Stick w/ WHS or get a NAS?

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lowteckh

Supreme [H]ardness
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Early spring cleaning.. That along with the utility bill. Figured I should stop being a pack rat and back off on storing the internet.

Current situation:
Have a 20 drive WHS and thinking about moving to a 4 or 6 bay device.

Requirements:
Usenet client (current: sabnzbd)
Torrent client (current: vuze)
File access from multiple computers
XBMC needs to be able to access
File duplication or some safety net for failing drives would be nice.. but not entirely required
NO computer backup required

Options:
HP Proliant N40L w/ WHS 2011
Patriot Javelin S4 w/ whatever it comes with..

Can't find any 6 bay ones that doesn't cost an arm and a leg..

Ideas?
 
I say stick with your WHS if you have one that can handle 20 drives.
 
^^ I agree, How full is your setup? if you only have 4-5 hdd, then ya, having a huge server might be a waste. but if your like me hovering around 14-15 HDD, then there no way to downsize without get rid of a lot of data, or moving to larger HDD....
 
That's the plan: get rid of lots of files... I mean, how many times over am I going to watch [insert movie here]?

I don't want to keep running 20 drives or anything close to that number.
 
It may be more cost-effective to downsize the number of drives you have now with your current WHS setup rather than pick up a NAS unless you have some monstrous power hungry CPU or something.
 
Doesn't WHS turn off hard drives when inactive? It also doesn't do any data striping so it doesn't need to spin multipule hard drives to access a single file. If WMS doesn't turn off the hard drive, you can use something like FlexRAID which does. The only electricity you would probably be saving would be if you were running a power hungry CPU, but many of them have power/idle saving features too. So, I'm not sure what kind of savings you would get, and any savings would probably be negated if you had to go out and buy a 4 or 6 bay device plus licenses.
 
No idea if the drives spin down.. gonna play with a kill a watt before I come back w/ more questions or comments.

Server's an E5200 + some G43 or G45 mobo.

Is it reasonable to assume a power draw of 10 watt per hard drive (long term avg)?
 
It looks like WD Greens, a favoraite for storage systems it seems, is 6 watts idle and 10 watts at peak. Factoring a very conservative 50% use or 12 hours of a day, I'd say 8 watts would probably be the average per hard drive. Removing 15 hard drives * 8 watts each = 120 watts/hour * 24 hours = 2.88 kWh * 356 days = 1,051 kWh * $0.13 per kWh (my teir 1 pricing in SoCal) = $136.63 in yearly savings by going from 20 drives to 5 drives.

Edit: Why not reorganize your drives and unplug the ones with data you don't use.
 
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Clocked in 150w avg. power consumption. I'm assuming I won't do much better by just simply downsizing to low power hardware, and the savings probably won't justify much.

I pay ~ $0.046 kWh for the first allowance, then $0.0956 after that, so the $$ in power savings is probably even less.

I think at this point I'm looking to just hold on to 8 drives at most in a hot swappable case, though the ones I've found cost as much or more than a NAS or the HP Proliant... Would be pointless to keep the 20 bay Norco.
 
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The day you need that bare-metal-restore from your Laptops backup on the WHS is the day you'll hate yourself for getting rid of it :)

lowteckh said:
Early spring cleaning.. That along with the utility bill. Figured I should stop being a pack rat and back off on storing the internet.

Current situation:
Have a 20 drive WHS and thinking about moving to a 4 or 6 bay device.

Requirements:
Usenet client (current: sabnzbd)
Torrent client (current: vuze)
File access from multiple computers
XBMC needs to be able to access
File duplication or some safety net for failing drives would be nice.. but not entirely required
NO computer backup required

Options:
HP Proliant N40L w/ WHS 2011
Patriot Javelin S4 w/ whatever it comes with..

Can't find any 6 bay ones that doesn't cost an arm and a leg..

Ideas?
Click to expand...
 
TechLarry said:
The day you need that bare-metal-restore from your Laptops backup on the WHS is the day you'll hate yourself for getting rid of it :)
Click to expand...

Thanks for the tip, but I have never backed up any of my computers since my first and have yet to encounter a situation where I've needed it.
 
I actually just ordered WHS2011 for a new server im building for my house. I could care less about their "backup tools" but the mymovies collection manager integration and automatic dvd ripping with the WHS add-on is why im using it. Plus for $50 on NewEgg for a server OS, can't beat it. And its windows your used to windows.
 
lowteckh said:
Clocked in 150w avg. power consumption. I'm assuming I won't do much better by just simply downsizing to low power hardware, and the savings probably won't justify much.
Click to expand...
Yup that's a correct assessment.

lowteckh said:
I think at this point I'm looking to just hold on to 8 drives at most in a hot swappable case, though the ones I've found cost as much or more than a NAS or the HP Proliant... Would be pointless to keep the 20 bay Norco.
Click to expand...

You already have the Norco. Yes it is a waste not to use the other 12 bays but it's still significantly less of a hassle than trying to sell off the Norco, reinstalling parts in a new case, and/or setting up the new file server.
 
I'm in the process of putting together a home/media server and was trying to figure out what to run it with. I initially thought of FreeNAS (because it was free), I have also heard a lot about WHS, but I wasnt sure if I wanted to spend a bunch of money on it.

I just came across this thread and saw Adam's previous post about Newegg.com selling WHS for $50. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832416443 If it's that cheap, it might not be too bad to try WHS out.
 
Yeah thats what i bought last night... i didnt buy my case yet but hell for $50 to go legit on WHS2011 why not. Sure FreeNAS is FREE but for some of us, we want to do a lot with media center/etc...

If you have a case id say keep it... a decent case with hot swap can cost $300 (i know im trying to allocate the supermicro one now but its sold out on newegg and my cdw rep has a high price)... i dont want rack mount though, not sure what you want.
 
If you decommission 15 drives you might get the following savings (assuming 1-2tb green/LP styles drives, see my sig for actual wattages).

15x drives @ 3.5w = 52.5 watts
2x controller cards for drives @ 5w = 10 watts
 
I took a roundabout way to putting this media server together. I had been piecing together a media PC for my brother. In the process of doing that he got a pretty good job and now has some extra money, so he decided to just buy an already set up media PC. So now I have a decent HP motherboard that I put into a generic case just sitting around. A couple of things are “rigged up” in it (had some connection issues w/ the HP mobo and the front USB/Audio connections). But it's a solid PC, I just dont feel comfortable selling it to someone, etc. As all that was happening, I was running low on space in my own desktop PC. I figured, instead of buying a larger hard drive, then having the same issues and have to replace it down the road, etc. I could set up a networked media server using this PC that I already had. And as I need more storage in my desktop PC, just add a drive to it without having to move data and re-install programs.

I found a deal on 2TB hard drives and picked up 2 of them so I'll have 4TB+ of storage (I think that I have a few misc GB drives laying around to add into the case). So I've got the case & hard drives, but wasnt sure what to use to "run" the server.

I’m pretty much trying to end up with a large network drive that I can expand as I need additional space (which seems to be often), and be able to access the network drive from my desktop, laptop or online from another location.

I’d be interested to hear opinions of WHS or any other server OS. Thanks
 
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