Hey guys, would appreciate any suggestions since I am super overwhelmed just looking over various resources and trying to figure out the best build for my needs. While this would primary be a Plex build, I am interested in learning some new things so I'm trying to build it around that. For example, I'm interested in playing around with ZFS, although I'm not sure if it would be viable to fit in given that I want to run everything in VMs.
Budget-wise, I'm willing to splurge up to around $800-$1,000. Of course, the more affordable the better assuming I don't sacrifice too much performance.
Now to the nitty gritty - sorry if I'm all over the place or things don't make sense. I can elaborate if needed.
So right now what I was considering was KVM or ESXi for the hypervisor (likely KVM). Movies would all be x264 in 1080p for the foreseeable future. At most, this will be getting two concurrent streams at a given time but it would usually be one - could be from Apple TVs or smart TVs, maybe iPhones. In the future, I'm intent on sharing it out of my network and could be looking at three or four concurrent streams at some point - but that's down the line.
I'd be looking to have some other VMs as well - one Windows, a couple of Linux VMs for various tasks or services, maybe one for FreeNAS? Still looking into FreeNAS. Most/all of the Linux VMs would be headless and would be running while the server is online. As for Windows, I'd be using it intermittently and was considering making it my means of downloading media with the GUI.
For storage, I'd be looking at either 8TB or 16TB for starters but would like something that could be expanded in the future. I do want some level of redundancy, so RAID is something I'm looking at. If the set up I want is possible with being able to use the Windows VM to download content, I'm kind of confused on where I could move the files so Plex would be able to access them. I've heard about unRAID and SnapRaid, but not sure if I'm too interested in them. Going to look into them a bit more right now.
Would be looking to minimize power draw as much as possible and keep it as quiet as possible as well.
Appreciate any suggestions, thank you.