Hey everyone!

I created a post in the Technology community regarding my home server and I got some fantastic advice from @CurbsTickle@lemmy.world which led me to installing Proxmox on an older Apple Mac Mini (“Core i7” 2.3 Late 2012 model) that I’ve been trying to keep alive.

My previous setup involved OMV and Docker. Plex and Haugene OVPN Transmission app running in containers. Then I manually copied from the Transmission SMB share to the Plex media folder. All of which resides on an external 2TB hard drive. I’d run into a really irritating network issue, usually when I was watching something in Plex. In the original post, I thought OMV was the issue and was looking for a new configuration to test. This led to me setting up Proxmox and installing Plex in a LXC container. Unfortunately the network issue is persistent and based on my limited knowledge it looks like the NIC is having an issue (Broadcom NetXtreme BCM57766), specifically transmit queue timeouts and then the NIC resets. I am unable to ping the server during this time and it happens randomly per the logs, but more frequent when I used Plex. I compared an old OMV syslog to the Proxmox ones and I suspect the hardware is failing and it’s time for something new!

My wife and I are trying to minimize our streaming services, but we’re also not huge media watchers. Occasionally we want to watch a movie or I download an obscure British show, I’ll go find it, download it and then copy via my Mac Studio with a SMB share. I will eventually look at the *arrs, but the priority is a functioning Plex server and a Haugene setup that doesn’t impact my Plex functionality. I’d like to be able to direct play 4K content on my LG CX and 4K Apple TV, download to my iPad quicker than right now and maybe have someone remotely play something and it not melt the CPU (least important). I’m watching more anime, so transcoding might crop up on occasion with subtitles.

I need advice on hardware and here are some key points

  • Form Factor: Compactness is key, aiming for a Small Form Factor (SFF) to save space.
  • Cost Efficient: I bought and installed a 1.0TB Mercury Electra 6G SSD not that long ago and also just bought (this week) 16GB of RAM which is now likely useless. I doubt I can repurpose these parts (drive maybe), so I’d like to be a bit budget conscious. But I’d also like to save myself headaches and willing to invest a little to have the performance and reliability I want.
  • CPU Preferences: I’m leaning more towards an Intel CPU, especially for their Quick Sync video transcoding, but I’m open to exploring AMD alternatives if they fit my requirements for 4K direct play and efficient transcoding.
  • Proxmox Compatibility: This will remain my primary OS for container and VM management.
  • Ease of Setup: I prefer a straightforward deployment/build process to get up and running without extensive tinkering.

With these considerations, do you have any hardware recommendations?

Whether it’s a specific model of a mini PC, a custom SFF build, or particular components that fit the bill, I’d greatly appreciate your suggestions.

If you think there is any chance of reviving this old Mini and have suggestions on how to avoid the NIC problems, I’m open to hearing them, but I’d hate to throw more money at this thing right now if getting something new would be less stressful.

  • LifeBandit666@feddit.ukEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    I’ve just gone down the hardware route and bought myself a refurbished Dell Optiplex with i5 6500 and 16g ram for under £70 on eBay.

    So far it’s running Home Assistant, Docker (I have a bunch of stuff in Docker rn and most of it doesn’t work but hey, I’m learning), OMV and an ARR stack with Plex that takes up half the 500gb drive on it. Currently awaiting a powered SATA to USB cable so I can see if I can mount some of these old HDDs I have lying around.

    Anyway point being it wasn’t expensive and seems to be running Plex fine.

    I have my Arr stack running on a Windows VM. I’d like to run it in Docker but I’m finding the VPN to be troublesome.

    I was told in here that 7th gen chips are good for hardware transcoding. This is the 2nd number of the chip set. So my Optiplex has a 6th gen i5 in it (i5-6xxx) and it’s doing the job.

    • CurbsTickle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      Personally, I’d say anything 6-8th gen will work well. 7th/8th gen get some improvements, but you won’t see a huge swing until 10th+ gen.

      Which is where the value of something like an n100 comes in, though you won’t be getting all your services on there like you can with an i5/7 6th-8th gen for comparable price.

      Which is why I’ve got a bunch of 6th-8th gen stuff running everything myself.

      Solid choice, cheap, easy to cluster, fairly low power, and small.

