Home server spec

MarcLister

MarcLister

MarcLister

Soldato
Joined
7 Mar 2005
Posts
19,514
Location
LU7
I recently bought an Antec 1100 for my PC which means my Antec 300 case is empty. As I already have a HP ProLiant ML110 G7 G840 server for my Windows Server qualifications I would like to build a nice little home server to act as a store for my weekly PC backup and as a file store.

As I already have the case, can someone please spec me a fairly good server and perhaps even an OS to run it? I would like to have an OS that would allow me to set up network drives that my Windows 7 PC can access, for the weekly backup say. I have a 500GB HDD that I currently use for backups that I reckon would do as the HDD for the OS. The motherboard will need to have Gigabit Ethernet and plenty of SATA sockets so I can bung in 2/3TB drives as I see fit.

Total budget is probably £300-400 for the basic spec, i.e. without the storage drives which I will buy separately. :)
 
 
Hi imb4tman. Thanks for the quote. Is an AMD board and chip the best way to go? I take it that AMD chips are very good for low power and heat settings like a simple home server?
 
imb4tman said:
YOUR BASKET
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020046-UK) £40.99
1 x Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 64Bit (1 Server & 10 Client Licenses) - OEM (CCQ-00128) £39.98
1 x Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 AMD 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £39.95
1 x AMD Sempron X2 190 2.50GHz Dual Core Processor (Socket AM3) - Retail £29.99
1 x Corsair Value 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low Voltage Dual-Channel Kit £29.98
Total : £192.89 (includes shipping : £10.00).

Click to expand...


Exactly the spec I built a few weeks ago except the psu and WHS, I'm using freenas with it as a headless box, get 60-70mbps transfers over gigabit with a single spinpoint f3 1Tb, I'll eventually expand to 8x2/3tb using ZFS raidz2 giving me 2 parity drives and 12/18tb total storage.
 
MarcLister said:
Hi imb4tman. Thanks for the quote. Is an AMD board and chip the best way to go? I take it that AMD chips are very good for low power and heat settings like a simple home server?
Click to expand...

I only use the single core in mine but with home WHS 2003 and it runs like a dream. For slightly better performance you could go for the Intel Celeron dual core. Uses 10w more power. Might cost a little more on the motherboard too going Intel but still well within your budget.
 
ManLoveRulesOK said:
Exactly the spec I built a few weeks ago except the psu and WHS, I'm using freenas with it as a headless box, get 60-70mbps transfers over gigabit with a single spinpoint f3 1Tb, I'll eventually expand to 8x2/3tb using ZFS raidz2 giving me 2 parity drives and 12/18tb total storage.
Click to expand...
Cool. Headless box though? :confused:

jamesfreddie said:
Microserver?
Click to expand...
Already got a HP ProLiant server for MS cert studies. Want to build my own one and use my Antec 300 case. :) The current ProLiant servers appear to be £440+ which I think is a bit steep.

imb4tman said:
I only use the single core in mine but with home WHS 2003 and it runs like a dream. For slightly better performance you could go for the Intel Celeron dual core. Uses 10w more power. Might cost a little more on the motherboard too going Intel but still well within your budget.
Click to expand...
Any particular Celeron dual core and Intel motherboard you can suggest then? Edit: This chip perhaps?

If I use two SATA ports for the OS HDD and a DVD drive, I have 4 left. Is there a way I could get more, if I needed to? Either with a motherboard that has 7-8 SATA ports or some kind of add-on card? 2nd edit: And this for the extra SATA ports?
 
Last edited:
Yeah that chip would be fine. And yes you could get pci sata card to expand. But once the OS is installed well you ever need the ODD again? Could just disconnect it and get a sata slot back.
 
imb4tman said:
Yeah that chip would be fine. And yes you could get pci sata card to expand. But once the OS is installed well you ever need the ODD again? Could just disconnect it and get a sata slot back.
Click to expand...
Cool.

Well, thinking about it, I have a USB DVD drive somewhere here. If the motherboard I end up getting supports that, I could install the OS that way and never use a SATA port. This'd give me 5 SATA ports for storage drives, which should be more than enough. :) I might need to find some 5.25" blanking plates for my case though!
 
Everything on freenas is done through Webgui and runs from a 4gb flash drive, so that frees up one of the SATA ports.

If you need more drives then a Dell Sas 6i/r is a cheap solution
 
ManLoveRulesOK said:
Everything on freenas is done through Webgui and runs from a 4gb flash drive, so that frees up one of the SATA ports.
Click to expand...
OK. And FreeNAS would allow me to set up network drives/shares that I can map to on my PC?

