Question diy media server, nas/drive array, Rackmounting.. many questions basically!

Marticus1982

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HI All, i'm not sure all of these questions belong here, but it seems easier to put all my thoughts in one place, so hopefully someone will be able to help.

Currently I have one PC in the livingroom doing triple duty as HTPC / Gaming PC / media server (i7, 16bg ram, 5tb storage in raid with backup ).

Hi have been looking at NAS for the past year or so and deciding whether to purchase or not, but to be honest i've been fairly underwhelmed by the choices at my price point of a couple of hundred pounds..
i will need something capable of streaming hd media to a few devices locally, but i may also end up giving access to my family in the UK so that could double...

I do however have an old PC sitting in my office with a dead power supply.
it's an old i5 3400k iirc with 8gb of ram, on an asus motherboard of some description (can't remember details).

So my idea is to turn this into a media server, does this sound feesable? will it take too much juice? anything i should be aware of?

assuming the computer would make a suitable media server we get to my next issue i don't think adding a second full size tower to my downstairs entertainment area is going to pass the old WAF. so i'm considering moving everything to a rack and having it under the stairs where i have a lot of extra space.

so next questions: can i fit a standard atx system into a rackmount chassis? being a media server, it won't have any pci cards as i will only use the onboard stuff, but i have read that 1u chassis would be too small due to the fan and heatsink, so 2u?
and i assume i would need the correct style psu (have seen plenty on ebay)

and of course i would be switching the htpc to a rackmount setup, so i guess 4u is the minimum for an atx with pci cards and a standard power supply?

aaand storage...

at the moment everything is stored on the htpc, divided over several different drives of different sizes etc.
If i build the media server i understand i can transfer this setup to the server and leave as is, but i have also seen on ebay some old drive arrays.

would using one of these even be feesable? and if so would it be worth it over just sticking everything into the one system?

and how would i get something like this running?

any suggestions?

thanks!!!
 
ok going again and answering my own questions here..

it seems like the second pc i have would be fine for nas / media server duties, it will just use more power, but i'm assuming that i can use something like wake on lan, to let the system spin down when not being accessed?
do the popular media server software options accommodate this?

and still considering if a seperate disk array would be useable..
 
Pretty much every Windows (and many other) OS for the last 25 years or so can avail "sharing" storage onto a LAN (be it containing "media" or anything else) - as long as the machine has a Network Adapter of course, but again, that's been almost everything in the last 20 years.

If you want "fancy" stuff such as real time media transcoding etc. you might need to be a bit more careful about compatibility (and things like CPU horsepower,) though from memory Plex Media Server (which seems to be popular) can run on Windows, Linux, etc. Personally I don't use Plex or anything similar as a "basic" network share is just fine for my client mix (a singe media streamer.)

If you want, WOL, it requires suitable hardware as well as OS, so check out the MOBO specs.

If you are contemplating spending money on hardware, you might care to consider something like one of HP's "microservers" loaded with your favourite OS. From a hardware perspective, it already has a 4 (IIRC) slot drive array (5 if you "hack" the ODD slot and give it over to another disc.) and has a fairly small form factor. If HP are running a "deal" they can be had for as little as 100GBP (minus discs and usually with a fairly small RAM amount, but that's fine for media sharing - it's not A RAM/CPU intensive task until you want to real time transcode.)

Whether discs will spin down whilst idle and up on demand is a function of the OS and hardware. Some of the free (as well as paid for) turnkey install-able NAS offerings offer such.
 
Pretty much every Windows (and many other) OS for the last 25 years or so can avail "sharing" storage onto a LAN (be it containing "media" or anything else) - as long as the machine has a Network Adapter of course, but again, that's been almost everything in the last 20 years.

If you want "fancy" stuff such as real time media transcoding etc. you might need to be a bit more careful about compatibility (and things like CPU horsepower,) though from memory Plex Media Server (which seems to be popular) can run on Windows, Linux, etc. Personally I don't use Plex or anything similar as a "basic" network share is just fine for my client mix (a singe media streamer.)

If you want, WOL, it requires suitable hardware as well as OS, so check out the MOBO specs.

If you are contemplating spending money on hardware, you might care to consider something like one of HP's "microservers" loaded with your favourite OS. From a hardware perspective, it already has a 4 (IIRC) slot drive array (5 if you "hack" the ODD slot and give it over to another disc.) and has a fairly small form factor. If HP are running a "deal" they can be had for as little as 100GBP (minus discs and usually with a fairly small RAM amount, but that's fine for media sharing - it's not A RAM/CPU intensive task until you want to real time transcode.)

Whether discs will spin down whilst idle and up on demand is a function of the OS and hardware. Some of the free (as well as paid for) turnkey install-able NAS offerings offer such.
Thanks for the help.
At this point i guess i'm fairly set on making use of this old PC i have.
Theres no point in purchasing hardware when i have it sitting here doing nothing. And it seems for the cost of a commercial nas i can get the rack mount system setup and some extra storage...
I will have to check up on the specs of the motherboard to see about power consumption and wake on lan i guess.
So i suppose i just need to figure out the case sizes. And decide on how to deal with the storage. Either in with the media server or as a seperate disk array...
Any ideas of the advantages and feesability of that?
 
X-case do some great 2u cases which accommodate full size atx desktop motherboards and psu etc. They are about £50 each, I have 3 in my server room (garage) and would highly recommend.
 
+1 for x case.

Though I went for a 4U case in the end :) More room and disk bays.

Watch the power consumption as it can add a reasonable amount to your electricity bill 100W left on all year will cost you just over £100 ...
 
X-case do some great 2u cases which accommodate full size atx desktop motherboards and psu etc. They are about £50 each, I have 3 in my server room (garage) and would highly recommend.

Thanks! i'll take a look..
+1 for x case.

Though I went for a 4U case in the end :) More room and disk bays.

Watch the power consumption as it can add a reasonable amount to your electricity bill 100W left on all year will cost you just over £100 ...
Yeah the power consumption is worrying. i'll be running with bare minimum hardware using only onboard graphics etc. also considering a headless linux setup..assuming i can figure that out. but by far the biggest issue will be getting the WOL tlo work. and from what ive seen it's not as simple as i would have hoped as most clients wont send a magic packet...
 
+1 for microserver too. I had one before I needed more space ;)
 

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