      • LifeBandit666@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        I’m surprised at just how capable it is for the money. All in I spent more buying a Raspberry Pi during Covid to run my Home Assistant. I mean of course that was my learning device so I had more idea what to buy this time and already had a ZigBee usb stick for example. But this didn’t require me to buy an extra SSD to run off, and so far it’s running my Home Assistant on a couple of cores with 6gb ram (which is doesn’t use all of, it was set up with 4 but was regularly hitting that so I added a couple extra) and I have plenty of room to play with other things.

        Wish I’d bought it many moons ago

        • CurbsTickle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          3 months ago

          I actually moved everything over to those little boxes during the pandemic too. There were a few things running on them, and my piholes (3b’s) I wanted to repurpose, but it was hard to get a pi for a reasonable price…

          And then I realized I could be doing this smarter and moved everything to those machines lol

          Just now spinning up an additional Jellyfin LXC for family - this way I can simplify access, each LXC has read only access to my media, no ssh access, etc, etc.

          Almost all of them are 6th, 7th, and 8th gen, with one 4th Gen i5 running just a bunch of lightweight LXCs. All in a 14ru rack next to Aruba 2960s, a DS1520+ and 1515+, etc, etc. Every bit of tech I run here in a small rack!

      • robalees@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        Fell down a hole looking at the Optiplex machines last night. My desk is tiny and I’m already rocking this Mac Mini, a Mac Studio, work laptop and a pi3B running PiHole. So I’m leaning towards a micro, although I might be able to get away with a small form factor instead. I also have a MBP (“Core i7” 2.8 15" Early 2013) that I could wipe and use as a temporary measure while I save for something new. Also bought a pi4B with 4GB of RAM laying around and not used, so I could always split up services, whack Plex on the Studio and use what I’ve got for a while longer.

        Right now I might go with @phanto@lemmy.ca suggestion to find a USB NIC adapter to keep this beast running or at least determine if it’s just the NIC and not the board. Any suggestions for a Debian friendly USB to ethernet adapter appreciated. I also have the Apple thunderbolt to ethernet adapter, might keep trying to get that working. Not seen a single dropped ping overnight with the builtin NIC, so it appears to be super intermittent or when I start to watch something on Plex.

        I’m putting some money aside for an 10th or 11th gen i7 at minimum, I feel like I’d like the option for 4K transcoding if needed. Looks like I can put a 2.5" SATA in a micro (7090?), which would be awesome seeing as I have a SATA 1TB SSD in the mini right now I’d like to cannibalize.

        My wife and I have had some bad experiences with Ebay in the past, but I’m willing to go back if I can find a good deal on an off lease Optiplex. Any other suggestions on places to look for off lease options that I can hopefully trust (US)?

        Also please be brutally honest if you think I should just get a 6-8th gen Optiplex and not bother with the newer CPU. Outside of Plex and torrents, I’d like to eventually run Node.js, VSC Code Server, Pi-hole, home assistant, some storage or cloud access and a Screeps Server. Also playing with Blender, but I doubt I’ll be able to do much with rendering with any of these machines.

        • CurbsTickle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          3 months ago

          Anker and TPLink tend to be well supported on Linux, I might have a look there first.

          For the record, one 7th Gen is running two Jellyfin instances, a DNS server, a pihole, my mqtt server, a docker host with misc nginx containers, my proxies, Prometheus and grafana, and home assistant.

          Currently under 5% CPU load, 14gb ram in use.

          Is it enough? Probably. But I also don’t transcode 4k (a holdover from when that wasn’t reasonable, I maintain a separate library). But I do HDR to SDR constantly, and PGS subtitles often.

          • robalees@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
            2·
            3 months ago

            Thank you @CurbsTickle@lemmy.world

            I’ll probably spring for the Anker USB-A adapter, it’ll be useful to have any way.

            After days of testing, a mix of Direct Playing 4K DoVi/HDR10 (HEVC Main 10) on my 4K Apple TV and different media on other devices during the day and constant ping, mtr and iperf3across devices, I’ve determined this problem is totally random lol! Went 48 hours of TBs transferred between devices with iperf and a day of content playing, no problem, then randomly I’ll see Link is down on the NIC and I can’t ping it until it comes back up like it did this morning.

            Might find a Linux community to share my syslog and see if any other suggestions for troubleshooting exist and make sure it isn’t something else with my network/unmanaged switches. But I might be burning time/energy on broken hardware and time to give up on it.

