| Mini Home Server | |||
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This is my miniature server that I built with small form factor computers.
Here's a quick overview of what it does and how I made it.
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| Hardware | |||
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There are three Dell Optiplex Micros all linked together with a basic Netgear switch.
To house them together, I found these SFF mounts which were originally meant for mounting PCs under a desk.
They have holes conveniently lined up at the top and bottom, allowing me to bind them together with M3 screws.
At the bottom of the rack is a basic power strip with 65W Anker power bricks plugged into each outlet. For some added protection, I have the power strip plugged into a surge protector. This should be fine as long as I don't exceed the power rating of the surge protection outlet. The front blanking panels were the only parts that I had to custom design and 3D print. I will leave a link to the CAD file along with links to the other parts at the bottom of this page. |
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| Software Stack | |||
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For the operating system, I decided to use Debian because it's lightweight and well supported.
Installing it onto each server was a quick and easy process.
In order to make my server reachable, I had to setup a domain resolution. I picked Cloudflare as the domain provider due to its robust security features. Since static IPs can be costly, I opted to setup a dynamic DNS using ddclient. Getting ddclient to work with Cloudflare wasn't as straightforward as I hoped as the current release didn't support Cloudflare's API tokens. I ended having to recompile the latest build from source. But once I got that built and running, and after waiting anxiously for the DNS to propagate, I was finally able to ping the domain! For the web server, Nginx seemed like the right choice as I only cared about serving static pages. Learning how to setup Nginx was trivial and I was able to load up a page within minutes. |
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| Conclusion | |||
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This was a very fun project for me and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
While it's currently only being used to host this website, my eventual plan is to use it as a dedicated host for a multiplayer game that I'm developing.
Stay tuned for that!
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| Links | |||
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Dell Optiplex 7070 Micro
Universal SFF Mount USB C to Dell Power Adapter HHSOET Power Strip Netgear GS308 Network Switch Anker Nano II 65W Charger 60W USB C Cable CAT5e Cable Custom Blanking Panel |
