Home Server.

[GTX]

As my work use VeryPC i thought this would be a great place to ask for a non power hungry server for my home.

 

I'm wanting to spend as little as possible for a Windows home server 2012 that will run my DHCP, DNS, Twonky and a few other things. Looking for a few TB with room to add more drives if needed. So really 2 x 1TB to start with. I would prefer something that isnt too loud. My last home server was a old Dell PC with 4 IDE harddrives in. I could hear it buzzing when i was in bed no matter where i moved it in the house.

 

Main issue is i want it to use as little power as possible without spending a huge amount of money on the hardware that does that, A Duel core CPU with 2-3GB of ram should be fine.

 

Any ideas or a spec list on what you think will be cost effective and cheap to run?

 

Regards

Rick

[Steve21]

If you don't plan to run millions of stuff what about a HP microserver? Generally about £120~ after cashback offer. Super quiet, and easy to upgrade RAM/HDDs etc.

 

Steve

[SHimmer45]

+1 on the micro server i keep looking out for a cheap one to populate for home stuff as well as the buffalo linkstation i have is pretty poop.

also have dual core atom boards, and i think MSI or gigabyte do a onboard 1.6ghz celeron which would give you a little more poke that the atom

 

one of these... GIGABYTE - Motherboard - CPU Onboard - GA-C807N (rev. 1.0) they do a couple of different verison.

might be limited on SATA ports mind which is a shame....

Edited February 14, 2013 by SHimmer45

[Kem]

+1 on the hp microserver, managed to bag the newer version that wol works fine on. running the original whs - fills my current needs :-)

[VeryPC_Tom_M]

Hi Rick!

 

Nice to see you on here!

 

I've dropped you that quote across.

 

As always with our quotes, if you want to change any part of the specification or have any questions, drop me an email or a call.

[GTX]

Hi Tom,

 

Thanks for the quote! Ill do some pro's and con's with it and let you know..

 

And SHimmer45:

Do you know where i can buy that board with CPU and maybe ram? Iv had a quick google and couldn't find a price

[dhicks]

As my work use VeryPC i thought this would be a great place to ask for a non power hungry server for my home.

 

We've been buying VeryPC FlexPCs recently here, and they are very good and well-constructed and so on, although at home I've gone for Tranquil PC machines - completly silent, passivly cooled. I currently have a two year old iXL machine, which has run silently under my desk 24 hours a day unnoticed with no problems, and I'm now thinking of getting one of the new Tranquil PC Intel NUC cases and fitting a NUC board. The NUC is small but does feature a proper i3 processor, complete with hardware virtualisations support and a 16GB RAM limit, so it should do nicly for running a bunch of virtual machines.

 

For storage, I have a 5-disk array in one of these:

 

5-Bay HD Test Rack CF-B3053BB Testing chassis for 5x Hard Drive Buy now on SPAN.COM

 

The NUC doesn't come with a SATA controller, which is fine as you can add a better one anyway: SiS miniPCIe cards support multiplexed SATA connections, allowing you to attach a number of disks (via a SATA expander) to one SATA port - the card comes with 2 SATA ports, so you can attach 2 5-disk arrays. The SATA expanders work rather well with the above testing chassis and a PicoPSU - the PicoPSUs come with a couple of disk power cables (which you can expand with a couple fo Y cables) and a floppy power cable to power the separate SATA expander. With no fans, the disk arrays are also silent, although I've found they work better laid flat rather than sat upright - upright the disks started to overheat.

 

If you used 4TB disks you could attach 40TB of raw storage, with a core i3 processor and 16GB of RAM. That should make for a pretty decent silent home server.

[tickmike]

Find a free computer from 'freecycle' Then use a free Linux operating system, the only thing I paid for was two 1Tb hard drives.

Mine works a treat, quite, fast, and I used a stripped down version of 'PCLinuxOS Minime'

 

http://www.edugeek.net/forums/nix/100270-directory-structure-permissions-home-nas.html#post864963

[SHimmer45]

Hi Tom,

 

Thanks for the quote! Ill do some pro's and con's with it and let you know..

 

And SHimmer45:

Do you know where i can buy that board with CPU and maybe ram? Iv had a quick google and couldn't find a price

@RickH i only googled it myself tbh

i can have a look and see what i can turn up its an excuse to roam around the net looking at hardware

[catshilllearning]

I used to run a HP server but I found it VERY noisy.

In the end I went for a custom built server that was actually quite cheap and very quiet. I'm still running WHSv1 as it works for me and the lack of drive extender in v2 put me offf.

I can recommend WeGotServed as a useful forum for all things WHS.

[Netwacky87]

I have a very neat HP EX490, not going to set the world on fire for performance but it does HD streaming fine and does a very good job at most things I chuck at it, looked last night at getting one of the HP Microserver's but the cashback offer ended last day of Feb! Wanted to get a few VM's on the go! Ah Well.

[chazzy2501]

I always recommend an old laptop, they consume very little power (mine is 11 watts) have built in battery backup and are quiet, you can run all your drives from usb. I know usb isn't great for transferring large data around but I expect 99% of the time you'll be streaming audio / video. I have 7 usb drives on a single 2.0 hub and can stream 2 1080p movies at the same time. Each external drive spins down when not in use (WD Elements, less than 1 watt in standby)

[SHimmer45]

@RickH not having any luck, perhaps an amd/atom might do the trick and be easier to find, not sure on the atom being able to decode that well mind last time i tried with one it wasnt brilliant

[GTX]

Thanks Shimmer,

 

Its will only be encoding for 4-5 max connections at a time. Not streaming to the whole street Iv had 8 devices streaming at once on a single core CPU. I think a atom is my best bet to be honest.

[old_n07]

I'm running a MAC mini for a home server which is the best use i could find for a MAC as well , I.ve put the free hyperV core 2012 server on it and run my home server as a VM along with a couple of other guests. It runs silently and with 8Gb of memory installed handles everything easily

[GTX]

Hi Old_n07

 

Whats a good price to get one of these at?

[old_n07]

Mine is a 2009 model and from looking on ebay they are going for £200 to £300 depending on spec.

 

HTH

Edited March 11, 2013 by old_n07