Help building home server

[gibbo_ap]

Morning all i am wanting to build a 'small' home server. With the main intention serving to my TV and other devices - so DLNA support on the OS.

 

Whilst for this end i could just get an old crapper, i'm paying the elecy bill now (NEW HOUSE!), i was wanting a low powered system - possibly atom based.

 

Now whilst i have seen many of the tiny foot print machines they havent the expansion for the amount of hdds i have (4 - 3x 3.5, 1x 2.5)

 

Has any one any ideas for a station which is uber low power, and enough room for a few hdds?

 

cheers

[jinnantonnixx]

Take a look at these guys....

 

Synology Network Attached Storage - Products :: DiskStation DS211

 

The DS4xx series holds four disks.

 

It comes with built-in DLNA server:

http://www.synology.com/dsm/audiostation.php?lang=us

Edited October 12, 2011 by jinnantonnixx

[glennda]

HP Microserver?

[tommej]

Sounds like the HP microserver would be right up your street.

 

HP hd204ui, KVR1333D3N9/4G, 2GBFREENAS8, 633724-421 ProLiant MicroServer '4TB NAS Box' Bundle | ServersPlus

[januttall]

i built a system using an atom mother board i bought with memory in the only thing i had to add was the hdd, o/s and power pack. i bought 3 and stacked them ontop of each other with threded bar as the mounting holes lined up. 2 run microsoft server and one ubuntu server. the great thing is there dual core at 2.5 ghz "from memory might be wrong" and suposadly 64 bit instruction set ovusly it depends on the one you buy but its worth checking to see which atom mother boards you can buy as mine are abought 12 months old

[Chris_]

You could build your own, Chenbro make some nice ITX cases for this purpose (Chenbro Micom Co., Ltd.). 4x 3.5" drives and a 2.5" drive.

[januttall]

this might sound daft but where do you plug the power in?

[edutech4schools]

I would go for either a hp micro server or QNAP NAS server. I have both but normally use the QNAP for my general day to day media needs.

 

Both the QNAP NAS and Synology Nas (posted above) are more than just a NAS, they are fantastic servers in their own right.

[gibbo_ap]

i forgot to mention it needs to be cheap!

[sted]

i forgot to mention it needs to be cheap!

if the3y still do the cashback the microserver should be <£150 iirc

[JoeBloggs]

HP ProLiant Athlon II Neo N36L MicroServer.. | Ebuyer.com

 

£224.98inc. vat

Cashback available with this productPurchase this MicroServer and claim £100 cash back.

Free Delivery Available

Edited October 12, 2011 by JoeBloggs

[Chris_]

i forgot to mention it needs to be cheap!

 

Ooo er, just had a look at how much that Chenbro case is... looks like a Microserver (and cashback) would be cheaper than the case alone!!

[featured_spectre]

HP Microserver - get cashback and job done. Stick S2K8R2 on there and you should be good to go with media support etc.

[dhicks]

Has any one any ideas for a station which is uber low power, and enough room for a few hdds?

 

For a low-powered server processor, I'd go for AMD's Brazos chipset as it includes hardware support for virtualisation, which Atoms tend not to. Although designed for laptops and similar devices, they are available in small form factor desktop motherboards, like ASRock’s E350M1 - a motherboard with the processor integrated, so you buy the motherboard and the processor comes with it, which is a bit cheaper. That should work passivly cooled, I think.

 

At home, I have a machine built on a similar Atom-based motherboard in a small-ish case - it's pretty quiet, but not absolutly silent. If you need to use several disks I'd get a case big enough to take a multi-disk caddy:

 

LinITX.com - Internal Drive Bays

 

Alternativly, if you want a completly silent computer, I also have a passivly cooled Tranquil PC ixLS that I use as a server:

 

Custom Builds - Tranquil PC Limited Store

 

They do make machines they sell as home servers, media servers, etc, but those quickly get rather pricy - I bought the basic bare-bones model and added some external eSATA harddrive caddies.

