Home Servers, Network Storage and the Case House
by Loyd Case on December 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
The X Factor
All we really need around the house is reliable network access, the ReadyNAS would probably run forever – or at least, until it died. But I do like to play with new toys, and I’d been thinking about bringing up a Windows Home Server system for quite a few months.
Of course, you can just buy an off-the-shelf WHS system built by HP or a number of other companies, but that would be too easy. All the PCs in our house were built from the ground up, so I felt compelled to actually build a Windows Home Server system from scratch. Of course, I could have simply taken some of the old PC hardware around here and built up a server from spare parts. That had some attraction, since it would have been fairly inexpensive. It would also have been, in my mind, a somewhat inelegant solution. The smallest power supply I have here is 430W, and even micro ATX cases are bulkier than the ReadyNAS 600.
On the other hand, I’ve had this motherboard for a few months now.
This mini-ITX board is made by Intel, ostensibly for small office or media centric PCs. I never really found a use for it, as most of my applications typically require more graphics horsepower. The Intel DG41MJ board uses the Intel G41 chipset and accepts LGA 775 CPUs (up to 65W TDP.)
Then, one day, I was at my favorite local white box store (Central Computer, in San Jose, CA), and stumbled across this case.
At first, I thought it was just another of many small form factor, slimline cases, ostensibly designed as small Media Center PC cases. But it seemed slightly more bulky than the typical case of that type. The feature list also mentioned “two hot swappable SATA drive bays.” So I slid the front panel open and found that there were, indeed, a pair of hot swappable drive bays.
I checked out the specs and discovered that the Chenbro ES32067 is actually a mini-ITX server case. At roughly $120, it ships with a 150W PSU – smaller than the 220W PSU in the ReadyNAS 600. So I bought one.
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warriorfan23 - Friday, December 4, 2009 - link
I want to set up a WHS rig myself, but 1 quick question. Can I stream media to mac osx machines from WHS?dagamer34 - Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - link
Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 shipped November 24th. Go grab it now!dagamer34 - Wednesday, December 2, 2009 - link
Also, I still find that the added utilities included in HP's latest MediaSmart Servers far outweigh any gains made from building your own server.Things like:
1) Time Machine support
2) Superior media streaming support via TwonkyMedia
3) Built-in video encoder
4) iPhone streaming app
5) Mac client
6) Nicer case compared to home-built server
7) Probably better thermal policies
These things are worth spending the extra $100 or so in the long run, at least until Windows Home Server 2 fixes most of these issues.
Spivonious - Thursday, December 3, 2009 - link
My dad has the HP server. HP case only fits one harddrive, the fans are loud, and the whole thing runs a little hot. iTunes streaming doesn't work with PowerPack 3.Plus, building it yourself is more fun. :)
Exelius - Thursday, December 3, 2009 - link
HM MediaSmart EX495:4 Hot-swap SATA bays, comes with 2 1.5TB drives. Does TimeMachine, iTunes streaming, etc.
$699 everywhere. And the case looks nicer. And has a warranty. I can understand building some things yourself, but a server that's going to sit in your basement and you can get it cheaper from a vendor? No way.
heinzr - Thursday, December 3, 2009 - link
The HP Mediasmart EX490 comes with a 1 TB disk, and sells for $499 at Newegg, and looks like the better buy. (I doubt that the EX495 comes with 2 disks.)I have the EX485, into which I put two additional disks, for about 9 months, and I am very happy with it.
heinzr - Thursday, December 3, 2009 - link
The HP Mediasmart EX490 comes with a 1 TB disk, and sells for $499 at Newegg, and looks like the better buy. (I doubt that the EX495 comes with 2 disks.)I have the EX475, into which I put two additional disks for about 9 months, and I am very happy with it.