Home Servers - New System Wanted

[Gareth]

I've currently got a simple desktop PC setup with Windows Home Server for sharing music, photos etc. I want to upgrade it (its currently only an AMD 2800+ with 2GB of memory (333mhz i think ergh) and 115gb storage (way too little). I'm thinking something Intel Based with atleast 4GB memory and 1TB probably 2TB. I'd like to spend not too much but the budget isn't too tight. Any recommendations?

 

[McBunny]

what do you want to do with it ?
just sharing photos and music ?
if so just stick bigger disks in and bit more ram

 

[Cookie]

Plus, how much money have you got to spend?

 

[Mike_182]

More RAM? WHS doesn't need RAM so much, all it is is a pretty NAS.

Best WHS in the world is a cheap Core2Duo, 4GB RAM cos you can in a big f*ckoff case with millions of HDDs.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-177-OK&groupid=43&catid=1078&subcat=

Give OCers a call and get them to do one of those without the HDD

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-054-SA&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=940

4 of those.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-098-SE&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=59

One of those.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-018-BT&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=72

One of those. That way you'll be able to change a drive without taking the machine down, and you'll have 2.2TB usable storage.

I've got a 1-slot 4x2.5" SAS HDD caddy, and 2x5-slot 3.5" SATA drive caddies, giving me all the storage I'll ever need

 

[Gareth]

ta, but best to avoid Celeron in my experience? Cheaper to build one myself or buy like that you reckon? Say a buget of £400-£500. The quieter the better as well as it will obviously be left on.

 

[Mike_182]

Doesn't overly matter on the processor - unless you ever sit in front of it for anything, RAID is handled by the chipset and NIC is offloaded for most tasks, so whatever goes in there will sit there twiddling it's thumbs.

Building/buying - it's your call. You could get one with the exact components you wanted, but then the costs tend to gently creep up - at least if you sit down and say 'thats an adequate barebones' then you can say all of your movements on price are storage.

If you want, you can add-in storage cards, but that gets expensive...

 

[Rage182]

http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/acatalog/HOME_SERVERS.html

 

[DMS]

I had this same dilemma a while back...
Couldn't be arsed setting up a PC / server, so I brought a Drobo!

Drobo with 2 x 1TB hard disks and (currently) 2 x 160GB hard disks, DroboShare and a few DroboApps means it now behaves as a streaming media server, a BitTorrent client, an FTP server and a very redundant NAS solution all at the same time.
Sure, it's not as versatile as a proper "server" but it does everything I need with no fuss.

www.datarobotics.com

 

[cava83]

Wicked things.

Really good

Very expensive though

Should really come with a gig network card built in instead of having to buy the idrobo share

Wow, check this out

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Drob...plus-FREE-DroboShare-NAS-Solution-Worth-16900

I had this same dilemma a while back...
Couldn't be arsed setting up a PC / server, so I brought a Drobo!

Drobo with 2 x 1TB hard disks and (currently) 2 x 160GB hard disks, DroboShare and a few DroboApps means it now behaves as a streaming media server, a BitTorrent client, an FTP server and a very redundant NAS solution all at the same time.
Sure, it's not as versatile as a proper "server" but it does everything I need with no fuss.

www.datarobotics.com

 

[Mike_182]

Can install all the stuff to do that on a computer - and get better technology...

Again, depends what you want!

 

[DMS]

Yes you can.
But the point is that it's such an awesome piece of kit and does everything I need it to do, while at the same time keeping the data safe from single and even multiple drive failure.
Plus the Drobo wastes a lot less disk space on overheads than traditional RAID methods (in most cases).

 

[DMS]

Wicked things.

Really good

Very expensive though

Should really come with a gig network card built in instead of having to buy the idrobo share

Wow, check this out

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Drob...plus-FREE-DroboShare-NAS-Solution-Worth-16900

That's exactly the same price I paid the other week, except I got mine from eBuyer. I think they've still got that offer on too.

 

[Mike_182]

Yes you can.
But the point is that it's such an awesome piece of kit and does everything I need it to do, while at the same time keeping the data safe from single and even multiple drive failure.
Plus the Drobo wastes a lot less disk space on overheads than traditional RAID methods (in most cases).

