Sammyinnit Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 Hey all;I've really been out of the loop on the technology front, truth be told I got bored of it. I used to keep up to speed with what was going on, I'd be on the forums blah blah, but I got to a point where I was tired of reading the same old rubbish from people with 'opinions'. Anyway, this has caused me to fall behind on what's the best option.I've currently got 3TB spread across 2 internal motor driven hard drives and 2 external USB motor driven hard drives, one of which is USB 3, but my mobo isn't compatible or something or another so there's no real benefit.I've thought about going down the file server route, and something with hot swappable drives but thinking about it, it's really more of a cost thing, I don't want to spend a fortune on new gear.What's the best way I could go to increase my overall capacity and maybe have some kind of redundancy plan, should a drive fail? Aim at this point would be 5TB Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason S. Global Moderator Posted March 28, 2014 Global Moderator Share Posted March 28, 2014 i would really suggest you do it right and pony up some money for a proper product. cutting corners in the storage arena will only lead to headache. at this point, i'd say get (2) 4TB drives and do a RAID1 in a Synology 2-bay NAS. if you need more space, then get a 4-bay NAS. xendrome, T3X4S and goretsky 3 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biohead Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 HP Microserver N54L - I believe cash back is still on in the UK so you can set it up as a 4-bay NAS for around ?100. You can put a free OS on (such as FreeNAS) or go for a more fully featured one such as WS 2012R2 Essentials. Put 2 x 3TB drives and that gives you 6TB storage, with two free bays for future expansion or redundancy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 28, 2014 Author Share Posted March 28, 2014 i would really suggest you do it right and pony up some money for a proper product. cutting corners in the storage arena will only lead to headache. at this point, i'd say get (2) 4TB drives and do a RAID1 in a Synology 2-bay NAS. if you need more space, then get a 4-bay NAS. Doesn't look a bad way to go. Do these work the same way as you'd map a network drive to your windows OS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 Easiest would be to buy a PCI-Express USB3 adapter - then some external drives with USB3 That would be easiest but not smartest or fastest. OR1 NAS with some 4TB drives in RAID 5, or 10Or cloud storage if you have a fast connection.I had unlimited storage through JustCloud - was storing 400GB on there but cancelled my account because restoring was just dumping to an arbitrary folder, not truly restoring per se.Never buy anything that says HP on it... unless its a printer... never. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 28, 2014 Author Share Posted March 28, 2014 Easiest would be to buy a PCI-Express USB3 adapter - then some external drives with USB3 That would be easiest but not smartest or fastest. OR 1 NAS with some 4TB drives in RAID 5, or 10 Or cloud storage if you have a fast connection. I had unlimited storage through JustCloud - was storing 400GB on there but cancelled my account because restoring was just dumping to an arbitrary folder, not truly restoring per se. Never buy anything that says HP on it... unless its a printer... never. I'm not a fan of the idea of storing data on external hardware/someone elses hardware/sensitive data. I've got gigabit ethernet through the house which is much more reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Warwagon MVC Posted March 28, 2014 MVC Share Posted March 28, 2014 Never buy anything that says HP on it... unless its a printer... never. Hmm... I've heard amazing things about the HP microserver. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biohead Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 Same here. They're pretty popular over here in the UK because of how cheap they are. They usually sell for around ?200, and you get ?100 cash back. I had an N40L before I upgraded to the N54L - the only reason I upgraded was because it was a net cost of around ?15 to do so! The fact you put put whatever OS you want on it makes it all the more better. From Windows, to FreeNAS, to ESXi you can get it to do just about anything - and there are a lot of free options for storage too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 28, 2014 Author Share Posted March 28, 2014 Same here. They're pretty popular over here in the UK because of how cheap they are. They usually sell for around ?200, and you get ?100 cash back. I had an N40L before I upgraded to the N54L - the only reason I upgraded was because it was a net cost of around ?15 to do so! The fact you put put whatever OS you want on it makes it all the more better. From Windows, to FreeNAS, to ESXi you can get it to do just about anything - and there are a lot of free options for storage too. Would one of these HP HS's allow me to have 4 drives in raid10 config? - I've never really taken much up about RAID controllers, I still think in IDE. LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+LogicalApex MVC Posted March 28, 2014 MVC Share Posted March 28, 2014 Hmm... I've heard amazing things about the HP microserver. A lot of people aren't happy with their policy to only issue firmware updates to people who have an active warranty... