many times, shucking is a very valid way to get large format disks for cheaper than retail NAS parts. But be aware of what your buying and make sure that the disk your getting if its a white label is a reliable disk. WD Easystore/Mybook are generally good, as are the larger format Seagate external.

Im not sure Intel has any worthwhile CPU’s unless you are getting them used.

Currently E cores are mostly trash, and not all that “efficient” and letting a P Core turbo up and get the task completed uses less overall power.

Secondly Intel is lying about its heat output, and power use. Everything from 10th gen up is a power hog if you dont limit the performance to well below “stock” settings.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2612-intel-core-i5-13500/

This is a good match up between an i5-13500 vs R5 7600, which is the most interesting IMO. The R5 7600 seems to be about $15 less expensive for just the CPU and uses 3/4ths the power which will be a greater savings over time vs Intel. The AMD Motherboards also still seem to trend a bit lower in cost than Intel.

So overall its a good question. If you can get a use 13500 or one under $150 then its probably worth it, but at retail prices the 7600 will cost less to buy, and less to own while being similar in performance.

Create 3 VM’s and pass-through disks to each VM. Boom ceph cluster on a single computer.

ZFS/BRTFS might still be better, but if you really want Ceph this should work and provide expansion and redundancy at a block device level, though you wont have any hardware redundancy regarding power/nodes.

I just sharpie my cable runs and then just a lable maker on ports and panels.

I have and I have done unifi. I don’t like being restricted to their NVR or software solutions because it means I to toss the cameras if I want to extend solution with things like ptz or verifocal cameras. Want to add ai/ml detection sorry can’t do…

Unifi is good for some people but it’s not the solution for everyone. Reolink can also offer similar ecosystem experiences but also while letting you expand your system if wanted.

They do but are a poor value next to most other options.

Would not recommend this. It’s fun to tinker with but a poor substitute for real cameras.

Most cameras are self hosted but they are not marketed to consumers because they require running cables to them either for power and/or data.

Reolink camera with onvif so support can be connected to Frigate or Shinobi.

Hikvison and Dahua are common Chinese brands that have lots of options across lots of prices points but are treated as insecure or hostile iot devices required closed networks.

Costco often has camera and NVR packages that are passable.

Whenever possible make sure any camera you get is onvif so you can use it with any NVR or software.

https://www.theserverstore.com/

They also have a large ebay presence but I have purchased from both their ebay store, and their web store depending on what I needed.

That is fair, I have a fully height rack and I dont really want equipment at eye height anyway so I like to keep that area open.

I got a cheap rack vesa Mount and an old Dell with VGA from goodwill.

Adding a 2.5g card to a PC it’s the way to go. I put one in my mini 1l PC and run pfsense on it.

Snap… My bad but sure you could create your own parts. I was thinking about adding a motherboard tray and HDD caddies to my design so I could use matx or uatx boards in custom 1 and 2u designs.

I made my own and 3d printed them. I built this one so I could add disks but I have another version with 2 side by side and not stacked.

The only real advantage of RAID1 is that in some cases you get 2x the read performance. But doing snapshots where you get backups that include changes is more powerful than RAID or a volume copy.

The version I posted is connect x3 and the b variant which is the lower power version. It is still well supported in most Linux/BSD based operating systems. The connect x2 less so, plus it’s on an older more power hungry design.

IDK about using the wireless card. I have APs so I never tried. I will say an AP will have much better coverage than any Wi-Fi card.

No that card wont work, it will cook its self in an M720q.

What you want is a https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p3814320.m570.l1313&_nkw=MCX312B-XCCT&_sacat=0 MCX312B which runs much cooler and can comfortably fit in an M720q.

the default 65w PSU is fine with an i3/i5, but you can get a larger one if you want. I can try testing idle power though I am on a 110v/60hz system so it may not be exactly the same.

I have seen line speeds at nearly full bandwidth on mine in synthetic testing.

I ended up adding a M.2 A+E 2.5gb network card in place of the wifi card which gives me 4 network interfaces. stock intel 1gb, M.2 Realtec 2.5gb, and 2x Melanox 10gb SFP’s.

Last thing, DO NOT USE RJ45 SFPs. The draw way to much power and generate lots of heat. Use direct attach cables, or fiber to connect to switches/routers.

This one looks kinda interesting. https://www.amazon.co.uk/INTER-TECH-Storage-88887191-Case-without/dp/B015FA61K2/ref=sr_1_20 https://www.scan.co.uk/products/4u-ipc-4u-4408-storage-server-case-w-o-psu-supports-8x-35-25-hdd-2x-80mm-fans-2x-usb-30

This looks ok. https://www.scan.co.uk/products/codegen-4u600v2-4u-rackmount-v2-600mm-deep-butterfly-lock-includes-2-x-80mm-and-2-x-120mm-fans-atx-m

Are you looking for a 4u case and what part of the world are you buying from?

1. this is a huge topic, I find Reolink a good balance of cost/performance but their ONVIF support is not great. You will need to research each individual camera to see if it will work. Otherwise AXIS/BOSH, or get Chinese cameras and make sure they dont have a way to call home. If you go Chinese Dahua and Hikvision.
2. Get POE cameras!
3. NO wifi, WIFI is crap for cameras as they need a constant stream of video to be recorded. If they only write a file when triggered it means you will miss lots of events. Most NVR software, even FOSS records constantly but overwrites files until an event is triggered and then it locks the previous 10 seconds until the event ends.
4. Any non “consumer” solution should record to local storage. Consumer solution like Ring/Arlo are all built around subscriptions.
5. Frigate/Shinobi are decent NVR FOSS solutions, and any ONVIF compatible camera should work fine with FOSS.
6. again Frigate/Shinobi, and I think frigate even has HASS integration.
7. most good quality professional cameras have built in tracking, detection, and other neat tools. But in addition Frigate has more features you can apply on top of the built in ones. 2 way audio IDK about never looked into it.