Your home server & Network

No pics but;

Server 1 - Windows Home Server
Intel E5200
Asus P5N-32 SLI
4gb RAM
9tb (6x1tb drives 6x500gb drives)
Akasa case with Icybox 3 into 5 swappable bays

Server 2 - Windows Home Server
Intel P4 3.06
Asus P4P800
1gb RAM
9tb (6x1tb drives 6x500gb drives)
Lian-Li 2000 with 1 x Icybox 3 into 4 swappable bay

The 2 servers are on different floors and I backup server 1 to server 2 once a week using a scheduled synctoy job, I then have a 4tb NAS that I backup all the irreplaceable stuff to about once a month and is kept off site.

I'm slowly upgrading the drives, and will start replacing the remaining 500gb with 1.5tb drives next. The P4 server is slow as hell, and I'm toying with putting in an AMD 4800x2 I have just "recovered" - but it only gets switched on once a week so not worth the hassle at the moment.

I have to ask...

I understand having something like WHS or a NAS to share files, but why do people have enterprise level tech (AD, on site DNS, even racks in bedrooms...) for home use?

I just cant see the point, other than having something to play with... if its for learning on, VMware on windows is more than sufficient for that...

Home server:

2 x Intel Xeon x5355 2.66Ghz quad cores
8GB FB-DIMM 667Mhz RAM
Intel S5000PSL Motherboard EATX Format
Antec Titan
Antec TruePower Trio 650Watt
2 x Samsung Spinpoint F1 1.5TB in RAID 0
2 x Samsung Spintpoint F1 500GB in RAID 1

iaind said:

I have to ask...

I understand having something like WHS or a NAS to share files, but why do people have enterprise level tech (AD, on site DNS, even racks in bedrooms...) for home use?

I just cant see the point, other than having something to play with... if its for learning on, VMware on windows is more than sufficient for that...

Click to expand...

Using it in a live environment regardless of how small it is, is much more beneficial than just using vmware on a workstation.... imo.

Not sure I can compete with some of the setups, but here goes.

AMD-based server, currently housing 7x1TB WD Greens and idling at 55W...


connected to a wall mounted patch panel, adsl router and gigabit /fast ethernet switches...


connected to these scattered round every room...


which connect to an htpc, squeezeboxes, wdtv and more desktops and laptops than is really sensible in one house. Or so I'm told .

I spot a DG834GT, are you running custom firmware on them?

No, it's running the stock Sky firmware, but as it's in a metal box I've got an external antenna which gives decent coverage round the house.

I have the same router, what's the name of the ariel? Been looking for one mysef.

It was a fairly cheap one - pretty sure it's Newlink 6dBi omni.

iaind said:

I have to ask...

I understand having something like WHS or a NAS to share files, but why do people have enterprise level tech (AD, on site DNS, even racks in bedrooms...) for home use?

I just cant see the point, other than having something to play with... if its for learning on, VMware on windows is more than sufficient for that...

Click to expand...

Because it's the best way to learn

For me its so I can keep up with tech. And on Virtual iron you can without the power/space/noise issues.

On the VM box with 3 VM's: I run AD/DHCP/DNS on one, IIS/SQL on the other and Exchange 2003 on the third VM.

I forgot to say as well as the RAID5 NAS, I have an ITX box I built running Astaro with my router set in bridge mode.

Heres the foundation for mine that me and a friend are going to use in our student house this year



We're missing some parts.

liking it benjo just a word of warning you will have to put up with them conatantly coming to you if something goes wrong !!!

Benjo that's obscene

Heh. Thats similar to the case I had my server in last, a full tower case. Worked a treat until I started buying the Icydocks! I could get more in with the case I have now. I must take a pic of the inside of my case, the mess is indescribable!

House is full of computing students, so hopefully not much will go wrong We have plans for it to be a file server, game server, and I think my friend wants to house his Xbox in there as a media center :/

I've got a test computer in there at the moment, 3200 Barton, 1gb DDR, 7600GT, and loads of space left over

wonko said:

It was a fairly cheap one - pretty sure it's Newlink 6dBi omni.

Click to expand...

Cheers. Was looking for a High-gain

benjo said:

House is full of computing students, so hopefully not much will go wrong We have plans for it to be a file server, game server, and I think my friend wants to house his Xbox in there as a media center :/

I've got a test computer in there at the moment, 3200 Barton, 1gb DDR, 7600GT, and loads of space left over

Click to expand...

ah class dude Ive got a 360 in the living room and ps3 in my room

youll deffo need more than 1 gb of ddr for a game server and all of that..... xp and vlite it up god dude i do envy you living with computer students !!! Im the only techy in the flat bar one of the business guys whos done business and it but Im having to teach him.....sadly theyve got me fixing pcs tvs alarms boilers ni on everything haha

knowlesy said:

ah class dude Ive got a 360 in the living room and ps3 in my room

youll deffo need more than 1 gb of ddr for a game server and all of that..... xp and vlite it up god dude i do envy you living with computer students !!! Im the only techy in the flat bar one of the business guys whos done business and it but Im having to teach him.....sadly theyve got me fixing pcs tvs alarms boilers ni on everything haha

Click to expand...

Unlucky mate

Yeh like I said it's only a test system thats in there at the moment, gonna upgrade when I move back to uni

Come msn mate

will be rebuilding mine later this week, current plans are as follows:

an ex corporate machine, provided by the old man (some form of asus slimline barebone) that is running a pentium D underclocked by 20%, 1 gig DDR2, a single 320gig HDD as main drive, with 4 eHDD plugged in each for a specific type of file, eg: music, videos, programs

aime to get all the usual filezilla, vnc, and possibly even geta few things like an IRC server up and running

basically its a test bed for year 2 uni work, and im bored next week as im not at work much