I’m running three servers: one for home automation/NVR, one for NAS/media services, and one for network/firewall services.
Does this breakdown look doable based on the hardware? Should the services be ditributed differently for better efficiency?
Server 1 and 3 are already up and running. I just received my NAS, and am trying to decide where to run each service to best take advantage of my hardware.
I’m also considering UnRaid instead of Proxmox for a NAS OS. I just chose Proxmox because I’m familiar with it, and I like the ability to snapshot. I also intend to run Proxmox Backup Server offsite at some point, and I like the PVE/PBS integration.
Any advice would be much appreciated!
I think a lot comes down to usage. It just depends whether you connect 1 camera to Frigate, or 6. And if you enable some AI features. Whether you download a lot of TV series or a few and delete old stuff. Or use ZFS or other demanding things. I personally like to keep the amount of servers low. So I probably wouldn’t buy server 2 and try to run those services on 1 as well. I’m not sure. You did a good job seperating the stuff. And I think you got some good advice already. I’d add more harddisks, 6TB wouldn’t do it for me. And some space for backups. But you can always keep an eye on actual resource usage and just buy RAM and harddisks as needed. As long as your servers have some slots left for future upgrades. But I think you already got way more servers and RAM than you’d need. I probably run half of those services on a smaller server.
Thanks so much for the response! Server 1 has been running strong for quite a while with six cameras on Frigate and very little CPU usage. I do have a ZFS pool on Server 1– this is the first I’m hearing that it requires more resource overhead… Could you elaborate a bit?
6TB is just to start, and I fully intend to upgrade both RAM and storage as I need it.
ZFS is an enterprise software RAID, and 1:1 RAM to TB is the minimum recommended requirement for a production server (e.g. enterprise implementations).
I’ve seen many users stating they have far far less than 1:1 without issues. I recall a r/DataHoarder user saying they have 100+ TB’s and only 16 or 32GB RAM, which is not fully utilized, so it all depends on your usage profile and the size/scale of r/w ops occurring during peak periods.