So I'm flirting with getting/building a home server, need advice

[SilverZ06]

So I am getting tired of trying to find pictures/music/videos/ etc on any one of the 5 computers in my home so I am thinking of learning about home servers and putting one to use. Backing up everything is also a big plus for me. I know absolutely nothing about home servers so I am coming here to try and get some advice/directions from those of you that have home servers. Where do I even begin to find out the ins and outs of building and maintaining my own server?

[Skuzzy]

I built a Linux based file server.  Using Samba, you can setup Windows network drives/folders under Linux.  I also use that same server as a media server.  I run Mediatomb for that.  If you have a DLNA capable television or Xbox/PS3 then you can use them to play files off the server as well (pictures, video, audio...).

I use that same server as a firewall/router for my home network.  Properly configured it is much better than anything in a consumer grade router or anything on your personal computer.

Caveats?  You need to learn how to use the specific Linux distro you want to use.  I use Slackware.  For me it is very simple to use.  For others it could be a nightmare.

Nice thing about Linux is how little hardware it takes to run it and how stable it is.

Good luck on whatever path you chose.

[SilverZ06]

I want to learn linux and have tried to install ubuntu on my laptop but I am completely lost when it comes to doing anything on linux. I usually just get frustrated and reboot into windows  I guess I need to find a book on linux and read up. As far as the actual hardware goes, can I run multiple HDDs in RAID to make carbon copies of each other? I guess what I am asking is can i run 2 in raid and an addition in raid as well? so 4 total hdds but basically two HDDs with two carbon copy HDDs?

[gyrene81]

for your raid questions, are you planning to use a server class mobo with onboard sata raid hardware controllers or a home pc/gaming mobo? hardware raid is more robust than what is essentially software raid found on most home pc/gaming mobos. personally, a fairly economical and robust raid solution can be found with a drobo.

http://www.drobo.com/products/professionals/drobo/index.php

and i know it works with most versions of linux.

[Skuzzy]

gyrene is right.  Software RAID is worthless.  When you want to get serious about needing a real RAID solution, a hardware based RAID solution is the only way to go.

I do not bother running RAID on my server.  I just have it automatically back itself up every night as the data on my server changes in clumps and then stays static for a long time.

[Noir]

I do not bother running RAID on my server.  I just have it automatically back itself up every night as the data on my server changes in clumps and then stays static for a long time.

You're doing an incremental save on a different drive, or maybe just a copy?

[Skuzzy]

You're doing an incremental save on a different drive, or maybe just a copy?

No copy.  The server has 6TB of data on it.  99% of that data is all static.  I made a copy of that and unplugged the hard drive.  The rest is done incrementally.

[bbosen]

So I am getting tired of trying to find pictures/music/videos/ etc on any one of the 5 computers in my home so I am thinking of learning about home servers and putting one to use. Backing up everything is also a big plus for me. I know absolutely nothing about home servers so I am coming here to try and get some advice/directions from those of you that have home servers. Where do I even begin to find out the ins and outs of building and maintaining my own server?

I do it the EASY way. I went to Frys and bought a router with USB ports and filesharing capability. There are several vendors offering these at low cost. Usually they are running some flavor of LINUX, but they can be administered through a web interface that minimizes your need to understand the innards. You DON'T have to use the router functions at all.... I just plugged in the LAN side, configured it with my web browser, plugged in a set of USB hard disk drives, and they instantly became available to all of my Windows and Linux machines through the well-known "SAMBA" protocol. I use this system extensively, and have had good success. Right now, I have a total of 8.25 Terabytes shared.

I published a detailed article on how I did this awhile back. Here's a link:

http://askmisterwizard.com/EZINE/AdvancedNetworkingSection/NAS/TheEasyWay/NasTheEasyWayPage01Full.htm
 

[RTHolmes]

easiest way - buy a Netgear NAS. out of the box it does all the filesharing/streaming/backup stuff and theres plugins to do a load of other things like CCTV recording etc.

[gyrene81]

a bit pricey for something decent isn't it RTHolmes, especially if you want redundancy?

[RTHolmes]

the empty 4-bay units are about £100 iirc

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Meh, you should just use floppy disks like I do. 

[Bino]

...As far as the actual hardware goes, can I run multiple HDDs in RAID to make carbon copies of each other? I guess what I am asking is can i run 2 in raid and an addition in raid as well? so 4 total hdds but basically two HDDs with two carbon copy HDDs?

Skuzzy is right on the money about software RAID: it is worthless.  And the only thing a proper hardware-based mirrored RAID-1 setup protects you from is the physical failure of a hard disk drive.  (It does *usually* also give you a slight read-access performance increase, but that depends on how well the RAID firmware is written.)  You can protect yourself just as easily on JBOD disks by running a periodic backup to another disk drive.

The way to get both better overall disk performance as well as some measure of data redundancy is to have a hardware-based RAID-10 array of four (or six, or eight...) disk drives.  But that is almost certainly not cost effective for a desktop machine, for example:

1 x Adaptec 6805E controller ........... $250
4 x WD 500GB VelociRaptor drives ... $600

At those prices, it makes sense to look at other options, like maybe a large super-fast PCI-E SSD unit with a 7200-RPM SATA disk drive as the backup.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Skuzzy is right on the money about software RAID: it is worthless.  And the only thing a proper hardware-based mirrored RAID-1 setup protects you from is the physical failure of a hard disk drive.  (It does *usually* also give you a slight read-access performance increase, but that depends on how well the RAID firmware is written.)  You can protect yourself just as easily on JBOD disks by running a periodic backup to another disk drive.

The way to get both better overall disk performance as well as some measure of data redundancy is to have a hardware-based RAID-10 array of four (or six, or eight...) disk drives.  But that is almost certainly not cost effective for a desktop machine, for example:

1 x Adaptec 6805E controller ........... $250
4 x WD 500GB VelociRaptor drives ... $600

At those prices, it makes sense to look at other options, like maybe a large super-fast PCI-E SSD unit with a 7200-RPM SATA disk drive as the backup.

You can get a fairly large Revodrive for 800 bucks and that's a lot faster than regular drives in raid 0/10. Or a z-drive.

[Pand]

I used to run FreeBSD, then Solaris x86 (utilizing disksuite) for years... then migrated to FreeNAS for a couple years, and then last year, finally for simplicity and necessity of windows only apps, I laid down a version of Windows 7 Pro (software mirroring capable).  I've used software mirroring for years with great success.  It may not be the most efficient, but when I'm maxxing out read/writes off consumer grade drives at 96MB/sec, I'm not seeing an impact.

- I have a small drive I run my OS off of
- I have a pair of 2TB drives running Raid1 for images/apps/financial/important stuff
- I have a pair of 1TB drives running Raid0 for media storing/sharing to my HTPC for items I don't care about losing.

About 550GB of the data on RAID1 is backed up to the cloud via crashplan for $3/month.

This solution has worked like a champ for me.