I’m in the process of designing a home server and am curious how many ethernet ports are required at minimum and how many people recommend. The single board computer (SBC) I plan to use has two built in and has a pcie slot to add four more if necessary. If I don’t need the four extra I’d like to use the pcie slot for a pcie Coral Edge TPU (preferred over the USB variant but still an option).

I expect to plan to use the server to connect to my home network so any device on the network via WiFi can access NextCloud. Besides that I want to use Frigate in another container for home video surveillance. I don’t know if I can or want to yet also add a Plex or Jellyfin instance to then connect to my TV or use a separate SBC for that.

What are your thoughts? I’m new to all of these things and just don’t want to waste money on the wrong hardware. Thanks!

  • grahamsz
    link
    fedilink
    21 year ago

    I’ve seen it done in data center environments where there are two connections to two different switches - so you can do maintenance on either switch without downtime.

    Same reason for having dual power feeds to each machine.