I want to set up a home server and take advantage of everything it can offer, specialty privacy.
Raspberry PI, no matter the version, are all quite expensive here in Brazil, so that’s off the table. I’ll go for a regular desktop. But the the requirements for a server that “does it all” remains a mystery to me.
What specs do you guys recommend?
I highly recommend you try proxmox to get the most potential out of you system. Basically can run many services and vm with little overhead, dynamically sharing the specs.
Now about those specs… what everybody else said really but heres some pointers:
You don’t need a big dedicated gpu unless your doing something that explicitly demands it. They are tricky to setup with virtual machines also.
If you plan on running a minecraft server i recommend at least 8gb ram. Most will probably run fine on 4. You can probably run quite a few things on 8gb but ram is cheap and its nice to have some extra room.
For cpu, the more things you do the More sense it makes to have more cores. If you plan on buying then amd ryzen x y z is you best option where.
X is the number you want higher Y is a number you should not care about as much Z is potentialy the letter “G” for graphics, they are often more expensive. Get them anyway because now you dont need a dedicated gpu (and even if you already own a gpu. Trust me you will thank me if that one ever has issues)
If you really want me to draw you something decent up that will give you plenty of freedom to experiment.
Ryzen 7 … G, 32gb ram. Small ssd for os. xTB of performence HDD ideally configured as some raid in proxmox.
It still cannot be said often enough that a (well cared for) second hand unlabeled laptop running ubuntu is all what most people need when they start pondering about home servers.
This specifically depends on what you want to run.
I’d say grab any unused PC in your home or off the street and it’ll work. Raspberry Pi are good for low wattage so it’s not expensive to run 24/7/365.
The electricity savings would pay for itself over time vs a 10 year old random desktop.
A repurposed old PC with something like yunohost, generic Debian, or some lightweight Linux will probably get you what you need.
It heavily depends on what programs you want to run.
The minimum spec is whatever e-waste you can find that still powers on.
My home server has an i3-4160, 10 gigabytes of mis-matched RAM, a ten-year-old 240 GB SSD with 36000 hours on it, and three 1 TB hard drives in a RAID5 array each with ~25000 power-on hours. It runs Proxmox on the metal with a virtualized OPNsense, Nextcloud, and Jellyfin server (plus smaller services). Jank levels are high, but not fatal, and it was mostly free.
Living dangerously
If you are buying I wouldn’t get something older as the newer stuff is the same price often times because it is less well known.
Gotta see some evidence on that claim. Older stuff is more power hungry no doubt about it, but especially old data centre equipment is waaay more reliable and built with some very nice creature comforts.
Check the data sheets for the components. It should have a Average time to failure which will tell you about how long it will last.
It might be fine but I personally wouldn’t rely on ancient drives
oh I wasn’t talking about storage media. I’m talking about rack servers, switches, storage arrays (with new drives), etc., etc… The older hardware can wear out/break (I used to do MTTF/MIL-HDBK-217 calculations for avionics) but generally speaking it’s got a lot of life left in it by the time it hits the surplus market. It’s also usually designed with redundancies/failover mechanisms which means you don’t have to bodge together inferior solutions.
I misunderstood then
Carry on
Go wuth what you have. Old laptop? Works! Old desktop? Also works! Old android phone? Might work! (VM/terminal)
If you have a device that can run Linux, start with that. Once you get some usage you can understand if you need an upgrade, and what kind. Maybe you will findout that this old laptop that you had works perfectly and you can sace money on buying a server.
A computer. Seriously that’s it. Of course depends on your use case (media servers usually need more than a web host for example)
My current server is just my previous desktop PC hardware. $0 when you repurpose while upgrading your desktop.
Find out if there are any corporate off-lease machines being sold in your area. USFF machines are frequently used as mini desktops or point of sale computers then sold off for peanuts when warranties are done. Especially look at i3-8xxx generation, as they don’t support windows 11 fully.
How does one find such retired laptops? As an individual hobbyist in the US, would I just monitor eBay, Craigslist, or Facebook?
Yes. EBay and Amazon have a certified refurbished thing with warranties for a little more money, or monitor local classified sites if you can inspect them. I’ve bought a couple off Kijiji here in Canada, which is a bit like Craigslist and Facebook marketplace. The sellers didn’t advertise that they were a business selling off-lease stuff, but you can tell by the number of laptops they post.
One hundred percent go for USFF. Even the cheapest, most basic processor will smash server roles because it’s not having to power desktop applications, graphics, window managers, etc.
Any corporate fleet machines, really. Corporate C-suite executives always demand the best laptops on the market… They also demand the newest laptops on the market. Because they can’t be seen with a worse laptop than the graphic artists or the programmers. This means there’s always fresh stock of last year’s corporate laptop hitting the used market. And they’re almost always gently used, because they just sat docked on some executive’s desk for a year, and were only used to answer emails.
Those $2000 laptops often get dropped on eBay for like $250, because the random Accounting person who has to auction them off doesn’t really care how much they sell for; They’re just checking a “was sold to recoup costs” checkbox.
I’m running an old Igel M340C thin client to run a lot of stuff, from Jellyfin to AdguardHome. Perfectly enough.
Why would raspberry pi’s be expensive but the hardware to build a server be any cheaper?
Second hand markets exist and Raspberry Pis are rarely sold second hand.
Sorry for my ignorance, so brasil has nothing like an Amazon where OP could buy a new pi from and have it delivered? If thats the case i feel like I could buy OP a pi and ship it to them in brasil for less cost than it would be to buy anyother option of hardware for a home server. Assuming USPS still offers flat rate boxes for international shipments.
I’m not Brazilian, but I’m guessing importing stuff is expensive. Look at PC components elsewhere in the world, it’s typically much more expensive than the US.
Right but thats kinda what im saying is that wouldn’t all hardware be expensive and not just Pis?
Except second hand. That’s my point.
Scalpers for highly sought-after hardware or just general lack of supply in specific regions.
If the size and low power consumption of the Pi are what appeal to you, you can try a getting a used thin client. Lots of suggestions and specs here: http://parkytowers.me.uk/
This depends entirely on what you want to run. A pihole needs vastly different resources than for example offering jellyfin to 20 simultaneous users. Both can be hosted at home.
The one you already have and/or if a raspberry pi 2 (all) can do it…. So can you. It’s not a game, you don’t need a RTX 9090Ti Super Omega Beta Pizza to run it.
Depends on what you want the server to do. A Minecraft server and a Pihole server have vastly different requirements. As a general rule, any old laptop or desktop will do, think on requirements for your grandma and that should cover most (except gaming servers) needs.
If you aren’t planning on running a media server go for a old desktop or laptop (with Ethernet port). Your bottleneck will be your network speed 9 time out of 10. Also use a firewall and a anti scrapper (ex: Anubis) to avoid wasting resources.
A raspberry pi 4 or 5 and some fast USB 3 hard drives.
