I need a NAS. I've been considering 3 options, synology, real rack-mount server, or home-built. I'll put a budget on this of ~$500.
Synology:
I've always had cheap NAS/DAS devices but this time if I buy a pre-built NAS it's synology or nothing. I was looking at the 718+ because of the ability to upgrade... which costs $400. I already have 2 4TB drives to go with it if I go this route.
Dell PowerEdge (2012):
I noticed that on amazon you can pick up ~8-year old dell poweredge servers with dual xeon processors & 32 gb of RAM for around $2-300. To me, this looks like a steal! these were once very capable enterprise grade servers, which would probably still be overkill for a home network.
Home Built:
Finally there's the option of building a home-server from scratch which is probably the least attractive and will end up costing me the most money, as I know I won't be able to settle for low-end parts. i was considering something like a raspberry pi with a bunch of disks attached to it but I have not heard good things about this.
The question:
The primary purpose of this device is going to be for storage and a media server. I am a software dev and sys admin so I'm sure I would like to be able to run a plex server, have a LAMP test bed, maybe host some websites and run some VMs (if I don't get the synology) etc. Just a basic home server for somebody who is techy to do what they will with.
So which would you choose and why? I'm not all the way acquainted with the features included with the synology, but I know people love them and swear by them. I'm sorta leaning towards the poweredge but then again, that's 8 year old hardware.
Any input?
Synology:
I've always had cheap NAS/DAS devices but this time if I buy a pre-built NAS it's synology or nothing. I was looking at the 718+ because of the ability to upgrade... which costs $400. I already have 2 4TB drives to go with it if I go this route.
Dell PowerEdge (2012):
I noticed that on amazon you can pick up ~8-year old dell poweredge servers with dual xeon processors & 32 gb of RAM for around $2-300. To me, this looks like a steal! these were once very capable enterprise grade servers, which would probably still be overkill for a home network.
Home Built:
Finally there's the option of building a home-server from scratch which is probably the least attractive and will end up costing me the most money, as I know I won't be able to settle for low-end parts. i was considering something like a raspberry pi with a bunch of disks attached to it but I have not heard good things about this.
The question:
The primary purpose of this device is going to be for storage and a media server. I am a software dev and sys admin so I'm sure I would like to be able to run a plex server, have a LAMP test bed, maybe host some websites and run some VMs (if I don't get the synology) etc. Just a basic home server for somebody who is techy to do what they will with.
So which would you choose and why? I'm not all the way acquainted with the features included with the synology, but I know people love them and swear by them. I'm sorta leaning towards the poweredge but then again, that's 8 year old hardware.
Any input?