[gibbo_ap]

HP ProLiant Athlon II Neo N36L MicroServer.. | Ebuyer.com

 

£224.98inc. vat

Cashback available with this productPurchase this MicroServer and claim £100 cash back.

Free Delivery Available

 

I think this looks like the winner!!! thanks all! thats quite cheap with the cash back, i may try and find some EEC around here

 

not to ask the SO

[MK-2]

perhaps SSD as OS drive too, quieter and more efficient.

if its purely to stream movies/tv/etc to other devices, why not get a popcornhour box? connect via hdmi to tv and ethernet to router, it then streams out movies and handles everything. obviously if you want it for more than movies/music a pc is better, but it can also queue up usenet and torrent files to download to itself

[sted]

I think this looks like the winner!!! thanks all! thats quite cheap with the cash back, i may try and find some EEC around here

 

not to ask the SO

i just shoved the first random stick of ram i found in the office in mine non ecc (now has 3gb ram) works fine no need for ecc tuff

HP Microserver - get cashback and job done. Stick S2K8R2 on there and you should be good to go with media support etc.

2008r2 i cant get dnla to work on got media player installed but tv etc just wont find it whatever i do id be tempted to shove win7 or maybe oven home server 2011 on it instead if ou want dnla

[CHR1S]

I run an HP Microserver, 8Gb ram, 8Tb RAID 5, 2008R2 base OS with another R2 VHD running my home exchange.

Other than the lack of DLNA (I use ps3mediaserver - Java Upnp Media Server, dedicated to PS3 - Google Project Hosting ) its been perfect and would highly recommend!

[sted]

I run an HP Microserver, 8Gb ram, 8Tb RAID 5, 2008R2 base OS with another R2 VHD running my home exchange.

Other than the lack of DLNA (I use ps3mediaserver - Java Upnp Media Server, dedicated to PS3 - Google Project Hosting ) its been perfect and would highly recommend!

take it you added a card to get raid 5

[CHR1S]

No, 2008R2 can do software raid 5.

 

Not really noticed any performance hits for basic media serving, I would say something a bit more intense would require a HW card tho.

[sted]

No, 2008R2 can do software raid 5.

 

Not really noticed any performance hits for basic media serving, I would say something a bit more intense would require a HW card tho.

never even thought about software raid

im actuallt wondering if i can shove a hdmi video card and a tv tuner in mine and installing 7

[CHR1S]

Yeh a lot of people have done that

 

http://www.edwardsd.co.uk/work/blog/2011/01/02/hp-microserver-as-htpc/

[IanT]

I wouldnt ever recommend using software RAID! - too many horror stories i've heard.

 

If anyone is interested im selling a Dell PowerEdge 840 with Core 2 Duo, 8Gb RAM, GIG LAN, Hardware RAID Card, 4x 250Gb disks.

[Arthur]

Yeh a lot of people have done that

I'm thinking of doing something similar with my MicroServer using WHS 2011 (£38.70), an AMD Radeon HD 6450 (£39.17) and BlackGold BGT3620 PCIe x1 dual DVB-T2 TV Tuner (£105.60). The Radeon HD 6450 from XFX (P/N: HD-645X-ZNH2) is supplied with a low-profile bracket, has a passive heatsink (so is completely silent) and supports HDMI 1.4a too.

 

AMD's Radeon HD 6450: UVD3 Meets The HTPC

So what do we do with a very low power, low performance, budget priced card? We throw it in our HTPCs of course! It’s here where we need to do some more aggressive testing as time allows, but the Radeon HD 6450 has all the makings of an excellent HTPC card. It has all the video decoding features we could ask for at the lowest TDP we’ve ever seen those features made available at. For a pure video decode and 10ft GUI card, I'm not sure there’s anything that can top the 6450. (Source)

[Arthur]

I wouldnt ever recommend using software RAID! - too many horror stories i've heard.

Not even ZFS?

Edited October 12, 2011 by Arthur