Best Homeserver OS?

wilber

wilber

wilber

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Hey everyone,

I have a small i3 setup i was looking of turning into a home server system. This system will be used to hold video/pictures/music/itunes for both me and the mrs. I would most likely want to set up some sort of backup software to pull work files off the mrs laptop onto the server so its backed up.

I am also planning on putting a streaming box next to the tv in the living room so all this can be accessed on the tv (Western Digital TV Live Air Streaming Media Player?).

I do have a copy of the latest Windows Home Server but from my brief play around i found it pretty crap/lacking (seems to be a massive lack of plugins).

What do you use and what would you suggest for my needs?
 
wilber said:
Hey everyone,

I have a small i3 setup i was looking of turning into a home server system. This system will be used to hold video/pictures/music/itunes for both me and the mrs. I would most likely want to set up some sort of backup software to pull work files off the mrs laptop onto the server so its backed up.

I am also planning on putting a streaming box next to the tv in the living room so all this can be accessed on the tv (Western Digital TV Live Air Streaming Media Player?).

I do have a copy of the latest Windows Home Server but from my brief play around i found it pretty crap/lacking (seems to be a massive lack of plugins).

What do you use and what would you suggest for my needs?
Click to expand...

WHS 2011. Does all you have mentioned pretty much straight out of the box :p.

You can get dedupe, drive pooling, lights out and various other plugins, some free and some not.

What did you find lacking with it ?. Remember it will also run the vast majority of Windows software and a lot of it can be converted to services so you do not have to be logged in for it to work.

I have it currently running on a D2700MUD Atom board in a 4 bay hotswap case as proof of concept and it works fine although a bit slow on installing updates but that could be due to it only having 2GB ram. I will be adding another 2GB and seeing if that improves matters.

RB
 
Hmm it was awhile ago and it was a brief look at it.

I cant remember the details but i found the backup system a bit poo, I also remember trying to hunt for decent free antivirus and failed to come across something good that did not cost £200+

I think I will set the server up over the weekend and have a play around again and see.

What about a linux based system? What's worth considering? I took a look at FreeNAS and that does seem pretty powerful yet fairly user friendly to someone who's never used anything but Microsoft Products.
 
Cheers Nick

I'm going to have another bash with WHS 2011 this evening and install a few of those plugins as i can see them being pretty useful.

What AV are people running on WHS 2011?
 
I'd personally look at WHS 2011, but I strongly suggest you look at running it in ESXi. I couldn't be without it now!
 
Using WHS 2011 on a i3-2120 myself.

OS is on a 120GB 2E with a 1.5TB 5900rpm holding my stuff. Tried Drivebender and purchased a key but could not maintain a decent transfer speed. Would start off at 80mbs but the day after when I tried to transfer again it was down to 3-5 mbs and gave up. Also happened on a Microserver aswell. Sole drive no probs at all and am quite happy otherwise..

Using Lights outs addin so WHS turns on with the laptop and turns off 5 mins after the laptop is closed down..
 
FreeBSD is very good but a pain in the ass to set up. FreeNAS is a user friendly, specialised version of FreeBSD. Both have ZFS which is fantastic and well worth the learning curve. It does not deduplicate well.
 
Esxi hosting freenas and server 2012 eval. The freenas stores my media and backups, the 2012 is for serviio and u torrent. The freenas uses rsync over ssh to replicate my backups to another freenas box at my parents. Their backups are also replicated over to mine. It all works really well.
 
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