Building a HOME SERVER on a BUDGET

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My Hardware:

My Studio Equipment:

0:00 Intro
0:38 The rules
1:47 Picking the parts for my server
5:08 Choosing an OS for my server
6:27 Setting up Unraid
7:26 How does it perform?
10:30 Overall thoughts

[Holdeenio]

It's always refreshing when people demonstrate that you can play and learn this tech on a pocket money budget. That's how I got into tech when I was a teenager anyway.

[Aick]

This was essentially the start of my home Server Rabbit hole. Other tip, check with your company. They I managed to get about 7 fully functional Delll Optiplex i5 systems free just by asking my IT department what they were doing with the old systems they just switched out. This was at a sporting good store. Many places don't want to pay to get rid of these systems.

[allthejars]

Finally, broken down so I can digest it. Everyone else explains it like you've had five years experience. Thank you.

[NightHawkATL]

Another great video! nailed it on the budget as parts are getting cheaper for older off-lease workstations that you can always use for something to scratch that HomeLab itch. I would have done the 2TB drives to add a little extra later for other parts or more memory.

[stephenanthony]

This is a great starter homelab for just building out a home cloud for remote office apps, self hosted email client or media streaming. Cool video

[yoelb]

Man, I appreciate your videos, simple fact that you are not meticulous makes the video enjoyable and educational while in a relaxing enviornment, even if I am not building a server---really just learning. Anyways, thanks for going slightly over the 100$. Great Video.

[Ukepa]

really good video! I'm finally seeing the need and practicality of a home server

[pringls]

Thank you for this video! Always fun to see projects like this!

[tnetroP]

Great video. You can learn so much from self hosting. I have an old an HP N40L Microserver running Unraid for my NAS. I prefer to keep my NAS separate from everything else. I also have a Dell Wyse 5070 Extended with upgraded RAM and SSD as my real "home server". It runs Proxmox virtualisation and various containers including Nextcloud for self hosted cloud storage. Using ex-corporate SFF systems like the Wyse is a really good way of getting a cheap system which also has a low power consumption. I leave the N40L powered off unless I need to use it but the Wyse consumes less than 10w so I leave that powered on all the time.

[MrAcethesecond]

Network Chuck: Currently unboxing and building one of the largest “home” servers of all time.
RAID Owl: Pfft, watch this.

[userperson]

Love this video. These old PCs are like horses anymore.. they used to run the world but now are just sitting around with nothing to do. Personally, I think it's virtuous to find a job for an obsolete but yet amazingly powerful and high tech machine and put it to practical everyday use.

[sendohikari]

First time watching your video and you answered my every questions. Instant sub.

[jong]

5:01 - there are actually 4 spare drive screws that are screwed into the front of your liftable drive tray, pictured on the far-side shot of the timestamp.

[Eggrole]

My server has been running now for about 4 years, built from pritty much the same as you did here! 3770K, 32Gb DDR3, 120SSD and 3x16TB discs <3

[tushargkwd]

I had my wife's old Dell laptop biting the dust and it had Windows 7 SP1 on it. Added a 2TB SATA SSD and upgraded it to Windows 10.
Then installed Ubuntu on it and installed Docker. Power consumption during idle is around 8-10W. Peak usage goes close to 35W as it's an Intel Sandy Bridge i5 processor and got QuickSync.
Plenty fast and one device saved from the bin and performs really well with downloads and streaming!

[timsandman]

Thank you very much. As always, really like the vids.

[CodyShell]

My unraid server is running on an HP Z4 G4 workstation. picked it up for around $400 and it was a steal, then I picked up a 3 drive bay that sits in the two 5.25 drive bays on the front, for a total of five 3.5 drive bays. Pretty fun using a normal workstation as a server, and I'll probably do that again in the future.

[darthkielbasa]

I have a hp z240 running unraid as a backup server. Similar specs as the box in the video. Fantastic machine.

[memphisartguy]

Don't mind the CLI, ProxMox with out VM does make a good storage solution. Samba and CIFS, and then everything can talk to it and it super lite os.

[mcpr]

I did something similar with the same pc but 2 used 14Tb retired video surveillance drives for a movie server for my family. Freebsd+ jellyfin is rock solid. Only caveat is edit rc.conf to set fsck to run automatically after power outage. I think it was fsck_y="YES" but check to be sure. I installed the os on the spinning rust which is less common today but it really makes no difference for a headless appliance.

Another pro tip: zfs raid the 2 drives abd temporarily install a 2 or 10gb nic to copy the files faster, then pull it when the tank is full.