Solutions to somewhat basic tasks

[Jekub]

I currently own an old HP Proliant 2U server that I bought off eBay years ago.

 

I've been using it for incredibly menial tasks like a teamspeak server and very little else. I've toyed about with the basic functions of IIS but nothing in depth. 

 

I've recently found a use for this server that I bought over a year ago and was wondering if anyone could suggest how to go about solving the following problems.

 

Music media server:

I want to be able to stick a CD drive in the server and have it automatically rip the files from it and add to a library that I can stream to a variety of mobile devices. I'm aware that Plex does this and it's incorporation with Alexa is certainly a selling point but the £90+ cost to stream my own media seems a tad steep and I was wondering if there were any cheaper alternatives.

 

iPhone Backup:

My parents are iPhone fanatics and won't touch anything android with a 10 foot pole. And have inherent disinterest in iCloud which coupled with the small storage quota rules it out as an option. I've seen that iTunes appears to offer a WiFi sync but I'm not sure of how to implement this and was wondering if there were any better solutions. 

 

 

 

[dalekphalm]

23 hours ago, Jekub said:

I currently own an old HP Proliant 2U server that I bought off eBay years ago.

 

I've been using it for incredibly menial tasks like a teamspeak server and very little else. I've toyed about with the basic functions of IIS but nothing in depth. 

 

I've recently found a use for this server that I bought over a year ago and was wondering if anyone could suggest how to go about solving the following problems.

 

Music media server:

I want to be able to stick a CD drive in the server and have it automatically rip the files from it and add to a library that I can stream to a variety of mobile devices. I'm aware that Plex does this and it's incorporation with Alexa is certainly a selling point but the £90+ cost to stream my own media seems a tad steep and I was wondering if there were any cheaper alternatives.

 

iPhone Backup:

My parents are iPhone fanatics and won't touch anything android with a 10 foot pole. And have inherent disinterest in iCloud which coupled with the small storage quota rules it out as an option. I've seen that iTunes appears to offer a WiFi sync but I'm not sure of how to implement this and was wondering if there were any better solutions. 

 

 

 

For the iPhone backup. My suggestion:

 

1. Enable iCloud backup - whether they have an "inherent disinterest" or not is irrelevant. Just set it and forget it.

2. Disable iCloud photos backup - this will ensure you don't go over the ridiculously small 5GB iCloud storage limit. Just backup config.

3. Choose one: Google Drive, OneDrive, or Drop Box

3a. Install iOS app for said service, enable automatic Photos backup (will do photos and videos).

 

This solution will have iCloud backup the device itself and important configs, and then all photos and videos will be backed up to the cloud service of your choice. I use this exact system with iCloud + OneDrive, and it works great.

 

WIFI Sync only works with iTunes, as far as I'm aware. You could have your parents backup to iTunes, and then create a script that automatically backs up the folder on their computer to your Server, but that doesn't seem as easy to me as simply using my above method.