NAS or DAS with Windows 8.1, surface 2 & phone...?


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Hyper V would be another option sure.. Yes esxi vsphere, etc. I currently run 5.5 -- they kind of screwed the power user with features that can be controlled from the client vs having to have the paid for vserver to managed your host and vms.

Yes the N40L is on 24/7/365 - and yes my router, nas and linus vms are on same.. They autostart if the n40l ever reboots on power loss or something. These vms are core to my network and have to be on.

They are my gateway to the internet, my firewall between my lan and wlan and my linux box I just just pretty much every day I need to do anything I have more freedom at cmd line on a linux box. It also runs cups and serves up my printer to everything, etc. I just couldn't get by without a linux box, but just cmdline I have no reason for a linux desktop since I do all my browsing and such from a window box that is a physical machine.

But I also have lots of other vms that I might fire up if need be.. Win 8.1 box, 2k8r2 box, centos, linux desktop, mint, freebsd, etc.

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I am always removing/adding tweaking different vms, etc.

AS to where you can get more info into what exactly? Running a esxi host, n54l, microservers in general, what?

Just ask, PM me - more than happy to help anyone on the path to playing with tech ;)

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"ESXi is boring (limited) without vSphere Server."

Boring? Limited I can see but the term boring makes no sense at all. If you run 5.5 then yes vmware has placed some limitation to control of your vms via the client if you update them to hardware level 10. And you can not take advantage of some aspects of 5.5 without vserver.

But for 1 you don't have to run 5.5 if you don't want to - run 5.0 or 5.1.

The newer features of 5.5 really don't have much use in a home/hobby setup anyway. If you want you can run the vserver appliance in trial mode for 60 days at at time ;)

To be honest once you setup the vm there is little need to edit them, I use the client as just simple access to console of the vm, etc.

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Hello,

This 2nd link goes to another site where it is ?300+ lol

Sorry, my apoligies :) Could have sworn there was a buy button there.

Like you mentioned: Lowest I could find you is: http://www.serversdirect.co.uk/Hewlett_Packard_HP_ProLiant_MicroServer_Gen8_G1610T_1P_2GB-U_B120i_NHP_SATA_712317-421/version.asp?refsource=SDadwords&crtag=SD which I understand is out of budget :)

I said because it was new but last gen works just as well from what Ive read and is not EOL. Go with that.

But I also have lots of other vms that I might fire up if need be.. Win 8.1 box, 2k8r2 box, centos, linux desktop, mint, freebsd, etc.

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I am always removing/adding tweaking different vms, etc.

You are a beast lol....

BTW, this makes perfect sense when we had that thread about "RAID5 vs storage pools"; The microserver is configured like you said as your gateway, firewall and other functions. Obviously you have that mirrored and those countless VMs you have for testing I imagine you dont....

Im just wondering about your backups: Do you make images of your firewall (pfsense) to make restores quickly? How about the OS on the microserver?

Ive fallen in love with your setup and it makes sense to me to use storage pools with that (like you said back then, I have space here just waiting to be abused and used).

The only problem is that my drives are your regular everyday normal drives; Not made for NAS or RAID or anything...

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Im just wondering about your backups: Do you make images of your firewall (pfsense) to make restores quickly? How about the OS on the microserver?

The only problem is that my drives are your regular everyday normal drives; Not made for NAS or RAID or anything...

I backup my critical files - ie my video's and pictures. I don't consider really anything else on my computers critical. This is a home, what would I have on my systems that I could not replace other than my home video's and pictures?

Pfsense takes only a few minutes to install - my forwards/firewall rules are a handful, I see no need to backup anything there. Now before I do say an update to the pfsense version, I take a snapshot in VM just in case something doesn't go just right I can then roll back to the stable setup in a minute. But same goes for esxi. What am I backing up? Lets say my microserver caught fire, or I spilled a beer on it and took out the whole freaking thing.

That would kind of suck to be honest - but in the big picture I would have to fire up one of APs as routers again to get on the internet. I would then order a new microserver and some new HDDs. When it shows up, I would recreate my setup.

And then start to rebuild my audio/video library - yes there would be some rerips to do. But my "critical" files are safe because they are on my PC as well as my microserver - so I would just copy them back over. Lets say I was just spilling beer everywhere and took out my PC.. Well then I would use a laptop and order a new PC as well ;) When I started over I would have to either have my son bring over his copies of my critical videos and pictures that I give him every other month or so.. But that would be only if amazon glacier was offline as well. Which I find unlikely.

I store my "critical" video and pictures on amazon glacier -- its 0.01$ a GB per month.. I have about 56GB of "critical" stuff.. So your looking at about what $7 a year from my DR backup. That grows very slowly - even when I get to say 200GB of video and pictures your talking $24 a year - much cheaper than you will get with any of these backup services, etc.

As to drive types.. I have never used anything other than just normal drives, and never had any real issues. Sure if you want buy some RED WD drives if you want - but for atleast how I access my disks and storage - normal whats on sale and gets decent reviews works just fine too ;)

Here look up these model numbers if your interested - there is nothing special about them. They store and serve up my files just fine ;)

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