Home Server vs. Appliance

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Kelvarr

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Currently, I have a P4 Northwood 2.6C based cpu, motherboard, DDR ram, etc sitting around at home doing absolutely nothing.

I desperately want to get a file/media server up and running. I have a few options...the less money I have to spend, the better.

Option 1: Use the above system to create a home server...OS could be almost anything...WHS (I would need to purchase a license), FreeNAS (free), unRAID (purchase), or just set up a normal Linux server (probably CentOS). Any options/recommendations appreciated.

Option 2: Purchase one of 3 different appliances. All can be had for about the same amount:
  • HP MediaSmart EX485 Windows Home Server w/ 750GB HDD
  • Acer Aspire Easystore H340 Intel Atom 1.6Ghz 2GB 1TB GBLAN 4 Bay Hotswap Windows Home Server w/ 1TB HDD
  • THECUS n5200br NAS 5

Option 3: Purchase Dual Core Intel Atom based board to replace above system.


What say you? Any help is appreciated and thanked in advance.
 
build vs buy would depend of few things.

1 how much storage space do you need? most prebuilt boxes have room for 4-5 drives so 10tb max
2 how important is your data? do you want some kind of redundancy? raid/duplication? do you have backup?
3 do you need easy to use gui to set things up or are you comfortable/willing to learn *nix cli ?
 
1. I'm not entirely sure...I'm in the process of ripping my DVD's. I think that 4TB will cover my needs.
2. Some data is very important. I actually just ordered a small 120GB external drive that will be more than sufficient for backing up the important things (pictures, resume, etc). All of my DVD .iso's could be re-ripped (it would suck, but they could be) if necessary. Mirror might be pretty nice though...
3. I'm in the process of learning CentOS (from cli). GUI is nice, but I like to know the why's behind it in case GUI isn't available.

One thing I guess I'm not entirely sure of is how much power the old P4 system will use compared to some of the newer stuff out. It doesn't seem too terribly far off from some of the current stuff, but I know it will change once I start adding drives. It also doesn't seem to have any kind of idle speed control.

One of the things that intrigue me is unRAID's ability to only power on the drives that need powering on. I'm not sure exactly what this ability is called, and I wonder if WHS has it?
 
Kelvarr said:
1
One thing I guess I'm not entirely sure of is how much power the old P4 system will use compared to some of the newer stuff out. It doesn't seem too terribly far off from some of the current stuff, but I know it will change once I start adding drives. It also doesn't seem to have any kind of idle speed control.

One of the things that intrigue me is unRAID's ability to only power on the drives that need powering on. I'm not sure exactly what this ability is called, and I wonder if WHS has it?
Click to expand...

I built a WHS based on a G41 MB, E5200 CPU, 1 Hitachi 1TB system/data drive and 1 Samsung F3, 2TB data drive & Antec EA380 PS. With both drives spinning at idle it draws 43w from the outlet. I have the power settings to power down the data drive after 20 min and then it draws unde 40w. (The setting is for both drives, but the system drive won't spin down under WHS.) I suspect a P4 system will draw almost twice as much power.

There is an Add-in for WHS called Lights Out. It puts the server in sleep mode when there are no active clients. It wakes up the server whenever there is an active client and for scheduled backups.

A plus for WHS is that it's not only a server, but also designed for backups and restores. WHS can do a bare metal restore of a client: restore the client to its former state (OS, all installed apps along with with data files) to a blank HD.
 
FreeNAS and any Appliances not using a server OS are going to be very slow (20-30meg/second write)

Ubuntu Server is much faster then FreeNas. I would assume WHS would also be much quicker.
 
sounds like 1 of those prebuilt WHS boxes would be good fit for you. You could always build your own but when u add the cost of WHS license + misc odds and ends you're not saving whole lot + your p4 will use about 2x power.
 
I've been running the HP EX-470 for a couple of years now and it's been a fantastic little box. I did upgrade it's RAM early on, but that's really about the only thing It needed. Newer Models didn't need the RAM increase. It's been sitting on the shelf running happily non-stop and working like a champ, so the newer HP WHS boxes would be a very good buy IMHO.

That said, I also have built a server of my own. Mostly for testing, but once Vail comes out it will become my my WHS solution.

Whatever you decide on, You will probably want to make sure that it's running a 64Bit processor. While it's not required for WHS v1, Vail is only 64 bit, so you would be not able to upgrade your P4 to the next version if you are thinking about eventually going there.

I've been running both Servers Side by Side for a while now. My Primary Desktop is still using the Original, but my laptop and a couple other PCs are now all using the Vail server. I have also swapped over my remote access stuff to Vail from Version 1. I think that the Vail remote access stuff is far and away better than the earlier server. I can't wait for Vail to be released so I can fully move over to the new server.
 
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