small home servers
 

I've been looking at some options for a small home server. I'd like a 24/7 system for these functions:

VOIP (MagicJack, Skype, etc)
Media - visual
Media - audio
RAID storage (external twin hard drive appliance)
FTP (accessible by net)
VNC (still learning, what is this?)

The system would have these qualities:

Quiet
Small
Low energy consumption
Robust
Durable
Future-proof (ready for new undefined tasks)

I've been looking at thin clients (it's your fault PT) and small form factor PC's which include:

thin clients:
HP Neoware e90
HP KF351 AJ
HP Neoware e140
HP KF424 AT

PC's (inc barebones):
MSI Wind PC
Shuttle K45 Box
Asus Eee Box

For the moment, the MSI Wind is my favorite. Add a gig of RAM and a solid state internal hard drive and it should meet these needs simply.

I'm starting this thread asking feedback on my choice and hopefully provoking a larger discussion.

THX, have fun!

You should to head over to AVS's HTPC forum and SPCR for all your quiet media servin' needs. I'm constantly amazed by how far us guys in the former have come in just a few years.

I'd avoid SFF PCs because very small and quiet are very hard to get in one package. Check SPCR to see what I mean. Their expandability also is almost nil - don't underestimate how big video files are. Even Shuttle's larger SFF PCs are limited. You also will need this space for futureproofing. Want to add DVR functionality? You'll need more drive capacity and an expansion slot for a DVR card. That sort of thing. Go for at least a midtower case if one box has to do it all. Antec makes good looking, high-quality ones if you can't hide the server. If you can hide it, say in a laundry room or in a basement, then I'd consider a big, cheap, old, noiser server with a silenced SFF HTPC serving as its client. The former isn't very expensive to build at all, as serving files is a very easy job even for an old PC. The latter will then not need much in the way of expandability. Of course, now you have to consider how to build your network. I opted for 802.11a wireless to my router so as to avoid interference in the 2.4GHz band. Wired networks are better, of course.

Avoid RAID if possible. RAID is for uptime, not backup. Even RAID 1 is not to be trusted. Slow degradation of a mirrored data drive means a perfect copy of corrupted data. Periodic backup is the way to go. Also, drives today are big enough that the convenience of RAID 5 (multiple drives appearing as one) is no longer relevant. Get a big drive for data and periodically back up to a second drive in a rack or its own enclosure.

For reference, my HTPC uses an Antec Sonata case with 4 hard drives, a removable drive rack for backup, and a DVD drive. Plus a network card, a DVR card, and a sound card. 120mm intake and exhaust fans, large Zalman heatsink/fan on the CPU, passively-cooled video card, that sort of thing. Very quiet and only mid-tower sized.

Wow....breakfast is served!

I'm a bit confused on what you are looking for. Is it a media center? A VoIP server? A NAS box? There are different considerations depending on what you want. Also, finding a prebuilt Linux distribution to handle everything might be a bit of a challenge.

I'm thinking an XP PC to handle these remote functions. It would be connected to voice, coax and broadband service entrances, and an 8-port switch connected to printers and two other computers. One personal, one CAD. Not too technical on the media, just Pandora, digital turntable and DVD's for now.

Hmmmm. The only aspect that is a challenge is visual media, though it depends on exactly what you want to do.

Needless to say, a thin client is ideal for this. VOIP, FTP and VNC are easy (VNC is a form of remote desktop that lets you operate the remote computer from another machine -- that way you don't need to keep a monitor, mouse and keyboard connected to it).

I've written an article about RAID on a thin client here: http://thinclientforum.com/nas.htm

I'm currently running the following on an HP t5730:

FTP server
VNC server
Two 1-gigabyte RAID 1 installations (total 4 gigabyte) as NAS (network attached storage)
MagicJack VOIP
Blackberry Redirector
Lightscribe DVD for burning, transferring video, etc. with the following software:
-Nero Burning ROM
-AnyDVD
-DVD Shrink
HP Scanner with Adobe Pro Version 7

and probably a couple of other things I've forgotten I've installed.

