I currently have a Dell r720 but am strongly considering downsizing due to size and power consumption.

What's the general consensus for a home server (small form factor) (I use it mainly for VM's and containers)?

I like the size and layout of the Minisforum MS-01.

https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2024/01/minisforum-ms-01-review-best-home-server-mini-pc-early-2024/

I've also considered an Intel NUC but have read mixed reviews.

If you don't need a lot of computing horsepower to crunch numbers or mine crypto, how about a NAS.

I have a 2 bay Asustor that lets you expand the memory and use separate m2 drives for read and write caching.

It also has an HDMI port on the back. I plug the HDMI into the back of my receiver and use it as an audio or video repository.

With Tailscale, I also have my NAS show up as a drive on all my computers, even my laptop as long as it has an Internet connection.


For context - my specific setup:
For hard drives I have two 10tb WD Red Pro spinning hard drives configured raid 1.

Locally everything goes through a 2.5 gbe switch and I am still waiting for fiber in my neighborhood so upload to the Internet is limited to 100 Mbps.

That's fast enough to view media remotely and edit raw photos. I can edit up to 1080p video locally with a minimum enough slowdown it is manageable for small projects. 4k is not worth it

I've tried a SFF as a workstation and it was a disaster.

If you don't ever need to add anything to it, it should work well. In my case, I put in two additional things -- a additional monitor card and a second hard drive.

It would work for a couple of months and die. The limited power supply could not handle the extra load.

Also, the power supplies were pretty specific to the machine and cost quite a bit more than the regular power supplies of the time. I ended up retiring it early in spite of it being the fastest computer in the building.

Lots of reviews by patrick on Serve the Home youtube channel. 2L pc's, project mini micro have lots of info about running Proxmox, pfsense, truenas, XCPng and other common application bare metal and in VM's.
I have a pile of NUC's and older HP thin clients I run as servers. I have no use for high power video cards, and if you do you will be disappointed.

I run an hp z440 with proxmox. Changed to a NAS, then SFF, and then back to the z440. Doubt I go smaller again. Just ran into too many issues.

Thanks for the recommendations! I was running ESXI on my r720 (mainly for learning new work skills, home automation, and security onion) but after Broadcom acquired VMWare I decided to replace it with Proxmox.

Because my r720 is getting older, I thought it might be worth the investment to downsize instead of upgrading to an r730 or r740. I have no need to an intensive graphics card.

merlin403 said:

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Thanks for the recommendations! I was running ESXI on my r720 (mainly for learning new work skills, home automation, and security onion) but after Broadcom acquired VMWare I decided to replace it with Proxmox.

Because my r720 is getting older, I thought it might be worth the investment to downsize instead of upgrading to an r730 or r740. I have no need to an intensive graphics card.

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In my case it was a very ordinary VGA card that it couldn't handle along with a second hard drive.

I gave up server life for a Synology. It can run plex, docker and tons of containers no problem. Makes me learn some coding skills to get the containers to act together and keep me sharper. So much less heat, power, space and sound. Well worth it!

I have a Synology DS214 but my connection to it is slow. It works well for a NAS and automatic backups using the Synology Drive client but attempting to do anything on the device in "real time" is painful.

If all you are using is VMs and containers, and are already using proxmox, why not just go for a cheap off-lease USFF or SFF HP or Dell? The Lenovos make it hard to use m.2 coral TPU devices because of locked BIOS issues, so I would avoid those if that is important. It may be silly to try to add a GPU or multiple spinning drives and expect the original power supply to be able to handle it, but for the price and compute power, it's a pretty good deal.

My experience with Synology was also painful. Slow, slower and slowest seem to be it only speeds