Technically, it doesn't waste less space - what it does is the equivalent of HP's 'De-duplication' - otherwise known as on-the-fly compression. Whilst great, it's a marketing spin on something that if people found out about 'directly', they'd probably avoid using the product. After all, there's sod all point having a mega expensive HTPC/HT System/Screen/Projector, if you're going to limit the quality of what you get by having an on-the-fly data compression tool that can only handle so much throughput.

This is great for pictures/music, as they aren't bandwidth-intensive - however stick HD movies in the mix and you've got a recipe for a bottleneck. Also, expansion costs/considerations? I know you can expand it, but the technology is readily available to do it on most decent hardware RAIDs.

I guess what I'm trying to say is yes, it's a very simple and quick way to do it, and it's not 'bad', but it's not rocket science and there's no magic to what it does. You can enable compression on shared folders on Windows and I'm certain you can do it on Linux as well. Torrent client/media server/porntube is nothing new to NAS devices...

 

[Darren S]

I'd probably be looking at a micro-ATX setup, with decent RAID features as my first port of call, rather than a Drobo. Having said that, a Drobo would probably look better!

As Mike says (and it's replicated here at work on a bigger scale) - the CPUs generally have little to on a daily basis. Even one of our SQL servers that is in use constantly, rarely gets above 15% utlisation on the CPUs - and they are old Xeons from approx 7 years ago.

The 1GB fibre NIC and 15K RAID arrays however, get battered. The handling of files and media at home could easily be done on an entry level Intel or AMD CPU - but I would focus the cash on the drives and NIC ports. Unless you're a HD-fiend, I don't think you'd trouble a good spec mobo with good RAID functionality and a decent set of quick disks.

D.

 

[MickM]

Currently using:
ML115 Quad core, 4.00GB Ram with 4x500GB drives and Server 2003 as my home server.

Got the server for £120, £30 for the ram, only needed to buy two of the drives roughly £40 each.

Use it with PS3 Java Media Server for streaming to PS3. Set up as terminal server so family can work from anywhere (Self employed) and can also get around facebook being blocked! and using BE to backup important Data/Pictures etc onto external HDD. Also running VMware as my test enviroment. Just awaiting some more RAM to arrive and will be trialing 2008 x64 for a while.

for the lot ended up under £300 but of course only if you can get the software for free.

 

[Darren S]

Currently using:
ML115 Quad core, 4.00GB Ram with 4x500GB drives and Server 2003 as my home server.

Got the server for £120, £30 for the ram, only needed to buy two of the drives roughly £40 each.

Use it with PS3 Java Media Server for streaming to PS3. Set up as terminal server so family can work from anywhere (Self employed) and can also get around facebook being blocked! and using BE to backup important Data/Pictures etc onto external HDD. Also running VMware as my test enviroment. Just awaiting some more RAM to arrive and will be trialing 2008 x64 for a while.

for the lot ended up under £300 but of course only if you can get the software for free.

Sounds good, Mick - certainly for the price! W2008 x64 is a great O/S. Took us about 5 mins to decide that the trial was good enough and to buy it.

D.

 

[MickM]

Good to hear.

Ive got all the software (Microsoft Action Pack FTW) Just didn't want to run it with less than 8.00GB Ram. That and after a day of working on Desktops/Servers the last thing i want to do is rebuild my own server.

Will probably have to upgrade to 1.0TB drives, Blu-Ray films at 10-15GB a film is using so much space. Just upgraded home network to Gigabit equipment (Free hardware - one advantage to working in IT) - All getting a bit geeky now!

 

[Dink]

i've got a server setup that consists of a single core,celeron cpu, 1gb of ram, 6 sata hdds

running ubuntu desktop edition setup samba shares and a shutdown cron job so it boots by itself but shutdown at midnight

get about 40MB/s from it over a gigabit network which seems to be fine for streaming HD videos to my pc

 

[Gareth]

sounds good, I've not used Ubuntu myself but do have it on CD at home, was going to give it a whirl at somepoint.

I'm thinking C2D with 4GB, 2 x 1TBs.

Just specced up a system quickly for slightly less than £400.

 

[Mike_182]

Ah, finally on my 4x 2.5" 146GB 10k SAS disks. Much better!