Windows Home Server Questions

[nantucket66]

Hi,

I posted something similar in the General Hardware section but I think I may get some more appropriate answers in this section.

I currently have a new 2011 Mac Mini and 2 x 2Tb Nas drives full of music. The mac mini feeds my USB dac using iTunes and Pure Music.

I have just discovered Plex and am using that for DVD/BD's (Mac is connected to 60 inch Pioneer plasma as well).

Obviously DVD/BD take up a colossal amount of space (I have lots of both!) and am thinking a WHS 2011 could be the right thing for me to do (I could move the music over too)

Happy to build my own as opposed to an off the shelf job as I want the flexibility for adding more and more drives as and when I need them.

So........

Can I use WHS 2011 to actually rip DVD/BD's or do I need to do it on another machine and transfer the files via the network to the server? If I can do it on the server it will save a lot of messing around.

I've left off hard drives for the time being and the software itself of course. I will also need a SATA controller card as the Motherboard only has 6 SATA ports.

Is the PSU sufficient as that case will take up to 10 drives and in time I would imagine I would use them all.

Can it be configured for certain drives to sleep when not needed? My only concern is using ton's of juice!

I know what I am doing with builds but have never done a server before. The above maybe overkill I honestly don't know.

Ta!

 

[Confused]

The one thing missing from WHS 2011 (that was in WHS v1) is Drive Extender.

This allows you to just plug in additional drives, click a button, and have that drive added to your storage pool. And that's it. Literally one or two button clicks.

With WHS 2011 you have to configure the disks manually and what's on each one, and move data around to make it all fit.


I hear you thinking "Great, I'll just stick with the older version, then!" - which is fine, other than WHS v1 doesn't support disks over 2TB.


Anyhoo - your hardware looks good enough - I've just updated mine from an old X2 4200+ to the Primo 500i and the cheapest dual-core Celeron and 4GB DDR3 and it's flying, re-using my old 1tb, 1.5tb and 2tb HDDs.


You can install pretty much any desktop software to WHS, and run it either via the console (ie keyboard/mouse/monitor) or via Remote Desktop - so sorting your BR discs should be fine, especially if you're not re-encoding them!

I'm also using something called Lights-Out, which will switch the server on/off when your clients start up

 

[nantucket66]

The one thing missing from WHS 2011 (that was in WHS v1) is Drive Extender.

This allows you to just plug in additional drives, click a button, and have that drive added to your storage pool. And that's it. Literally one or two button clicks.

With WHS 2011 you have to configure the disks manually and what's on each one, and move data around to make it all fit.

Thanks for that, just to get it straight in my head - I buy a couple of 2tb drives to get me going and fill them full of BD's ripping on the server either via the console or remotely (could I do it via an ipad?).

When these 2 drives are full can I simply buy another 2 drives and plug in them in and add content to these drives too?

All of my discs I am ripping to mkv's, I will most likely set up some form of Raid (0 or 5 probably) to build in some redundancy.

Do you know whether lights out would work with Plex?

Cheers

 

[Confused]

If it's just BR/DVD's you're storing on the server, and you have the original disks, I personally wouldn't bother with RAID or redundancy - yes, re-ripping them would be a pain, but I'd personally prefer the additional storage space, especially when I've got them in another format (the original disks) anyway!


I'm sure the iPad has some kind of VNC or RDP application for it

Not sure on whether Lights Out will work with Plex, but it will do stuff like IP address or network traffic monitoring. I've not played with that because all my machines at home are Windows, so have the client service installed.

 

[nantucket66]

Makes sense, the extra storage will certainly come in handy, no question about that.

I could raid up a couple of drives for BD's I'll get from friends/blockbuster where I don't own the discs, but not bother with raid for the stuff I physically own. It means the collection will be a little fragmented but....

I do have a cracking VNC on the iPad which works perfectly with the Mac (Remoter VNC), I believe it works with Windows, not sure about WHS...

 

[nantucket66]

Or being paranoid, could I back up to external USB drives or tradtional NAS drives? I could add these over time and maximise storage on the main server in doing so....