Building a server for all your needs.

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
So I have had a few questions on what I am running this server on and a few other things I do as well and I wanted to get it all down into writing and explain some things. I will go into why I chose various things and post some config files to show how I am running things and people can pattern something similar off of that. Right now I am using zero paid software and getting a lot of mileage out of what I have running.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
My server is as follows.
  • Dell R720XD
    • 2x E5-2670
    • 192GB RAM
    • 34TB HDD
    • 240GB PCIe SSD
So this server is a bit overkill for what I was going to be doing with it. The main thing I wanted was a good amount of HDD space and a server that could handle a lot of concurrent streams at the same time via Plex. Those CPU's are super popular right now in the used market because they recently all were pulled from large server farms due to expired service contracts, same with the RAM, and a lot of chassis's. They have no "wear and tear" from actually being used for the most part. They were racked once and then unracked.

The server cost me $2k on Ebay and I bought the SSD off Amazon new. What I got was a total steal. I spent a lot of time on /r/homelab - for those who have a computer lab at home... looking at some of the things that people did and bought and browsed Ebay for a month until I saw one that looked good and had a make an offer option and I did.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
This is a list of the things I currently have running.

  1. Ubuntu 16.04
    1. Plex
    2. PlexPy
    3. PlexRequests
    4. Sonarr
    5. Couchpotato
    6. rTorrent
    7. Guacamole
    8. Owncloud
    9. Jackett
    10. Ubooquity
    11. Cloud9
    12. MineOS
  2. Ubuntu 16.04
    1. Xenforo
  3. Ubuntu 14.04
    1. Mail In a Box
  • Windows 7
    1. MySQL Workbench
So both of the Ubuntu servers are running what is commonly referred to as a LEMP stack which stands for Linux, Nginx, MySQL (or MariaDB), and PHP. I chose Nginx over Apache because I read up on it a lot and I like the formatting of it's server blocks considerably more. I will go into detail on that later.

VM#1 is running Ubuntu 16.04 and was the first one I had up and running.

Plex - This takes a folder(s) of media files and hosts them up for streaming for yourself or friends. This does not need to be in the 'cloud' but can be run from home not even exposed to the internet. The process is the same no matter what you are doing with it really. Every TV in my house has a Plex client of some sort and a lot of my friends and family use my server.

PlexPy - This is a monitoring program for Plex that shows me who is watching what. It allows me to monitor how the server is running and what things are popular. I can them make adjustments on all of my media based on that information. I glance at it from time to time but don't put a ton of effort into it right now. It's there logging until I need it though.

PlexRequests - This allows people I allow to put a request in for a TV or Movie show that they want me to have on my server. It authenticates from their Plex user information to see if they have access to my server to begin with. I can have it automatically go out and grab it or have it do so once a certain amount of users request it like 3 or more. I can also just manually approve any like I do now. It will send me notifications if I set that up but I just check it every so often. Only one person has access to it right now.

Sonarr - So this program is amazing. Basically what I do is input a TV show and when a new episode airs it will go look for it on the torrent sites I add or newsgroups and grab it, put it in a folder, and name it properly. I can then set it up to automatically refresh Plex or XBMC or whatever. The program is really amazing. You can have it download SD or HD on a per show basis if you want, even have it download SD first and then grab the HD when it finds it. It will grab any propers it sees also ... amazing in every way.

Couchpotato - This is a buggy piece of shit and I hate it. It is the equivalent of Sonarr but for movies. It hasn't been updated in a year and even then it didn't work very well. It does okay though and I struggle with it.

rTorrent - So this is my torrent client. It is rtorrent on the backend which is just a command line torrent client but there is a web frontend and some plugins. This one isn't insanely hard to setup but it does take a bit of work. Transmission or Deluge are both acceptable alternatives, there are reasons I chose this one and I will go into detail on that later.

Guacamole - I find this thing invaluable for controlling all of my machines. It is an HTML5 based RDP/SSH/etc server. I can open a browser anywhere and authenticate into my guac server and then manage any of my servers. You can save the SSH keys etc in that and then you don't have to use some of the more insecure methods of working with these servers. If you put it on a machine inside a private network it can communicate to each of the devices via the private IP allowing you to block outside network access to your SSH ports. You can also add in your mothers, sisters, and whomever so you can manage their PC from wherever, whenever. Way better than Teamviewer if you put a tiny bit of effort into it.

Owncloud - This is a Dropbox alternative. I don't use it a ton but I will in the future. My wife has a ton of pictures and I will use it to back them all up. In the meantime work has Dropbox blocked so I occasionally toss a file in there. I could use google drive but gdrive doesn't like wget and sometimes I need to get a file onto linux without an ftp client or similar so I use Owncloud.

Jackett - This is a backend server for searching torrent sites and then passing them to Sonarr or CouchPotato. A few sites don't have an API to 'search' on them which Sonarr uses. Mainly I use it to make IPT work with Couch because since it hasn't been updated in a year there are new API's and things that it doesn't play well with.

Ubooquity - This I installed because I thought it would allow me to read ebooks in the cloud. It doesn't. I can upload a large library though and get to it from the cloud. I have not found a solution for this yet. That being said this does allow you to read comic books in the cloud which I have not played with at all.

Cloud9 - This is a contextual programming notepad that I have so that I can edit config files and php scripts etc. It is okay, the software is better than I am at using it.

MineOS - This is a simple frontend I use to manage two minecraft servers for my nephews and their friends. It's real easy to use and I gave my brother in law access to it just in case they need to do something and I am not around. There might be better solutions for this but I wasn't disappointed in this so I haven't looked for a new option.

VM #2 is also running Ubuntu 16.04 and has the same LEMP stack. All it runs is this forum and some firewall things.

VM #3 is on Ubuntu 14.04 because that is the highest that Mail In a Box will handle. This is the mail server for our domain here. Running a mail server is a total pain and it needs to be very secure for all the obvious reasons. I tiptoe around this VM.

VM #4 is just a Windows 7 VM that I spun up real quick for Lendarios to do some SQL server admin stuff for the forum.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
  • 7Like
Reactions: 6 users

Izo

Tranny Chaser
18,343
20,942
Wasted. J/K.
Good info, a_skeleton_03. When did you get the server? How much time did you spend researching? How much juice does the setup need?
 

Lusiphur

Peasant
595
47
I was wondering wtf was up with Couchpotato. I need to look into Jackett and IPT. Thanks for the tip.
 

chaos

Buzzfeed Editor
17,324
4,839
I am curious about Owncloud. Considered setting it up but I don't know anyone running it.
 

LiquidDeath

Magnus Deadlift the Fucktiger
4,827
11,113
Couchpotato is such a piece of trash. All I need it to do is watch a folder for downloads and any time it sees something new I need it to rename and move it to the correct place. About a year ago it suddenly stopped monitoring the folder I set for no reason I can figure out and frequently it can't rename very obviously named movies. I wish there was a good alternative.
 

a_skeleton_03

<Banned>
29,948
29,762
Couchpotato is such a piece of trash. All I need it to do is watch a folder for downloads and any time it sees something new I need it to rename and move it to the correct place. About a year ago it suddenly stopped monitoring the folder I set for no reason I can figure out and frequently it can't rename very obviously named movies. I wish there was a good alternative.
I wish so also, there was a git update to it a week ago though. Have you grabbed that?
 

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
14,053
15,564
I was walking through Costco the other day and I saw that they now carry climate controlled (air conditioned) server racks. It was surprising.