Home server

[adelhied]

I am planning to setup a home server and based on the ultimate home server guide that linus did but I heard that windows home server 2011 will be discontinued. I have read some of the alternative but I really want to use a windows environment around the house, as I'm not the only one here that decision is because my family is well adopted to windows. Can you share your setup with me particularly the OS that your running and if your using a NAS can you tell me what brand or tech detail about it as I want the server to be a file/backup/media server the house.

 

P.S.

media server will be accessed by all kind of devices like ipad, android device, windows based HTPC.

[looney]

Have a look at the 10TB+ topic in my signature, there are a couple windows builds in there.

 

Now for simple media storage I would recommend FlexRAID if you want to stick with windows.

I have a tutorial on FlexRAID in my signature that also has a "What is FlexRAID" section.

 

 

So just read those 2 topics and tell me what you think

[tycheleto]

I am planning to setup a home server and based on the ultimate home server guide that linus did but I heard that windows home server 2011 will be discontinued. I have read some of the alternative but I really want to use a windows environment around the house, as I'm not the only one here that decision is because my family is well adopted to windows. Can you share your setup with me particularly the OS that your running and if your using a NAS can you tell me what brand or tech detail about it as I want the server to be a file/backup/media server the house.

P.S.

media server will be accessed by all kind of devices like ipad, android device, windows based HTPC.

+1 on flexraid if you want software raid. The level of flexibility in adding/removing drives for the array while not having to worry about hardware failures losing all your data is amazing. And there's no striping involved so there is also less problems with corrupt parity causing you to lose data. And you can mix and match drives if you wish, as long as your parity drive is your largest drive.

You can run flexraid on top of standard windows or even linux, and just use standard windows network shares for sharing media. Also allows you to use whatever windows programs you want for streaming media(eg plex).

If you are planning to go flexraid, I'd use the trial and hold off for a while. They have a new version now as Transparent RAID that is in the last RC I think, and will be launched soon. I find it much better than the older realtime raid/snapshot raid in flexraid.

If you don't like flexraid and don't mind non-windows, you can also consider FreeNAS. If you are planning on running hardware RAID with a RAID card, you can frankly just run normal windows.

[adelhied]

Thanks for the advice I will take that all into consideration