hey guys recently i have been working on re-doing my home network setup firstly what i am currently running
Server = Old Intel Quad-Core Q8400 / 4gb DDR3 1333mhz Ram / 12TB Data / Windows Home Server 2011
Desktop = Intel i5 2500k / Radeon HD6850 / 8gb G.Skill Ripjaws X 1600mhz ram / Samsung 840 128gb SSD / Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black / Windows 8 Pro
HTPC’s = 2 x Openelec Machines / 1x Windows 8 Pro Machine
What I plan to do because i have run out of room is rebuild the server pc with lower power parts and adapt External USB 3.0 Drives and Docking Stations to Expand Data capacity
so my new server setup should be
CPU = Intel Celeron G1610 2.6ghz or Pentium G2020 2.9ghz (both 55w Cpu’s but apparently idle lower than that)
MOBO = Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H (it has 6 External USB 3.0 Ports plus another 2 Internal and 8 Sata Ports and also 3 x PCI and 3 x PCI-e Slots)
Ram = 4gb DDR3 (whatever is good and cheap at the time i buy the rest)
External Storage = Hotway HFD1-SU3S2
docking stations (unsure how many will need yet) was going to go with enclosures but they are almost $50 more each and these should be fine passively cooled by fresh air they won’t be running all the time anyways mostly idling except when needed to watch stuff or do backups
So the hardware part is pretty much sorted now i am coming to the OS part and the main reason for this thread
I am very familiar with windows and windows server 2012 looks good however as i haven’t until recently dealt much with linux i though of setting up a linux server however after spending just over a week trying different things i can now see why windows is the dominant OS something that would take 3 mouse clicks in windows takes like 5 - 10 minutes of command line or app installation on linux i have spent way to many hours googling for answers to such simply things like hard drive spindown or power management settings or even setting up shares or checking IP addresses
so i would love to hear from people on here what they are using at home and what OS they are running on their servers or any network pc’s for that matter
also their experiences with linux as i really want to like it and some aspects i do but i think i just don’t have the patience to deal with linux it might have been different if i started out on linux but now for the most part how simple windows is i keep getting drawn back to it
BTW also let’s not forget if i ran a linux server i could not run NZBDrone on it (at least until the new version is released) i would have to use the day-old bread that is sickbeard
I also purchased one of these http://dx.com/p/4-port-usb-3-0-high-speed-pci-e-card-blue-110044 , it is a 4 port usb 3.0 card so with this in gives me 8 usb 3.0 ports over all. Connected to this are 3 x Welland Tera Hard Drive enclosures USB3.0. These hold 2 x 3tb hd’s each. I have each case split in 2. One drive is on going series and the other drive is finished series. The other enclosure which holds the other 2 drives are mirrors and are backed up twice a day. So in all 12tb of storage for tv and I have another 6 tb for movies one 3tb for the movies and the other as a backup.
For my backup i use sync back pro which is fantastic and it is scheduled to backup any changes twice a day.
This is all hooked up to my Panasonic flag ship model plasma 55 inch tv.
I run windows 7 64 bit pro as the os and find it great
I use XBMC latest stable as my media center and have just finally got it set up the way I wanted with the hybrid skin. I have also just used plug ins which mute my phone etc when I start playing anything I find it all great.
This in turn is all controlled with my Ipad.
Personally for me windows os better because at my age now its all just point and click. I come from when my first computer was a sinclair zx81 and I even bought the 16K memory pack to go with it hahahaha and although I never got into programming can find my way around a system most of the time.
Although linux has come a long way I still feel more comfortable with windows and its ease of use and integration with whats available.
thanks for the reply mspec i did not know you were a kiwi (i’m an aussie so you know the perils of getting cheap hardware down here and newegg and amazon practically teasing us with good prices but no delivery south of the equator)
i like that card you bought (did you buy it off that DX store they look alright and seem to ship to australia and NZ)
how is the i5 going in a server i would have thought a little more power than needed unless you use it as a workstation as well
i also keep backups but i keep the offline so i plug the drive in run a mirror backup then disconnect and put away in their anti-static bags is use a program called FreeFileSync it performs a drive comparison before it copies anything to detect what is missing then it copies new or updated files over you can create batch files with it then add them to task scheduler and it works great it also outputs a log file at the end of each back so you can see what was transferred
i also as i mentioned above use xbmc i have two machines running openelec as all i do on them is what stuff one is in the lounge room connected to my Samsung 60 inch LED 3D TV
the other in one of the bedrooms for the less techy minded people so they can just turn on and watch and then i have a windows machine in my room so i can watch with xbmc but also surf the web from there as well
i did try out the ipad, iphone and android apps but i found just using a simple Microsoft MCE Remote works best for me batteries last longer anyways
finally i am no stranger to computers i have been using them for about 15 years now and i build and repair them but as most people who have come to me for repairs or builds have all involved windows so had no need to look at linux i only started to look now out of curiosity and i am always looking at new things to learn before this is was building computers now i have got that pretty much sorted with over 10 pc builds under my belt i was looking for the next challenge the thing with linux is you come across a problem read through pages and pages of stuff to work the problem out you do that fix the issue then you want to do something else simple and find you have to do the same steps again for this whereas with windows most of the tasks are a couple mouse clicks away instead of
Yup I have bought heaps off of dx.com and its all free postage and although it takes a little while to arrive it does get there in the end and I would recommend them as they are cheap and very reliable.