            @phanto@lemmy.ca I’ll see if era ships to the US and make sure to be extra cautious of the listing description. Might also see if I can find a US equivalent.

            • robalees@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              1·
              3 months ago

              Relevant log outputs for anyone intrigued

              NETDEV WATCHDOG: enp1s0f0 (tg3): transmit queue 0 timed out

              tg3 0000:01:00.0 enp1s0f0: transmit timed out, resetting

              Link is down... Link is up at 1000 Mbps, full duplex

  • xantoxis@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    3 months ago

    So in the, let’s say, top one-third tier of the options, something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Beelink-SER5-Mini-PC-Desktop-Computer/dp/B0C286SR8V/ref=pd_ci_mcx_pspc_dp_d_2_i_1?pd_rd_i=B0C286SR8V

    Or, similarly, this, which is my current mediaserver: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C1X191NR/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

    I went with the second one–more ram. Anecdotally, some people think beelink is more reliable but this is not a universal opinion, and my experience has been that the minisforum is extremely reliable.

    If you search similar you can find options both up and down depending on your actual budget. You probably don’t want to do components on these things, apart from maybe putting in a bigger m.2 nvme.

    • Billygoat@catata.fishEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      I agree on this comment. I run a couple of these and they work great. If you want to go even cheaper I have setup my sibling with this one running proxmox with a Plex and WireGuard lxc and an HAOS vm. It will hw transcode just fine as long as you are the only user.

  • skatrek47@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    Idk if this will help, but there are plenty of SFF systems on eBay, but I’d just be careful about what you want… I thought those looked good and bought a Lenovo but then wanted 10Gb Ethernet for a NAS and now I’m putting together a 2U rack server! Not to say you’ll do the 180 I did, but just keep future expansion in mind…

      • skatrek47@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        3 months ago

        Hey of course, sorry for the delay, work has been crazy! I put this together from eBay and Newegg, I’ve installed UnRAID and am trying to get everything setup, moving Dockers from the tiny Lenovo to this, and replacing my Synology DS920+ eventually. The UnRAID forums are extremely helpful!

        CPU: Xeon E-2324G (eBay) Motherboard: Supermicro X12STH-F (Newegg) RAM: 4x 32gb NEMIX RAM MEM-DR432MD-EU32 CPU cooler: Supermicro SNK-P0074AP4 (Supermicro) Case: CSE-826BE1C-R920LPB (eBay) PSU: included in case HBA: Supermicro AOC-S3008l-L8E (eBay) NVMe: HP EX900 512gb (Newegg) SFP NIC: X520-DA2 (eBay) HDD: combination of 8 10TB hard drives - Seagate Exos ST10000NM0226 or HGST UltraStar 0B42258 (2 parity drives)

  • phanto@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    3 months ago

    This is really lame to suggest, but I had an old Mac Mini that had a dead NIC, and I also had a USB NIC, and it ran that way for god knows how long… Maybe 20$ and keep using the Mac Mini? I have an old Lenovo Tiny that’s running a few Docker services. It’s an i5-4570t, I think? It sits in my closet next to my router and is probably covered in dust.

    • robalees@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      3 months ago

      Not a lame suggest at all, this is probably saner option than me throwing $$$ on an 11th gen i7. Doing some research and I’m curious if you have a recommendation on adapter? I know the ASIX AX88179 is suggested and the Plugable adapter uses that chipset. I’d prefer to get something I know will work plug and play, then I can continue testing to ensure it’s just the NIC and nothing else. I also have an Apple Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter, I’ve not invested too much effort into troubleshooting, it doesn’t seem to work natively out the box with Proxmox/Debian.

      • phanto@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        There’s a store in my town called Memory Express, and I bought their generic card back in the day. I can’t remember if it was vantech or Startech branded. I didn’t actually buy it for that purpose, I just had it lying around. I originally bought it because my work computer had no ethernet port, and I was testing networks with it. It’s funny, I seem to wander through my Linux-using experience with amazing luck. I always hear about ‘no sound’ or ‘no wifi’, and I’ve never run into that.

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    1·
    3 months ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    DNS Domain Name Service/System
    HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
    LXC Linux Containers
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
    PSU Power Supply Unit
    PiHole Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
    Plex Brand of media server package
    SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
    VPN Virtual Private Network
    nginx Popular HTTP server

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