So I think its time for me to build a media server for the house, and I had a couple questions I was hoping to get some input on. The major hurdle I cant seem to cross is picking out a proper chassis. I see a lot of people using regular mid or full size towers and building from there. What I have been pondering is the use of an actual server case. What has me intrigued are the used Dell Poweredge 2800 servers. They are tower servers but can also be mounted on a rack if I ever wanted to go that route. Second they seem to represent some decent value, Ive seen some dual 3.2Ghz Xeon systems with 4GB of ram go for $200-300 plus shipping. Im not exactly sure what generation those Xeon processors are but the whole system is probably a few years old, but I think it should be sufficient for any type of video streaming [I plan to stream 1080p video to my WD Live].
I know most of them come with some sort of SCSI drives which I assume could easily be swapped out for SATA drives. Never having worked in a server environment I am a little worried about noise and heat [I think they are powered by dual power supplies].
Any suggestions, comments would be welcome.
Just as a comment I am looking to run 4x 2TB WD drives in most likly a RAID5 configuration.
I know most of them come with some sort of SCSI drives which I assume could easily be swapped out for SATA drives. Never having worked in a server environment I am a little worried about noise and heat [I think they are powered by dual power supplies].
Any suggestions, comments would be welcome.
Just as a comment I am looking to run 4x 2TB WD drives in most likly a RAID5 configuration.