The hard drive enclosures I use auto spin down after 10 mins of no use so drastically reduces their wear.
The i5 is great as I also have couch potato and head phones running and I also forgot to mention I also run Maraschino which is a fantastic little program that runs under peal for connecting to xbmc and you can access it from anywhere.
Hi all,
I thought I’d join this discussion. I’m an old user of NzbDrone, but new to the forums. I’m American so almost all of this was purchased from NewEgg or Ebay:
Server: Norco RPC-4224 / Xeon Quad-Core E3-1230 / TYAN S5510GM3NR / 9gb Kingston DDR3 ECC RAM / IBM M1015 SAS Controller with RES2SV240 Expander / ESXi 5.0 / APC XS-1200
In 2010, I bought my first unRAID license explicitly for media-serving my movies to an old AMD HTPC. The unRAID was on a Pentium IV with a bunch of random disks. My server has grown to the beautiful VM server above.
I know very little about Linux as I work with Windows all day for years. But my unRAID is so stable–it just works and I hardly think about it…I just focus on the content.
I don’t have cableTV anymore thanks to NzbDrone! And I don’t use Headphones or Couch Potato, I search for that stuff about once a week manually anyway. Maraschino sounds interesting! I’ll have to look it up.
The surprising thing lately has been the $35 Raspberry Pi + simple MS remote. Installed RaspBMC on an SD card and hooked it up to the network. Works as well as my $250 media boxes! I can even use an XBMC app on my Xoom tablet to look up my movies and play on my living room TV.
P.S. I just picked up NewEgg’s Rosewill Ultra-Slim HDMI RedMere Cables that were free-after-rebate. They are so slim and sexy! So light-weight, I don’t worry about the HDMI ports on all my devices becoming loose.
hi tara i remember you from NzbMatrix you may not remember me but we have both commented on each others posts on their forums
i remember the name but mostly the Pirates of the Carribean Avatar
also first american nzbdrone user i have seen mostly canadian , Kiwi or Aussie like myself on here so far
in other word mostly Commonwealth Realm Countries
Yay! I’m the 1st American! Good to see another NZBMatrixer is still alive.
I’ve been super happy with the way NZBdrone is working so I haven’t had a need to hit the forums here earlier.
MSpec does Maraschino work with NzbDrone? Have you tried HTPC Manager? Do these programs work like a different skin on XBMC. I presume you install them on the actual HTPC and then you can access the HTPC remotely. What happens to the actual XBMC skin, is it replaced? I use Constellation on my IPad to control XBMC remotely. Am I on the correct track?
Hey Menage , Maraschino is a stand alone program written in python it does not replace the skin on xbmc at all and is just an interface with which you can control it remotely, Yes I have it installed directly on my HTPC (I run windows 7). It used to intergrate with sickbeard in such it used to show what programes you had coming up but currently does not intergrate with drone, however I believe there is going to be an api in vnext which is the upcoming next version of drone so might look at that once its all completed. You can also integrate it with Sab but I haven’t bothered. Here are a couple of screen shots of Maraschino working on my system , first one is just it sitting there and second is when you are playing something the fan art is displayed in the background.
I used to have Constellation on my ipad as well as commander which I thought was fantastic but I have now moved over to android and use Yatse which is amazing and even has voice control.
Thanks mspec, it looks great. I will load it onto my HTPC. What a shame about drone, I am really enjoying using it at present, it has a much more intuitive feel than Sickbeard. Perhaps the pending api will fix this.
Cheers and thanks for your reply
Well nobody has replied to this post since 2013 and I’m wanting to open it up again. I see everyone has mentioned windows server, but has anyone done anything with MAC. I would be interested in knowing what you use. I have three external drives, 2 macs, 2 ipads, i mini ipad, big honken TV and sweet stereo system, 1 iphone and 2 samsungs and used plex and dabbed with xbmc but now I’m wanting to get it all setup properly and most importantly being able to access my external drives from outside the network, meaning away from home and also if possible watch from ipad in home and away from home. Is this ALL possible? I have JUST gotten Sonarr to work and am stoked. Even if it took me hours to figure out its because I had the wrong api code, and I changed the directory name LOL and in the end it was easier to setup then sickbard. (I had just formated my drive and lost it all)