I chose a t5730 for a couple of reasons:

- It supports PCIe, which permitted a hardware-based RAID solution.
- It has a 1000baseT NIC, which makes it easier to ship data around my LAN

I don't use it for media, but it does serve video to another thin client that plays the video on my home theater at 1080p. Note that the t5730 has an HDMI output and, probably, I could have used it for video media as well. In fact, now that I think about it, I may try it for this purpose (I'm using a t5720 for video support now).

Note, too, that I replaced the 1 gigabyte SSD on which XP Pro SP2 embedded (a subset of XP Pro) is installed with an 8 gigabyte SSD so that I could install a full copy of XP Pro SP3.

I think my system meets all of these requirements. Note in the article the drives that I used. They've been quite reliable (up for 6 months or so), they're dead quiet and don't generate much heat at all, particularly when compared to the Seagate external eSATA drives.

Be warned -- fooling around with thin clients becomes addicting. I have seven of these beasts.

I'm not familiar with the HP KF series. The HP Neoware clients are, I think, neither powerful enough or readily upgradeable with PCI/PCIe cards, SSDs, etc.

I don't know the Shuttle. The MSI and Asus machines certainly have the power to do this (as would an Acer Aspire One), but they all have fans and aren't particularly quiet. I think you'll also have trouble supporting eSATA, which offers approximately 10 times the transfer speed of USB2. You'll also have to rely on a software RAID setup (XP supports this within the OS), which puts an additional load on the CPU.

I've built several servers around the Shuttle here. Works perfectly, low power, low noise and runs Vista media center perfectly.

If you shop around, you can build one with a decent dual core CPU, 2GB and some storage for under $225.

I have a home PC that I use for downloading media (divx, mp3, etc) and browsing any websites that I wouldn't want to view on my work PC. I just use Windows remote desktop to connect back to my home PC. The IP address on my cable modem seems to never change. If it were to change, I connect to my slingbox and run a netstat to see what comcast IP address I am connecting to from my laptop. I have a netgear router so I just set up port forwarding for remote desktop to the dedicated IP of my home PC. I also use this PC to stream divx to my xbox so I can watch divx files at home on my TV without using my laptop.

The PC has Windows XP installed on it to support the streaming media to my xbox. I installed VMware and linux running in a VM. I'm still working on how to set up the port forwarding so that I can launch an SSH session or VNC from a remote machine and go straight to my virtual linux server.

I ordered a bare bones machine from NewEgg and put it together myself rather than a PC from someone like Dell or HP.

What's an SFF PC?

Small

Form

Factor

Geeky way of saying "small PC"

Hey, I resemble that remark!

Let your geek flag fly!

You guys are having too much fun!

I've digressed to wanting a Shuttle with a Wolfdale processor and P35 chipset. Not sure why. :rolleyes:

However I did find one barebone of note....the Shuttle D10. It's SFF and has a 7" touch screen.

I've seen a lot of posts from people that say the Shuttle boxes aren't as quiet as they'd hoped.

Not sure why you're looking at a thin client + external raid box. You'd probably get the best power savings by having them in the same box.

You should consider something like the HP EX485 Windows Home Server box. They're just starting to trickle into the retail channel now.

Thanks OTTM....the HP looks OK, but Windows Home Server OS looks great. Now if it could support VOIP, and stream media.....

http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2008/12...-ex487-part-4/

You can stream audio/video to a remote PC or Windows Mobile device. If you're just looking to set up streaming on your local network (inside the house), it can easily do that too.

As far as running some VOIP software, you probably won't find a lot of providers advertising support for this. It's running a Windows Server OS, and most of the VOIP stuff is advertised for normal Windows OS's (clients). You can easily fake the app into thinking it's running on XP/Vista just by right clicking on it.

Check out the forums there or here. I'm sure there are a bunch of folks already running some VOIP clients on one of the earlier revs of this box.