I'd lilke to build a couple of home servers for me and my friends, but the problem is that I seem to have a really hard time finding a proper enclosure and a motherboard that goes with it. Ideally I would like somehting small, quiet (no fans), and with room for 4 hard drives at least. Any suggestions?
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Bas
It finds lightbulbs.
I just grabbed an Asus barebone PC and put a Celeron processor in there. Mine has fans though. And four harddrives might not make it as quiet as you want.
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I like redundancy though. I prefer many small than a few big ones... I've seen quite a few hard drives fail over the years. How many drives do you have?Bas said:I just grabbed an Asus barebone PC and put a Celeron processor in there. Mine has fans though. And four harddrives might not make it as quiet as you want.
Edit: Which processor did you go for? How much memory? Thanks -
Bas
It finds lightbulbs.
giovanni said:
I like redundancy though. I prefer many small than a few big ones... I've seen quite a few hard drives fail over the years. How many drives do you have?Bas said:*snip*
Edit: Which processor did you go for? How much memory? ThanksI have two 500GB drives. I don't remember what processor, it was the highest celeron at the time, which is, like, over a year ago. I think I put in 512MB of RAM.
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Harlequin
http://twitter.com/TrueHarlequin
Home servers are mainly for streaming music/movies and storage, aren't they? Sounds like you really don't need much in terms of CPU/RAM to do somehting like that.Bas said:giovanni said:*snip*I have two 500GB drives. I don't remember what processor, it was the highest celeron at the time, which is, like, over a year ago. I think I put in 512MB of RAM.
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dahat
inanity makes my head hurt
It all depends on what you want it to do today and tomorrow. Streaming is fine and dandy and doesn't require all that much CPU time... until you start wanting to do transcoding... then the CPU starts getting hit harder and harder.Harlequin said:
Home servers are mainly for streaming music/movies and storage, aren't they? Sounds like you really don't need much in terms of CPU/RAM to do somehting like that.Bas said:*snip* -
dahat said:
It all depends on what you want it to do today and tomorrow. Streaming is fine and dandy and doesn't require all that much CPU time... until you start wanting to do transcoding... then the CPU starts getting hit harder and harder.Harlequin said:*snip*
Exactly.
I use a Windows 2008 Server in the basement and use TVersity for the streaming/transcoding
I wish C9 would add a TVersity RSS Feed button, like this one.
<-- Clicky
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i was able to pick up a Dell system from an insurance liquidation place. P4 with 1Gig of ram. attached 4 of the western digital book drives and 3 that i put into enclosures. i may replace it with one that has a core 2 or atom CPU and has less fans, had to move it out of my room.
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I think that these enclosures might be what you are looking for.
Edit 1: Ignore me. I thought you were referring to a media server that would be placed in a living room, but after reading through the thread it seems you are looking for one that would be placed somewhere out of sight.
Edit 2: I had a look at the cases in more detail and it seems that some of them may be suitable. -
tfraser said:
I think that these enclosures might be what you are looking for.
Edit 1: Ignore me. I thought you were referring to a media server that would be placed in a living room, but after reading through the thread it seems you are looking for one that would be placed somewhere out of sight.
Edit 2: I had a look at the cases in more detail and it seems that some of them may be suitable.Thank you all for your input. I ended up buying most of the parts suggested on this website (except I went for a little more ram, a second hard disk and a dual core celeron processor just to be rady for future software upgrades). Now I just have to sit down and wait for Amazon to ship the goodies!
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pathfinder
Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?
Just do what I did. I bought an HP Media Smart Server, and then went to NewEgg and bought a new processor and 2GB memory for it and loaded it up with Terabyte Harddrives.
I don't think you can beat the form factor of the Media Smart Server.
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Kryptos
Backup People!
Take a look at www.mini-itx.comgiovanni said:tfraser said:*snip*Thank you all for your input. I ended up buying most of the parts suggested on this website (except I went for a little more ram, a second hard disk and a dual core celeron processor just to be rady for future software upgrades). Now I just have to sit down and wait for Amazon to ship the goodies!
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I've been thinking about this for some time and actually asked C9 about NAS solutions and what was the best way to go. I'm about to become a poor student so I don't think I'll worry about it just yet but I am quite tempted to install Ubuntu on my old PC, slap a couple of hard drives in it and just share that bad boy over the network eventually.
Maybe a project I can undertake when I get home for Christmas! -
Bass
I need better writers.
Does anyone know of a barebone with at least 256MB RAM and like 5 watts power consumption while idling?
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Can't buy from NewEgg in Europe!!!pathfinder said:Just do what I did. I bought an HP Media Smart Server, and then went to NewEgg and bought a new processor and 2GB memory for it and loaded it up with Terabyte Harddrives.
I don't think you can beat the form factor of the Media Smart Server.
Anyway, I wanted to try and make the thing myself, so I bought the parts, it should be more fun and I don't really care for the fancy LEDs. The only thing I might miss is the hability to hot swap hard drives, but I am sure it won't be something I will do very often. -
PerfectPhase
"This is not war, this is pest control!" - Dalek to Cyberman
If you want to turn an old PC into a NAS, for simplicity have a look at http://www.openfiler.com/the-laughing-man said:I've been thinking about this for some time and actually asked C9 about NAS solutions and what was the best way to go. I'm about to become a poor student so I don't think I'll worry about it just yet but I am quite tempted to install Ubuntu on my old PC, slap a couple of hard drives in it and just share that bad boy over the network eventually.
Maybe a project I can undertake when I get home for Christmas!
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W3bbo
Work hard; increase production; prevent accidents, and be happy.
I just use any old ATX case (although I have a penchant for the higher-end Chieftec cases). Hardware wise it isn't important since Windows Server is designed to run on commodity hardware (if XP runs on it, WS2003 will run on it; likewise Vista and WS2008).
You only need specialist hardware if you're looking for running Hyper-V or Exchange Server (since you'll need an x64 CPU with hardware virtualization support), -
dahat
inanity makes my head hurt
Bass said:Does anyone know of a barebone with at least 256MB RAM and like 5 watts power consumption while idling?
256? God no! 512 is the minimum you want to have running, and throwing in a gig or two is even better when you want to run some services or apps on top of it.
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