I need a cheap home server

[Benjamin_ONeal]

Hi everyone.  I need a home server and want to spend no more than $200 Australian and it does not matter whether it comes with HDD as I can add them later.  This server will hold movies and files to be shared on home network and would be nice if I could access it through the net.  The reason i'm asking you guys is that i have no experience with buying second hand servers. I would appreciate help with this.

[Cyanara]

A second hand Netgear ReadyNAS would probably suit you well. Quite user friendly, well suited as a media centre and NAS, and includes simple yet decent remote access to your files.

 

QNAP and Synology may also have equivalent offerings, but I can only speak for ReadyNAS myself. I had the now discontinued ReadyNAS 314. A cheaper 2 bay NAS would probably be plenty for your needs though.

[Canada EH]

https://www.newegg.com/global/au/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108690&cm_re=nas-_-22-108-690-_-Product

[Benjamin_ONeal]

I should also mention that I need it to hold more than one HDD.

[GDRRiley]

https://www.newegg.com/global/au/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108213 

[ewook]

I did a post about a cheap alternative;

 

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/890347-cheap-offsite-nas-with-low-power-footprint/

 

There's tons of ways - why go overkill if you just have basic filesharing needs?

 

[TheGeeker]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Poweredge-R410-2-X-QUAD-CORE-2-40GHZ-E5620-4GB-RAM-SERVER-QTY-AVAILABLE/352244126880?hash=item520362d4a0:g:SfYAAOSw3fZaSUGT

 

I run this for my FreeNAS server, dont have it set up for offsite access but thats just because im lazy right now

[DogKnight]

On 3/13/2018 at 12:02 PM, GDRRiley said:

https://www.newegg.com/global/au/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108213 

As above. https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Network-Storage-(NAS)/1-4-Bays/61025-DS216se

 

A good recommendation given budget constraints. Synology OS is really easy to use. It'll handle DLNA for you and has tools for remote access. 

Going to be simpler and more efficient than trying to build your own. 

 

I have a Synology 416j which I picked up to throw some old HDD's in and to play around with. Their cheapest 4 bay from memory, but it's not doing anything serious. Handles media streaming fine.

 

I also have a Netgear ReadyNAS 314 the same as @Cyanara. It's a great device and works really well for a number of different tasks. And last week I only just realised (after a year of ownership), that it does NIC bonding as well. 

 

I do have an ancient Netgear Stora NAS. It's usually switched off these days as it is just so damn slow. But modders have done some fun things with this one if you can be bothered. 

 

[alex75871]

Buy a secondhand Supermicro motherboard with CPU and RAM.

[alex75871]

Here:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-X7DBE-System-Board-W-a-single-Intel-Xeon-Processors-16Gig-RAM/142654189924?hash=item2136da3164:g:T3sAAOSwDkVaWTvx

[Razor Blade]

A lot of people have the misconception that a server is a big ol' loud, heavy, massive, beast running dual CPUs, a hundred gigs of ram and ten zillion hard drives. While it would be neat to have a data center straight out of Google it is not necessary. A server is simply a computer that provides data and services to other computers on networks. A NAS is just one flavor of server that exists. They don't really need a ton of power to run well either. Even using a service like Plex where transcoding is done on the fly by the box it runs on, if you're not running multiple streams being transcoded at once running a server that consumes several hundred watts even at idle doesn't really make much sense.

 

Now if you want to get into enterprise grade server stuff by all means go for it! Generally that stuff has a lot of compute power for the dollar and are designed to run 24/7/365. I'm not trying to talk you out of it. But please take it from someone that has recently gotten into old server stuff, getting exactly what you want will be ludicrously difficult if you don't know exactly what you're doing. There are got-chas all OVER the place with this stuff. People that have been into the enterprise stuff for years will not understand that a new guy won't know that an Intel servraid 8k raid card from an X3650 7979 server can't support drives over 2TB. Which means you would have to get out your wallet to buy another raid card... then find out that unless you can install that raid card into the riser card above the old raid card you'll need a 1 meter sas cable. Oh and if you want to run the new raid card in HBA make sure you didn't buy the LSI megaraid 9260 8i card because it doesn't support it. All this to say that especially since you're on a budget you don't want to end up with a giant proprietary paperweight you can't use and have a heck of a time trying to sell...or in so deep you can't sell it.

 

If you want my opinion... That budget is tight for any enterprise grade hardware really worth plugging into the wall. Even an off the shelf NAS with multiple disk support may be a bit too rich for that budget. What you could do for now is to find a good working second hand computer locally that is maybe a few years old. If it doesn't already come with an OS, you could install a free Linux based OS on it and run something like Plex to access your media where ever you want.

[Benjamin_ONeal]

Thank you everyone for your help.  I ended up with HP ProLiant DL380 G5 for $138.50 AUD. I will eventually replace the duel core xeons with quad core ones which when done any of you are welcome to the duel cores for free.  I just need to know now if freeNAS will make use of xeons.  Thanks

[Razor Blade]

Freenas itself doesn't need a lot of CPU. You would benefit from more HDD and RAM upgrades if all you need is a storage server. If you end up using something like Plex it will benefit from more power since you would need CPU to transcode media on the fly. Or if you get into creating VMs that run all the time you would benefit from more cores you can dedicate to them. To give you an idea I have a Xeon X5550 in my current server (which is an old gaming PC) and I can reliably get 3 simultaneous transcoded streams on Plex no problem. Though to be fair the bottle neck right now is not likely the processor.