Build Advice Media derver nas and general home server

Right its been a while since Ive done anything major with computers so I'm a bit behind the times. What I want to do is build a computer which meets hopefully all of these requirements and I was wondering if anyone has any ideas on what components to use and how to do it.

Low Power (so it can be on all of the time)
Quiet
The ability to store as a minimum 4 HDD
Remote access so I can start operations from my smart phone/ tablet
the ability to stream media to my smart tv and any other computer in the house (potentially over the web to my smart phone?)

my first thought was a raspberry pi due to it being inexpensive and low power however im not to sure about how the storage would work?

Think that's about it any questions feel free to ask, thanks in advance



Dave

 

Nto all that familirar with Raspberry Pi but I agree that you wouldnt get the storage you want with that.

If all it needs to do is act as a server then any old school system will work. I would look at the LGA 775 socket cpu's and motherboards. They are all over Ebay and plenty of bargains can be had. A low power Pentium 4 would provide more than enough computing power (hell a P2 or P3 would do but finding them would be harder)

There are some excellent LGA 775 mobo's out there and would easily support 4 -6 sata drives from the board wothout the need for additional cards (although a Raid card might be another option, pricey though)

A low end LGA 775 cpu wouldn't consume a lot of power and as it will be a server only you wouldn't need a graphics card or monitor, it could be cooled passively as well.

 

HP Microserver would fit the bill very very well. N36, N40 and N56 are the one's you will find around on sale, with the N36 being the original. The Gen 8 is the latest and greatest, and as yet, not released.

Usually priced around the £200, the £100 Cashback from HP would bring them down to the £100 mark making them extremely good value.

Sam

 

Thanks for the help, I think I will look at the Hp server any ideas what would be best to run on it and also can you get the cash back if you buy it from anywhere brand new?
What do you think to that?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/704941-421-...tion/dp/B00AHQUX86/ref=pd_sim_sbs_computers_1

 

Cashback offer has to be from an authorised HP dealer, I have read of some success with Amazon sales, but i'm certainly in no position to say yay or nay.

I ran Windows Home Server 2011 on mine before i sold it, worked like a charm.

There's a huge thread in the Hardware section for the Microserver, go have a gander, because there's alot of good information in there.

What Smart TV do you have?? Media Server idea would be Plex (App available on LG and Samsung Smart TV) and can also stream online to the iOS or Android Apps, It does also have DLNA so can stream to other devices like the PS3 and 360, just remember, these devices don't play all formats.

Sam

 

Microserver all the way tbh, I've got a N36L from when they first released, It's been turned off a handful of times, for removal of dust bunnies, but other than that it's been up 24/7 for 3 years now with no ill effect on our power bill. I suspect it's drawing sub 40W at idle.

OS is really what you're comfortable working with, I've got win7 on mine just because I got pissed off with the ntfs driver in linux being so slow. I had to transfer 4tb of data between drives at a transfer rate of 4mb/s, peaking at 10mb/s. I will go back to linux on there in the future possibly with Freenas, but I want a new array of drives for that.

The raspberry Pi isn't suitable, due to the bandwidth of it's I/O, technically the Ethernet port is bolted onto the USB stack, and any storage you share via samba will be flipping back and forth across the stack, which results in slow transfer speeds.

RPi is fine as a webhost, but any large files really slows it down. I've turned mine into a squeezebox after finding XBMC is still too clunky for my liking.

Also consider your network infrastructure, wireless networking just doesn't cut it, so throw in some GigE, it's cheap and fast enough for everything.


As for streaming, unless you've got a decent upstream connection speed forget mobile internet streaming. I find DLNA a load of half polished crap, so save yourself a headache of poor interfaces and badly indexed files and get a HTPC with XBMC.

 

I've also got a microserver, and another satisfied customer here.

Been running for over 2 years, and touch wood, not a single problem.

I run WHS 2011 with StableBit Drive Pool to expand storage across multiple drives without messing around with RAID.

I also run Serviio as my Media Player. It works via DLNA with my Samsung TV via the inbuilt software in the TV with no problems. On the fly decoding of MKV files, and can play 1080p with no issue.
I can also stream media via the internet to my phone / tablet (when my upload speeds allow, but that's a separate issue!)

Mike

 

Echoing the above of a home-server, have 2 here (might get a third, not sure yet) and they run whatever I throw at them as mine as VM hosts.

For OS, depends on what your TV supports, I am a fan of windows (one vm for homeserver 2011) but have just put in a nas4free box in work and found it to be lovely to work with. Also if your a student you can get server2012 essentials which is the updated version of homeserver.