  TBS tuners require either a DVB-S/T install or DVB-C install so that rules them out and currently I'd be wary of the tuners meep has recommended with Linux, although there does seem to be active development of the Linux open source drivers from the company recently.  See the link in my signature to Unraid DVB.

[Johnny G]

Thanks for the heads up on that. As soon as I've decommissioned my existing TV server I'll have 3 more TV cards to play with, so I'll have a closer look at what I can do with them natively in Linux. I do really like NextPVR, but if I can gain performance without losing functionality, then as a software-performance-tester by trade it really makes sense to go that route.

Thanks buddy.