Help choosing a Low Power high capacity NAS for media storage

Helium_Junkie · 15 Feb 2015 at 16:25

After a hard drive failure in my PC I'm looking for a way to offload my media to free up HDD space in my PC so I can add redundancy. I have about 6TB of media at the moment, and would like space to expand over time.

What I'm looking for:

Decent redundant capacity (4*3TB+ drives in raid5?).
Low power drain, less impact on my electric bill the better!
Doesn't have to be a media server, just acting as storage is fine. Can use my PC as transcoder if needed. Ability to use PLEX server wouldn't hurt though.
Low price. Not looking for economy options, just not looking to go wild either.

From what I've read here the HP Proliant Gen8 looks like a good bet for my requirements, and a bunch of WD green drives perhaps. This should be cheaper than most of the 4 bay NAS options around, can you implement a 4 drive RAID5 on this server?

Before I go any further am I on remotely the right track or is there something else that would be more suitable? I see a gen8 for £185, would that + HDDs be all I need or are there other purchases to include?

Many thanks for any help!

Helium_Junkie · 16 Feb 2015 at 00:01

Thanks for the suggestions and advice, the red>green tip is very helpful!

I wasn't looking for performance gain from RAID5, the goal was least lost storage space. I'm changing my mind on RAID however, the amount of media I have makes it quite expensive, and losing a few movies isn't the end of the world.

I'm currently considering the HP Gen8 with 2 WD Red 4TBs non raided, giving me a little expansion from my 6TB of media without too much cost. Is there anything else I might need to make this all work?

Thanks!

Helium_Junkie · 16 Feb 2015 at 09:48

Little_Crow said:
And finally, I use VMWare ESXi on my Microserver. I have my Plex media server on an Ubuntu VM and it works brilliantly.
I run the NL40, but the Gen8 looks like it's completely supported in ESXi, it's an option I would seriously consider as it gives a great deal of flexibility.

Hi Little_Crow, could you please explain a little more how this works as using the Gen8 as a plex server could be a nice addition

Helium_Junkie · 16 Feb 2015 at 11:46

Awesome, thanks Crow

I'm good with the linux and plex stuff, but am new to ESXi. I've used VMs under windows before (HyperV) but never as the boot device.
Do you know of a guide or walkthrough for installing/using ESXi with the Proliant?

Is one of these the image I want? http://www8.hp.com/us/en/products/servers/solutions.html?compURI=1499005#tab=TAB4

Really appreciate your help

Helium_Junkie · 16 Feb 2015 at 13:20

I've downloaded the HP specific image, and then separately visited http://www.vmware.com/uk/products/vsphere-hypervisor to get the client and a license for vSphere.

Once concern is that the documentation states a technical minimum RAM as 4GB, the Proliant comes with 2GB, do I need to order some more?

Helium_Junkie · 16 Feb 2015 at 14:40

Thanks

Think I've got it. Server's in the post, let's hope I don't screw this up too badly!

At what point should I install BIOS updates, the downloads on HP suggest that you need to have the OS in place beforehand.