Building A Home Server

[Bailes1992]

Looking to put together a small home server for some basic tasks.

We currently have an old Rasberry Pi B+ which sits quite happily running PiHole and I want to be able to access and use PiHole on my phone werever I am. I have tried a few times to get it to run NordVPN so I can access PiHole using Meshnet but the Pi B+ seems to be unable to run it, although this is no surprise considering it's probably 10 years old now.

I've dug an old PC out of the attic which I built back in 2012 when I was a lowly apprentice electrician on apprentice electrician wages. The PC was considered a very decent specification when I built it and even seems okay by todays standards.

The PC spec is as follows...

Gigabyte GA-H61M-DS2 Motherboard
Intel i7 3770
12GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM (I think I originally built it with 16GB as it was the maximum the motherboard could support but one of the two 8GB modules failed and I had a 4GB on hand so I threw that in)
256GB SATA SSD

The PC does have a graphics card but I think I'd pull it and run on the on board graphics as the graphics card fan is quite loud.

Other than PiHole duties and being able to access it via Meshnet I'd also like to use it to share storage and the internal CD/DVD writer drive.

So I'm thinking of using Ubuntu Desktop with PiHole, NordVPN and Samba.

Would there be any benefits to be running a server based OS like Ubuntu Server? I'm quite comfortable working in command line but if there's no real benefits then I'll stick with Ubuntu Desktop and make use of the GUI.

And is there anything else I should consider or do?

 

[himemsys]

That's more than enough hardware and Ubuntu Desktop should be fine. Get the most recent LTS edition. The Server edition would work better on weak hardware, but and i7-3770 is still quite powerful in my book.

 

[Ed_Flecko]

If you don't need the GUI, then Ubuntu server would work well. At some point, if you DO need the GUI, you can always add all of the needed software (like X server, etc.) very easily to Ubuntu server. I'm a big fan of using only the software you need and no more, so the Ubuntu server would be my choice. The server version without the GUI will be the most resource thrifty.

Any desktop version of Ubuntu is bound to be loaded with a lot of software you won't even use and eat up more memory resources, increase the attack surface (however, this probably isn't a worry for you at home), etc..

Ed

 

[Fordiesel69]

I am still running a Xeon version of the ivy bridge I think its a 1225 v2 and it runs ok. It idles at 21watts without hard disks which is pretty good. I have an array of 5400RPM storage drives that are well past their lifespan but the keep on truckin.

Your config should be fine!

 

[ka9mnx]

Forget NordVPN and install pfSense. You will need a computer with 2 either net ports (WAN in and LAN out). I use an intel NUC i got from epay for $45 US. pfSense runs on FreeBSD so not much computing power needed.

 

[2009Caraman]

Thats plenty of server. Power draw is reasonable on that cpu too.

I suggest setting up TailScale. Its Wireguard simplified. Very user friendly and awesome capabilites. Its free. You can have all your devices use a pihole at home and use your home server as an exit node(with or without a vpn). I work out of hotels so I find it very handy.

 

[terry274]

I agree with ka9mnx, either pfsense or opnsense. I run opnsense and openvpn to route my cell phone through my Unbound DNS server with blocklists. This cuts most of the ads and give me a layer of protection when I use wifi away from home.

 

[Chester11]

If you are looking at adding storage, check out Unraid.

I'm running Pihole and Wireguard, and a Minecraft server for my kids. It works well, and the support community is good.

 

[OVERKILL]

What are you currently using as your edge device?

 

[Bailes1992]

What are you currently using as your edge device?

We have an Eero 6+ router.

 

[OVERKILL]

We have an Eero 6+ router.

So, then it might make sense to put a pfSense or OPNsense box at the perimeter for your VPN and traffic filtering and just turn that into an access point.

If you wanted to be really creative, that box has more than enough power that you could slap Proxmox on it and spin up a couple of VM's. Assign one of the NIC's as the WAN interface for your pfSense/OPNsense firewall VM and set the other as a shared bridge to the LAN side and then run something like Unraid or TrueNAS for a home NAS.