Suitable re-purposed PC

[Sonic]

7 minutes ago, Dylan said:

This might be slightly off topic but I found it to be an interesting product and hope it's helpful.

@Dylan, not off topic at all. It's very relevant. 🙂 Robbie is mentioning the price difference between 10 gbe adapters and 5 gbe adapters. that difference is huge. Especially when you have only a few HDDs in your device, it's difficult to saturate your 10 gbe connection. In that case is useless to invest in 10 gbe

[Ferkner]

Here is the 10gbe card I saw yesterday that piqued my interest. https://www.servethehome.com/networking-cheap-gigaplus-10gbase-t-adapter-mini-review-marvell-aqc113/

Even if I put that in the HexOS server and can only update other parts of my network over time, that card is cheap enough that even if it takes me a long time to use the 10gb speed I won't feel like it's getting wasted. The only concern is the need for drivers and whether they exist for HexOS/TrueNAS.

The case I plan on using  officially has six 2.5" bays and three 5.35" bays so I can fit 8 hard drives in there officially with some caddys. If I can figure out how to fit even more drives in there I would even eliminate the 5-bay QNAP as a main component as getting a higher speed NIC for that thing will be even more costly and use the HexOS server as the emby server and file server using two separate storage pools. The QNAP could be cold storage that remains off most of the time.

[Sonic]

The price is more then reasonable. Drivers will be the challenge for Mavell nics. They are focussing mostly on Windows drivers. It's good to check some forums like Reddit upfront. If you search on Truenas ans AQCL113 you probably will find a lot of comments. If the right driver is available, it will be a good upgrade!

 

[Ferkner]

So I drew out my network map. This is just wired connections as I am not concerned with WiFi devices. I would like to consolidate a few things, like having pi-hole run on the Hex OS server and remove that Raspberry Pi from the network, and maybe turn the QNAP into cold storage that is only on sometimes. I might move the Xbox One upstairs as I still have 4K Blu-rays I would like to watch on our 4K TV one day.

I might add a newer Raspberry Pi downstairs to host RetroNAS unless I can figure out how to do it easily in HexOS/TrueNAS. It seems like something to do on a Pi easily enough and have it tucked away somewhere.

And this is how I see a potential future home network. The other potential is keeping a 1gb switch and connecting things to it that don't need to be on a faster switch (work laptop. printer, cold storage QNAP, spare ethernet for retro PCs)

[Sonic]

It will work!. If you follow @Mobius and you go directly to 10 gbe. You can buy a 5 port 10 gbe for approx. 200 euro and a 8 port 10 gbe switch for approx 350 euro. One thing to keep in mind, not all 10 gbe desktop switches are fanless. Some are really noisy.

If have one remark about your network design. You are daisy chaining you network. In theory you are limiting your bandwidth. But in your case it's purely theoretical. I don't expect that u will have more then 50 concurrent users @ home 🙂. In the past with 10 MB or 100 MB switches it could be a problem, but with 2,5 gbe or 10 gbe it won't.

[Ferkner]

If I don't want to run multiple ethernet cables along the floor in the basement I have to daisy chain them. But there are only 4 people in the house and eventually it will go down to three and then two. I couldn't fit 50 people in our house if I wanted to!