Physical space is actually a huge issue
Ah then I’d recommend keep the existing machine as the server (it sounds like it’s serving you well hardware wise), and get a SFF machine for regular desktop use, be that a new build or a used office machine. The trick will be in migrating the server to Linux, and without endangering your data in the process.
Examples of some of the deals I’ve personally gotten (ymmv, some were auctions):
In short, I’d recommend option B/C, where you buy used enterprise grade equipment, learn to run Linux, and build out that way. I can’t overstate just how good a deal can be had on eBay, even from reputable sellers. This goes for everything, from the computer itself, to disk shelves, to HDDs and SSDs. Plus you’re reducing on e-waste! Used HDDs are a great deal if you buy enough to run redundancy (RAID 6 or equivalent), because the seller will often include a warranty (up to 5 years!). I’ve only had a handful of drive failures and 0 issues with warranty refund/exchanges.
You’re running roughly the same services as I do (though a bit more storage), so if it means anything, I’ve ended up using the following (all purchased used)
Broadly, I find the following with my setup:
A few things that might help narrow options down:
For sure, there could be one person with 1.1 and 10 people with 0.99, but the average will still be 1.0
“Half our students are below average!” kinda vibes - KDR necessarily means that for every person with 1.5, there is someone with a 0.67, that’s just how the math works. If I’m anywhere near 1.0, I’m happy.
Absolutely, it’s a fabulous engineering challenge, to make it work well on a hobbyist grade 3D printer with ordinary materials. Also a lesson in using the right tool for the right job (some parts are just better off milled or bought OtS)
I used to frequent the FOSSCAD IRC ages back as a teen. This started during the post-Liberator panic, there were talks about regulating 3D printers to not allow printing guns, etc. Designed a few things, never actually printed any of it myself, but some others did. Really got me into engineering before I exited the scene, led to actually pursuing an engineering career. Was surprised to see 3D printed gun videos so openly shared, it was pretty underground for ages there.
I have 35mbps upload from the ISP, and limit each stream to 8mbps. This covers direct streaming all my 1080p content and a 4K transcode as needed.
Can confirm, tastes good. This was in Papua New Guinea, the dog was donated to a function to be eaten because it kept killing people’s chickens.
What’s funny is some tribes will eat dog and not cat, others eat cat and not dog, and they both think the other is weird for their choice.
Yeah, no data loss, rebuilt within 48 hours each time. 10TB is a nice balance that doesn’t have such long rebuild times
The first two died within 30 days, the second one took about 4 months I think. Not a huge sample size, but it kind of matches the typical hard drive failure bathtub curve.
I just double checked, and mine were actually from a similar seller on Amazon - they all seem to be from the same supplier though - the warranty card and packaging are identical. So ymmv?
Warranty was easy, I emailed the email address included in the warranty slip, gave details on order number + drive serial number, and they sent me a mailing slip within 1 business day. Print that out, put the drive back in the box it shipped with (I always save these), tape it up and drop it off for shipping. In my case, it was a refund of the purchase pretty much as soon as it was delivered to the seller.
I currently have 6x10TB of these drives running in a gluster array. I’ve had to return 2 so far, with a 3rd waiting to send in for warranty also (click of death for all three). That’s a higher failure rate than I’d like, but the process has been painless outside of the inconvenience of sending it in. All my media is replaceable, but I have redundancy and haven’t lost data (yet).
Supporting hardware costs and power costs depending, you may find larger drive sizes to be a better investment in the long term. Namely, if you plan on seeing the drives through to their 5 year warranty, 18TB drives are pretty good value.
For my hardware and power costs, this is the breakdown for cumulative $/TB (y axis) over years of service (x axis):
Anything USB connected more likely to be flaky, but a good enterprise disk shelf and a HBA card would be rock solid (just noisy…)
Unfortunately my solution when I did a big data migration was to buy more (cheap) storage lol. Ultimately it was a cost vs. time/stress tradeoff.