Best NAS Box for under £300 (without drives)

so how would the speed of the a mircosever compare to off the shelf nas box?

also how would i be able to access from PS3 and Android and Ipad?
What price are we talking for a Microserver?

One more question is what is power comsumtion like compared to offshelf nas box

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Originally Posted by mattx

I think it's sad people just want to buy one without building one themselves whilst at the same time gaining valuable experience and knowledge. Looks good on a CV too........

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meh ive built pcs/servers before its hardly rocket science and its usually cheaper to buy pre done esp when microservers usually have cashback

Surely if you're using iSCSI then you just let a Windows server publish the iSCSI targets as shares, thereby avoiding the whole AD integration?

so can Freenas or Opennas etc do everything i require?

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Originally Posted by Geoff

Surely if you're using iSCSI then you just let a Windows server publish the iSCSI targets as shares, thereby avoiding the whole AD integration?

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Yep you sure do, however I have FreeNAS boxes doing different tasks depending on what office they are in.

so what sort of price am i looking at for a mirco server?

freenas feature chart Feature Chart

£250 ish before cashback 150 ish with

where is the best place to get one with cashback?

and i assume that i stream to ps3 and ipad etc from freenas ?

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Originally Posted by tri_94

where is the best place to get one with cashback?

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ServersDirect is the cheapest at £115.98 (inc. VAT) after cashback.

Click here to download a copy of the form you need to fill in.

Does that server have onboard raid ? or does freenas do software raid?

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Originally Posted by tri_94

and i assume that i stream to ps3 and ipad etc from freenas ?

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How? PS3 is assume uses DLNA so that's no issue (most OS's support it) but what do you mean stream to ipad? What protocol?

Power wise I'd guestemate a prebuilt NAS and the microserver will be very similar - theres plenty of info on the net. The main thing thing here will be the hard drives, their power consumption and how you set up sleep policies.

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Originally Posted by tri_94

Does that server have onboard raid?

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The HP Microserver doesn't have a proper hardware RAID controller. RAID-Z in FreeNAS would be a much better choice, but make sure you buy plenty of RAM (ECC is recommended for ZFS-based NAS's).

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Originally Posted by j17sparky

How? PS3 is assume uses DNLA so that's no issue but what do you mean stream to ipad? What protocol?

Power wise I'd guestemate a prebuilt NAS and the microserver will be very similar - theres plenty of info on the net. The main thing thing here will be the hard drives, their power consumption and how you set up sleep policies.

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As for the Ipad not sure what protocol? i know its possible to stream music via itunes on a pc. so i assume that must be simlar for videos and pictures. if not i guess if i was to stick itunes on the server if could wireless sync.

can you suggest how to setup sleep policies?

thanks

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Originally Posted by Arthur

The HP Microserver doesn't have a proper hardware RAID controller. RAID-Z in FreeNAS would be a much better choice, but make sure you buy plenty of RAM (ECC is recommended for ZFS-based NAS's).

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sorry whats raid-z ?