Do you have a home media server?

Does anyone have a server at home to host their files? If so what OS, etc do you use?

I have a few 2008 r2 servers hosting AD and files but am going to cancel my technet and thus stop my evaluation of them but don't exactly know the best way to have a backup target, file share, etc.

Is a NAS a better idea?

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Comments

fiftyo

You could have a look at plex
Plex - A Complete Media Solution

tbgree00

I'll look at plex since I have an extra computer in my graveyard but it may not work. I am wanting something that I can do RAID 1 on, something that doesn't require AD authentication, and something my wife can easily back up to and fix if needed. I also want to hook an existing USB external drive and backup the data on there outside of the RAID 1.

I'm looking at a Synology DS212j and also checking out some Buffalo enclosures. 1 TB writable seems like it should be enough right now but who knows for sure. If I'm buying I may spring for more space. Buying a 200 dollar enclosure and drives outside of that gets pretty pricey but I could get away with it.

Kinet1c

I'm running XBMC on a HP microserver with 8TB storage. I then have an ITX & Pi running XBMC which connects back to the HP microserver for content and database files. There is very little it doesn't play.

Coolhandluke

I use ushare on linux (used to be slackware for around 5 years, but now ubuntu). I also run PS3 Media server on it as a backup for anything that ushare won't play. Server is nothing special, just my old desktop machine and 2TB of storage + external backup. ushare, samba, vnc and vuze = great combination.

jdancer

I use the following:

HP ProLiant MicroServer
Intel Gigabit CT Network Adapter
archlinux.org
Samba
NFS

Zero issues.

tbgree00

That looks pretty nice. Thanks Jdancer

I may go cheap on it and buy a Seagate Central for 170 and manually copy my data over to my existing external backup target when stuff changes. I love the idea of RAID and so on but this does automatic machine backups and the price is right for my wife. Or I may just keep it how it is and not buy anything new!

MiikeB

I would look in to Snapraid or Flexraid. Snapshot raid models are really the way to go for home media since it does not require your drives to always be spinning.

My setup is the following: Windows 7 Ultimate running Plex and Snapraid. I actually run this in a VM off my main computer with the OS portion of the VM stored on a SSD and then the 3TB drives are part of the VM using raw device mapping.

paul78

I have a fairly utilitarian setup for the whole family. I reused parts that I keep around to build a pair of NAS servers. They are Celeron 900Mhz with about 128Mb memory and 2Tb per server. I use FreeNAS -www.freenas.org - a BSD-based solution. I use rsync to do sync data between both servers so that I have real time simple replication of the data between the primary and secondary. I have extra spare parts as well in case of failures. And I get still get Celeron CPUs for about 6 bucks on eBay. Its also a bit more economical since these devices don't consume a lot of power.

EasyMac308

I use a Lenovo T400 laptop with a busted display and a 500GB HDD. I'm running 2008R2, but could just as easily run OpenFiler, FreeNAS, or anything else, really.

DevilWAH

I have a raspberry pi with an external USB HD.

Have installed

Transmission as a bit torrent client
Subsonic - to stream media out side the network so I can listened to my music at work.
MiniDLNA - to stream to computers and PS3
I also have a version of XBMC that's optimised for the PI, however as I generally have the PS3 on I normaly stream through that to display on the main TV using Upnp/DLNA. But the hardware can easily render HD directly.

What I like is the Web interface for Transmission, means I can kick of downloads from my laptop and they are moved to the correct folder once downloaded.

the only thing I do need to do is set up subsonic jukebox mode so it can play music through the raspberries local audio output and control it via web or smartphone app.

Its probable not the slickest set up, but I had the HD laying around and for £30 its a pretty complete solution

ally_uk

Currently I don't have any type of media server setup I have a terabyte drive where I store all my movies and I use XBMC to play them. I have the data backed up to a external hard disk but would like to somehow get some redundancy in place.

DevilWah your setup sounds the route I want to go down, I have a shuttle I can use as the Media Server do you have any good documentation on how you achieved your setup

wallpaper_01

I have a 4tb Synology NAS. Don't go near anything else, they are amazing, great UI. Have a Buffalo one at work thats rubbish.

Have Acer Revo that runs OpenELEC XBMC. But the NAS streams to every part of the house over Gigabit ethernet.

the_Grinch

I use to run PS3 Media Server, but when my box died I brought a Western Digitial Media Player. Now they have one with network access and released a hub. We recently brought a Netgear NAS and that has a media server on it....love that device, but don't know about what it can play since it's for work.

MAC_Addy

I have a Synology DS411j - it stores all of my files. Even has a built in media server so I can watch videos from any PC/laptop, xbox or PS3. It also has built in apps you can put on your smartphone, and apparently you can watch those videos while away from home. I haven't used that yet, but it may come in handy one day. I highly recommend it!

nosoup4u

HP n54l microserver with WHS 2011

networkjutsu

I use Synology DS1812+. Currently, it has 1x 3TB (WD Red), 2 x 1.5TB (WD Black), 2 x 750GB (WD Black), and 2 x 640GB (WD Black) - using SHR to grab more space. My other 2 x 3TB (WD Red) are collecting dust since I haven't dedicated a time to install them. It requires me to remove the volume and recreate it. Finally updated my backup (failed for weeks now coz my 3TB external drive is full) so that's my little project this coming three day weekend. Ugh, hopefully, I won't spend a lot of time recreating my Time Machine backup, NFS mount for my ESXi 5 server, and dont have to redo my custom share permissions.

