Abhay Rana aka Nemo

Homeserver Configuration

This is the latest hardware configuration of my homeserver (Some links affiliate).

Category Details
CPU Intel Core i5-7600 3.5 GHz Quad-Core
Motherboard MSI B250I GAMING PRO AC Mini ITX LGA1151
Memory Kingston HyperX Fury Black 8 GB DDR4-2133 CL14
Memory Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 2400MHz
Primary Storage WD Blue 1TB SN550 M.2 NVME SSD
Internal Storage 3x Seagate Desktop 8 TB 3.5” 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive
Graphic Card MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB Video Card
Case Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini ITX Tower Case
Power Supply Cooler Master GM 450 W 80+ Bronze Semi-modular ATX Power Supply
UPS APC BX600CI-IN UPS

Hardware Changelog

The original part list from when I did the build is at https://in.pcpartpicker.com/list/krc8Gf.

Jun 2023

  • Added a new 8TB disk to get to a 3x8TB RAID1 setup.
  • The following is after a week of a balance task, that is still running.
Data,RAID1: Size:7.34TiB, Used:7.33TiB (99.77%)
   /dev/sdc    6.33TiB
   /dev/sdb    6.32TiB
   /dev/sda    2.04TiB

Mar 2022

  • Upgraded from 120GB SSD to a WD Blue 1TB M.2 SSD as root disk.

Oct 2020

  • Since RAM prices are low, I got a 16GB RAM, bringing the total available memory to 24GB
  • The ORICO enclosure was giving too much pain on every reboot. Since the 3 internal HDDs were at zero usage, I took them out, and moved the 2x8TB inside the case. Removed the extra disks from RAID and all is well.
  Total devices 2 FS bytes used 3.30TiB
  devid    5 size 7.28TiB used 3.31TiB path /dev/sdc
  devid    6 size 7.28TiB used 3.31TiB path /dev/sdb

Last Updated: 24th October 2020.

Sep 2020

Attempted to revive the 2x8TB setup. Moved to btrfs RAID and added both the disks individually to my normal RAID configuration. Works much better than the hardware RAID. Both the disks are still connected over the HDD enclosure, but the enclosure presents them as 2 individual disks now. Here’s how it shows up:

Total devices 5 FS bytes used 3.26TiB
  devid    2 size 2.73TiB used 0.00B path /dev/sdd1
  devid    3 size 2.73TiB used 0.00B path /dev/sdb1
  devid    4 size 2.73TiB used 0.00B path /dev/sdc1
  devid    5 size 7.28TiB used 3.28TiB path /dev/sde
  devid    6 size 7.28TiB used 3.28TiB path /dev/sdf
  • Moved from a HDD to an old 120GB M.2 SSD as root disk.

Apr 2020

One of the RAM sticks died, so I’m down to 8GB again. The hardware RAID setup isn’t working well, so I turned it off.

Mar 2020

Added a 2x8TB RAID1 setup. The disks are identical 8TB Amazon SE Seagate Expansions, which I got for cheap, and the RAID enclosure is a pre-used ORICO 3529RUS3-V1-SV. First time I’m running a hardware RAID setup, lets see how it goes. Moved the second UPS to my PC setup and got a sound bar for audio.

Apr 2019

Feb 2019

  • The WD 3TB MyBook HDD was dying, so I replaced it with a 3TB Seagate Barracuda Internal HDD. Switching the disks was a challenge due to some btrfs issues. I wrote about it here.

Jan 2019

  • :zap: A friend was leaving Bangalore and offered me her UPS, so now I have a 2xUPS(600VA) setup now.

Sep 2018

  • I added a new 8GB RAM (Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4), and a Nvidia Graphics Card (1050 Ti 4GB OC)

Mar 2018

  • Switched from the 1TB Expansion to a 3TB Seagate Expansion. The disk setup is now btrfs RAID1 over 2x3TB+1x500G disks.
  • I added a UPS. Twitter Thread with some details.

Sep 2017

  • Initial setup

If you’re interested in my self-hosting setup, I’m using Terraform + Docker, the code is hosted on the same server, and I’ve been writing about my experience and learnings:

  1. Part 1, Hardware
  2. Part 2, Terraform/Docker
  3. Part 3, Learnings
  4. Part 4, Migrating from Google (and more)
  5. Part 5, Home Server Networking
  6. Part 6, btrfs RAID device replacement

If you have any comments, reach out to me