Part of me wants to use a Microsoft Server OS, part of me wants to save the £40 if FreeNAS is good enough. :p

Any idea how much Server 2012 Essentials cost? Is it worth looking at that or should I just decide between WHS 2011 and FreeNAS?
 
MarcLister said:
OK. And FreeNAS would allow me to set up network drives/shares that I can map to on my PC?

Part of me wants to use a Microsoft Server OS, part of me wants to save the £40 if FreeNAS is good enough. :p

Any idea how much Server 2012 Essentials cost? Is it worth looking at that or should I just decide between WHS 2011 and FreeNAS?
Click to expand...

It does indeed, the only downside with freenas is NTFS performance is very poor so you'll need to switch to either ZFS or UFS. ZFS has some very powerful software raid options, but is RAM hungry. 1gb Ram per 1tb or storage is recommended.

Heres a couple of screenshots of the FreeNas interface.


5qKnxgN.png


JIkcPkK.png



EDIT: This is where I spent my money apart from the storage drives...And I bought the B-Grade version of that board

YOUR BASKET
4 x Western Digital Caviar Red 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD20EFRX - OEM HDD £89.99 (£359.96)
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) £54.98
1 x Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2P 760G (Socket AM3+) DDR3 MicroATX Motherboard £38.99
1 x AMD Sempron X2 190 2.50GHz Dual Core Processor (Socket AM3) - Retail £29.99
2 x Crucial 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10600C9 1333MHz 240-Pin (CT51264BA1339) £19.99 (£39.98)
Total : £535.90 (includes shipping : £10.00).



That would give you 6TB useable storage running a RAIDZ1 array with a parity drive. You could then add another 4x2TB drives at a later date as another RAIDZ1 array but add them to the same storage pool so it shows as one logical drive.
 
Last edited:
Been thinking about this and I was wondering how much RAM would I need at most? I'd have thought that 16GB would be more than enough? Or can I get away with just 8GB? I could get 4x4GB sticks of RAM and max out a 4 DDR slot motherboard? Or go for 8GB and look for a 2 DDR slot motherboard, which'd be a bit cheaper. :)

How does the Intel Celeron G550 and the MSI B75MA-P45 mATX look? I would use 2 of the Crucial 4GB sticks, if 8GB is more than I'll ever need for a server.

I really don't know how much RAM I'd need for a server. I'm going to use WHS2011 I think if that helps determine how much RAM to get.

I would like my motherboard to have Gigabit LAN (for obvious reasons) but also a UEFI BIOS. Why not? :p
 
Board and chip will be fine, could go a little cheaper with something like I'm using. You don't need a power house for a NAS. If you're using WHS then 4gb Ram will be plenty, if you go freenas then the rule of thumb with ZFS is 1gb ram per 1tb of storage.
 
You're not going to need a lot of memory for a server, might be worth listing what you're going to be using on it but 8GB will be plenty. That would easily allow you to run a media server like Twonky for your UPnP devices, a NZB client, Sickbeard, Torrent client, backup automation etc. You definitely want gigabit for backups.
 
ManLoveRulesOK said:
Board and chip will be fine, could go a little cheaper with something like I'm using. You don't need a power house for a NAS. If you're using WHS then 4gb Ram will be plenty, if you go freenas then the rule of thumb with ZFS is 1gb ram per 1tb of storage.
Click to expand...
I was thinking that if I went for say 4 x 3TB drives, then that's 12GB RAM. Not that I would need/want/use 12TB of storage. :p

imb4tman said:
You're not going to need a lot of memory for a server, might be worth listing what you're going to be using on it but 8GB will be plenty. That would easily allow you to run a media server like Twonky for your UPnP devices, a NZB client, Sickbeard, Torrent client, backup automation etc. You definitely want gigabit for backups.
Click to expand...
To begin with just WHS to allow for backing up of files to a single 3TB drive. I'll add more in once I get the hang of network shares and so on. :) I'll have to research Twonky, NZB and Sickbeard to see what I can do with them and see if I'll ever use them.
 
MarcLister said:
I was thinking that if I went for say 4 x 3TB drives, then that's 12GB RAM. Not that I would need/want/use 12TB of storage. :p

To begin with just WHS to allow for backing up of files to a single 3TB drive. I'll add more in once I get the hang of network shares and so on. :) I'll have to research Twonky, NZB and Sickbeard to see what I can do with them and see if I'll ever use them.
Click to expand...

Take into account that you would actually have 8.2TB usable storage if you we're to use one parity drive setup on that and 8Gb would be sufficient. FreeNAS also allows Sickbeard, Couchpotato, SabNZB and torrents etc, without the license costs. Worst case you run FreeNAS to start with, decide you dont like it then buy WHS
 
WHS 2011 has a 8Gb memory limit, also you would need a graphics card when installing it, although you can run headless after its set up
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom