How to set up central shared server at home?

[Joeman]

I have a QNAP TS412 that does all that, trouble is with it is it just disappears off the network after time. It's Linux you see. Connectivity kinda essential for a NAS though....

Get one of those plugs with a built in timer to reset the power every night at 3am.. Thats what i do with my dodgy old router that seems to hang occasionally, it turns off a 3am, and back on at 3:02.

[Sysman]

I'm using Windows Home Server 2011, nice and easy to configure, running on one of these...
HP ProLiant Turion II N40L MicroServer - £100 CASHBACK | Ebuyer.com

£249. That's roughly what I paid for one with 4GB RAM but no disk at Christmas. WHS2011 cost about 40 quid but I already had it.

It's a nice piece of kit. Jury still out on the WHS2011 side, but it's certainly doing the streaming and backups (off to external USB disks) nicely. There is the catch that there's a 2TB limit on the size of backups. Thus far it does a nice job of backing up Windows clients too, and you can create a USB boot stick to restore those clients (tested - it's a doddle). Despite the product description you only have limited functionality with Mac clients though.

2GB is the minimum RAM for WHS2011, 4GB is fine, but I'm going to max mine out to 8GB.

Oh, one tip. Unlike Windows Server 2008, when you install WHS2011 it overwrites Disk 0; it creates a 60GB partition for C: and the rest of that disk for D:. You don't get the choice of aiming it at another disk.

According to the license, you aren't supposed to promote it to a domain controller (it won't let you - I tried ), enable any roles that the initial installation doesn't enable, and you shouldn't make it a member of a domain either. However a bit of searching soon shows you that folks are doing that sort of thing

[TheFaQQer]

I have a QNAP TS412 that does all that, trouble is with it is it just disappears off the network after time. It's Linux you see. Connectivity kinda essential for a NAS though....

If it's permanently connected to something, then it shouldn't power down. Since I added a mount point on my Linux desktop machine, the only time my QNAP shuts down is when the desktop machine isn't running.

If it's shut down and I try to ping it / connect to it via a network share on any of the other machines, it wakes up automatically and is accessible.

[TheFaQQer]

Can someone translate this in to English for me I push pens about so this means absolutely f all to me!

I use the older version of this with a 2TB drive.

I have other things as well.

[Sysman]

Anyway, for hardware I have ordered one of these hp microserver on eBay which is £150 after cashback so pretty tidy. Only 250GB but very easy to add drives.

How does this cashback thing work? Do you pay the full amount then get cash back or what?

I've only just seen the cashback idea appear in my country, and yes it was for some HP kit, but not something I have a need for at the moment.

[TheFaQQer]

How does this cashback thing work? Do you pay the full amount then get cash back or what?

Yes.

You fill out the form from the HP website once you've got a serial number, and they send you the money.

[administrator]

How does this cashback thing work? Do you pay the full amount then get cash back or what?

I've only just seen the cashback idea appear in my country, and yes it was for some HP kit, but not something I have a need for at the moment.

I got a couple of these little HP boxes before Xmas. You just send off proof of postage, the serial number and a copy of the invoice and they send you a cheque. They are really well made little boxes, only faff I had was I was too tight to buy DVD drives for them solely to put the OS on so hacked them with a couple of USB keys and these posts:
Booting from USB on HP ProLiant Microserver « Biker Patch
Installing Ubuntu 10.10 Server on the HP ProLiant Microserver using bootable USB « Biker Patch

Had not seen UNetbootin before so was a fun evening

[Joeman]

I got a couple of these little HP boxes before Xmas.

What sort of power consumption are they using?? given that in a home server environment, they are likely to lay unused whilst we're all at work, are these boxes draining the power grid for no reason??
With typical home pc's and their 300watt+ PSU's, im reluctant to leave one on 24/7 as a home server.

[Sysman]

I got a couple of these little HP boxes before Xmas. You just send off proof of postage, the serial number and a copy of the invoice and they send you a cheque. They are really well made little boxes, only faff I had was I was too tight to buy DVD drives for them solely to put the OS on so hacked them with a couple of USB keys and these posts:
Booting from USB on HP ProLiant Microserver « Biker Patch
Installing Ubuntu 10.10 Server on the HP ProLiant Microserver using bootable USB « Biker Patch

Had not seen UNetbootin before so was a fun evening

Yes I noticed from the destructions that the 4 screws designated for the DVD drive which are in the front door had been used. If I had been given the option I might have gone through the same fun that you did.

P.S. I've just looked up the exchange rate and realise I paid about 208 quid.

[Harmonic]

I've got a mini-ITX server that I built myself. It's got a Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB RAM, 750GB 7.2K boot disk and 2x 2TB data disks and Windows Home Server 2011. The whole thing runs off a 120W external PSU as the case is a 10"x10"x10" cube. There's an add-in for WHS that will shut down and restart according to either time or activity so it's pretty frugal when it comes to power.