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted March 28, 2014 Veteran Share Posted March 28, 2014 Raid 1 it will not Raid 10 i love my N54L Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 28, 2014 Author Share Posted March 28, 2014 Raid 1 it will not Raid 10 i love my N54L If I added a raid controller capable of raid 10? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Biohead Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 Yes, if you add your own RAID controller you will get whatever that supports. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 28, 2014 Author Share Posted March 28, 2014 Just out of curiosity, does anyone use their home server for DNS and DHCP services? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adster01 Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 Just out of curiosity, does anyone use their home server for DNS and DHCP services? Yep. Just installed pfSense on my Microserver G8 as a VM in ESXi. Works great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted March 28, 2014 Veteran Share Posted March 28, 2014 I use mine for DNS but not DHCP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rr_dRock Posted March 28, 2014 Share Posted March 28, 2014 Just out of curiosity, does anyone use their home server for DNS and DHCP services? yeeep. WS2012 DHCP/DNS. Why do you ask? (curiosity aside) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sammyinnit Posted March 29, 2014 Author Share Posted March 29, 2014 yeeep. WS2012 DHCP/DNS. Why do you ask? (curiosity aside) I've been looking at various videos on the net of sever setups and alot opt for the use of server side DNS and DHCP over router based, as they are alot more advanced and customisable, but I wondered if within the home environment if it was really that much of a benefit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+LogicalApex MVC Posted March 29, 2014 MVC Share Posted March 29, 2014 I've been looking at various videos on the net of sever setups and alot opt for the use of server side DNS and DHCP over router based, as they are alot more advanced and customisable, but I wondered if within the home environment if it was really that much of a benefit. Depends on your needs. I run AD at home so DNS becomes a requirement. But having access to a full DNS server allows me to have a separate record for servers behind my firewall without having to do NAT loop back and other hacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T3X4S Posted March 30, 2014 Share Posted March 30, 2014 Depends on your needs. I run AD at home so DNS becomes a requirement. But having access to a full DNS server allows me to have a separate record for servers behind my firewall without having to do NAT loop back and other hacks. AD @ home ? Why ? just to mess with it or what ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rr_dRock Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 I've been looking at various videos on the net of sever setups and alot opt for the use of server side DNS and DHCP over router based, as they are alot more advanced and customisable, but I wondered if within the home environment if it was really that much of a benefit. I run a Zenworks Configuration Management 11sp3 environment at home, with PXE imaging, so trying to set up DNSMasq on DD-WRT turned out to be a nightmare, as such I've elected to handle my own addressing/host records. I can micromanage my little heart out. It does help considerably when you're working with multiple subnets as well, as routing with the tools in WS2012 is considerably easier than in DDWRT. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted April 2, 2014 Veteran Share Posted April 2, 2014 I use DNS just purely for easiness of not remembering IP addresses Log in via ssh to do updates on the kids laptops etc so its easier to just do ssh root@alex or ssh root@lucy or ssh root@server :) rr_dRock 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPreston Posted April 2, 2014 Share Posted April 2, 2014 I've thought about going down the file server route, and something with hot swappable drives but thinking about it, it's really more of a cost thing, I don't want to spend a fortune on new gear. HP P400's Cost as little as 20$ online and have 512MB of battery backed cache... And can do RAID 6 with up to 8 HDDs SAS > SATA cables are similarly inexpensive You'd pay thousands for a solution like this from synoligy or qnap... No brainer; If you need more than 8 drives you can team a HP P800 with one or more MSA60 sas expanders and get 12-64 bays. They go for 100$ online but are noisy... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts