Building a server for all your needs.

I favored HP/IBM server equipment in the past for my home lab, but have found since I share space with them the best solution for me was to go with commercial grade workstations. They run far quieter than servers, and likely cost a whole lot less to run too.
My current setup is an HP xw8600 (2xE5410 and 24GB ram) running ESXi 6.5, it does everything I need it to do but have been considering upgrading to an HP z800. Freenas is a nice option too if you want to play around with iSCSI.

Yeah I initially wanted to build out a Freenas server, but all I had sitting around was the XPS and Freenas discontinued support for 32 bit processors. I use Nas4Free, which is a fork of Freenas, works ok for the time being to supply storage for the ESXi server as well as an nfs share I can use just for day to day stuff. Issues with Nas4Free are that the interface is a little wonky, I swear the zfs functionality is borked, can't get it to work, and use isn't as widespread so there's more limited documentation on it. So it works as long as I don't do anything crazy.

I almost got a z800, I spent more money on the e200-8d but it should last longer and be a little more robust performance-wise. Should being the operative word.

So do most people setup a server these days because of Plex? That's all I would need one for, but setting up a server for that sounds more fun to me than building a new gaming PC.

I understand it seems like an ignorant question, but what are some things other people use their servers for?

Edit: This actually helped quite a bit: Stumbled into /r/homelab? Start Here! • r/homelab

Virtualization, Linux, and web hosting all interest me quite a bit, and given my simple needs, I think I could get away with something very cheap. Exciting!

I use kodi to stream for the most part, tried plex but it didn't do it for me.

I virtualized my pfsense router, torrent box, and media server (this I use a passthrough usb3.0 card attached to a couple Mediasonic 8bay and a couple 4bay enclosures), also I virtualize a couple different versions of Mac, and the standard stuff like domain controllers, exchange server, netbackup master, the list goes on.

a_skeleton_03 said:

So the server this forum is on is all because of r/homelab and the things I learned there Crone

This was a "cloud" Plex server that blossomed out to a whole bunch of things causing me to learn things I couldn't imagine doing.

Click to expand...

Yea, that sounds fun! I think that's what I'll do and start with just making a dedicated Plex server, and then start tinkering to see what else I can add to it.

My lab is specifically for a certification I am going for, or was. But I'm expanding it. Last night I built out a ubuntu server to house my weak ass twitter bots and openvpn, and will add some more to it as stuff comes along. Still have the pentesting stuff up for the certification. I am also going to build out an AD forest, probably next month.It's hard to fit the projects in with schooll and work and cert and blah blah blah. Ultimately, I want to do something like this: https://blindseeker.com/AVATAR/AVATAR-2-25-17.pdf

but that's a bit down the road. I'm going to get a few utilities that I want, a few parts of the to-be lab in place, and work on what I need to in the meantime.

I run Plex off my desktop, but it's only for my household so it doesn't have huge demands. I always just assumed that the gpu was doing the transcoding and now I learn that is not the case and feel super dumb.

I have a server that is just my old gaming rig. I run Windows 2008r2 on it and the main services it does are domain controller, windows updates and plex. Well and of course file services. The DC setup was mostly to experiment, but I will admit that being able to use the same account for every machine (Desktop and 3 laptops one of which is Linux) is pretty nice. I installed WSUS because it's way easier to control windows updates that way since they won't pop up on my machines until I approve them (I have Critical and Security updates set to auto approve though).

Aside from that I will use it to test web applications in IIS occasionally and all of my files on the other machines get replicated over there (I have a USB drive attached that the files replicated to as well). I don't really do any virtualization on it because that is done much better on one of my newer machines. Most of my virtualization needs are just for testing out various OS's and nothing I need set up permanently.

Before I sink alot of time and effort into something I thought I would post here to get your thoughts.

Basically I want to create a VM to serve as a streaming source for Steam, one of the requirements to do this is a decent graphics card so my plan is to install my old GTX650Ti as a passthrough. I already have a passthrough USB3 pci card for another VM and it works beautifully.

This should work right?

Server is running ESXi 5.5.

@a_skeleton_03 what is the best solution for remote controlling my server? Is TeamViewer (setup as LAN only) ok? Or do you use Window's built-in shit?