self-quote, “building systems is LEGO for adults”
TL;DR
I built a homelab server at home:
| type | model |
|---|---|
| CPU | i5-3450 |
| MB | Z77 |
| DRAM | 4*8GB DDR3 1600 |
| Storage | 2*Optane M10 1*SSD 8*HDD (from 2TB to 6TB, ~35TB in total) |
| HBA | LSI 2308 SAS (OCP Card) |
| Network | ConnectX®-3: 10 GbE RTL8125: 2.5 GbE RTL8111: 1 GbE * 2 |
| Case | $2 case |
| Rack | IKEA LACK + 4 pulleys |
| OS | Ubuntu Server 22 LTS |
Most of them are USED products from personal or data centers. (CHEAP)
This server hosts a number of services, including NAS, network proxy, media streaming, media encoding/transcoding, VMs, download station, home assistant, pCDN, etc.
To ensure enough data reliability, less intrusion, and high flexibility. I used a bunch of open-source tools to manage data, including OpenZFS, MergerFS, BorgBackup, Open-CAS, etc. In conclusion, it can provide a global view among multi-HDDs with different replication, erasure-coding and snapshot strategies for different types of files.