Home Media Server Build

peneau

Hi Everybody, looking for thoughts/comments/suggestions on this project I'm going to have a go at.

Want to build a home media server. Already have BitFenix Prodigy M case, I'm going to use. Any suggestions on suitable Mobo for the purpose (and other components if I'm not being too cheeky) that fits this case greatly appreciated. Plan on using Ubuntu as the O.S.

Many thanks for any comments.

Wossack

just for storage, or will you be putting tuner cards in there also? how many disks do you envision?

peneau

Wossack wrote: »

just for storage, or will you be putting tuner cards in there also? how many disks do you envision?

Thanks for replying Wossack. Was going to put three disks in it, 1 ssd for the O.S. and 2 x 1tb for storage and was going to put a 2 in one hauppauge dvb-S/T tuner card

Wossack

Are you planning on raiding them together or anything?

Is the Hauppauge a 1x pcie card?
Gonna be in the living room (from a noise point of view)?

tbh a synology could be worth a look if just a 2 data disk is needed

/edit duh, synology wont cater for the tuner card

Serephucus

Do you plan on expansion in the near/medium term? 'Cause my home server started with three drives, and it now has six, with another two on the way. :P

Also, what are you going to be doing with it? TV watching/recording I take it at least. Any game or web servers, media conversion, downloads, backups, etc.? It'll help determine what OS to use, as well as hardware requirements.

peneau

Serephucus wrote: »

Do you plan on expansion in the near/medium term? 'Cause my home server started with three drives, and it now has six, with another two on the way. :P

Also, what are you going to be doing with it? TV watching/recording I take it at least. Any game or web servers, media conversion, downloads, backups, etc.? It'll help determine what OS to use, as well as hardware requirements.

Thanks guys for the replies.

Yes I'd like to be able to watch and record TV programmes with it and stream these programes around the house, also backing up my desktop computers. Don't plan any expansion anytime soon however the option to add additional drives in the future would be a requirement I reckon. Not planning to run game or web servers although I think media conversion and downloads would be good to have too.

Not planning on raiding and the Hauppauge card is a single card with built in satellite and terrestrial tuners, going to place the machine in the attic, even though I'd still like it to be reasonably quiet her indoors has very sensitive hearing don't you know !

Thanks for your help.

Serephucus

If you're not planning on RAID, how are you going to keep stuff safe? You'd want at least some fault tolerance somewhere.

Have a look at Plex, and see what you think of it. The main reason I like is it that the server can transcode files on the fly before streaming to devices (so you don't get some crazy 10GB 1080p file on your phone, for example).

Oh, and a budget of some sort would be helpful too.

peneau

Serephucus wrote: »

If you're not planning on RAID, how are you going to keep stuff safe? You'd want at least some fault tolerance somewhere.

Have a look at Plex, and see what you think of it. The main reason I like is it that the server can transcode files on the fly before streaming to devices (so you don't get some crazy 10GB 1080p file on your phone, for example).

Oh, and a budget of some sort would be helpful too.

Like the look of Plex downloaded and installed it on my desktop last night, works well, could put that on the new build for the media end of things as I wouldn't fancy leaving the desktop on full time, prefer to build a separate machine for that. Okay raid what setup would you suggest ? Budget can go to a grand if needs be but looking to do as economically as possible.

Thanks for replying.

Wossack

Raid is good and all, but I thought it very restrictive with regards future expansion, so I'm using a software raid-ish os called unraid. There's others like flexraid, snapraid, freenas etc which might be worth a look either

Should be fine budget wise (probably quite excessive even :P)

I recently upgraded my unraid box from a MSI ka780gm, athlon 5050e & 4gb ddr2 to an asrock c224, g3220, 4gb ddr3 ecc ram for not much monies. If its gonna be in the attic I'd reccomend a main board with ipmi, so you don't need to lug a monitor up there if it acts up

Serephucus

Heh, I was actually going to recommend FlexRAID. It's similar to unRAID, but it runs on top of Windows. It has a very nice snapshot functionality, where the parity drive is calculated on a schedule, rather than in real time. It also means you can expand to as many data or parity drives as you like.

I'm busy at the moment, but if one of the lads hasn't specced something by then, I'll have something up tomorrow for you.

peneau

Wossack wrote: »

Raid is good and all, but I thought it very restrictive with regards future expansion, so I'm using a software raid-ish os called unraid. There's others like flexraid, snapraid, freenas etc which might be worth a look either

Should be fine budget wise (probably quite excessive even :P)

I recently upgraded my unraid box from a MSI ka780gm, athlon 5050e & 4gb ddr2 to an asrock c224, g3220, 4gb ddr3 ecc ram for not much monies. If its gonna be in the attic I'd reccomend a main board with ipmi, so you don't need to lug a monitor up there if it acts up

Thanks Wossack, attic's converted there is a monitor up there already, like the idea of ipmi on the board though, goods news on budget estimate

peneau

Serephucus wrote: »

Heh, I was actually going to recommend FlexRAID. It's similar to unRAID, but it runs on top of Windows. It has a very nice snapshot functionality, where the parity drive is calculated on a schedule, rather than in real time. It also means you can expand to as many data or parity drives as you like.

I'm busy at the moment, but if one of the lads hasn't specced something by then, I'll have something up tomorrow for you.

You're a top man Ser thank you for taking the time to do that for me, much appreciated