If you do not need all the extra features of a NAS, definitely try FreeNAS or Openfiler. PERC 5i or any other older gen RAID controllers on eBay are cheap and reuse older PC then you're good to go. If I didn't have any problems with my older server, I'd still be rocking Openfiler. Though, I am pretty happy with my Synology even though I haven't used a lot of its extra features.

MAC_Addy

networkjutsu wrote: »

I use Synology DS1812+.

I must admit, I am a little jealous.

tpatt100

I have a Synology DS413j and while it does have a lot of features from my experience the apps were kinda "meh", I tried a few of the iOS apps and they were not that great and crashed a lot on my iPad.

Since I have a couple of Apple TVs I ended up just loading iTunes on my Shuttle PC and used iHome Server to run itunes as a service. It works easy with the Apple TV, iPads in my house and since I buy my TV show subscriptions off iTunes it's supported.

Wireless Hard Drive, iPad Hard Drive | Seagate

I bought one of these and it works really well with iOS and Android. I have the hard drive hooked up to my Shuttle and it regularly syncs with my iTunes directory. So when we have a road trip somewhere whoever isn't driving can catch up on shows or listen to music on their devices because they drive has built in wifi router capabilities.

networkjutsu

MAC_Addy wrote: »

I must admit, I am a little jealous.

At the time, I didn't want to spend money on HDDs and since I had 3 x 1.5TB, 2 x 750GB, and 2 x 640GB so I went with that instead of buying a smaller one.

@tpatt100 - were you able to try the iTunes Server app? I've never tried it just wondering if you did. All my machines has a mount to my NAS so if I needed to play music or video I dont have to use all these app available on Synology NAS.

I tried using the iPad app and didn't crash on mine. I don't have it installed now since I rarely use my iPhone/iPad to access my files. Though, I am sure it'll come in handy someday.

DevilWAH

[QUOTE=ally_uk;749330
DevilWah your setup sounds the route I want to go down, I have a shuttle I can use as the Media Server do you have any good documentation on how you achieved your setup

[/QUOTE]

A Raspberry Pi Subsonic Jukebox using Java 8 | MJ2P Blog

is good for subsonicc insulation.
transmission (bittorrent) and minidlna you can just apt-get install and it's a single config file that's really straight forward. For minidlna it's just setting the media paths and it will apear on your ps3/xbox under media servers.
for Transmission you need to set the download path and authentic username / password. Loads of walkthroughs on google. You want transmission-demond as this has the web front end.

oh if you are using external drive you need to edit fstab to mount volumes on boot.

xbmc there are a number of builds for the pi, it's a while since I installed this so I suggest you research this. All are easy to install and set up.

Note, subsonic and xbmc are both a little laggy for navigation on the pi which is why I use the ps3 as a front end.

I am not at home this week so can't give you more details sorry

oh lastly make sure all the web server ports are different, they do default to different ports but you need to make sure they don't conflict. You could create a single page under port 80/443 and then link to the different services from there.

nerdinhiding

I have a Synology 2413+. I does a great job, I even use it to record my IP cameras to. The only thing I wish it could do is stream videos / movies to apple tvs without jailbreaking them. But that is an Apple limitation not Synology's fault.

pizzaboy

Synology DS213, does a fairly good job.

olaHalo

I use WHS 2012.
Only about 4 TBs of space. Made from mostly old desktop builds

N2IT

I have a high end desktop with a 2 GB video card and 2 SSD 250 running raid 0. I also have a old school raptor drive as a backup. Home server is the OS which I love. I have an external drive that can be used which is 500 GB 7200 rpm.

jibbajabba

Using my Nexus 7 as media server lol .. download movies in any format straight to the Nexus and run a DLNA server on it which streams movies wireless to the Playstation .. no nonsense approach

You can also attach an external HDD to the Nexus if you really want to keep those movies.

Used to use a Microserver running Linux before .. 16GB of RAM, 4x2.5" SSD for the system and 4x3.5 SAS for long term storage (running an Adaptec 3805) ... but that got too expensive to maintain, especially once I realized that I can do all that with an external USB drive and a tablet

tbgree00

How does WHS 2012 work as a time machine backup target? Does it do DLNA? Actually that probably wouldn't matter since my DLNA device is an xbox.

I have a spare desktop but it has a motherboard problem so it doesn't work very well. It's also significantly bigger than the space I have for it. One of the small boxes barely bigger than 2 drives would work (the original HP home server for example) but I'm suddenly getting wet feet about spending the money.

It's really interesting that my personal laptop died as I have been working on this. I was able to get the 30GB of personal data off of it but it's basically kaput. I'm going to send it in to Squaretrade to see if they can figure it out and fix it. It was a cheapy from Office Depot so I'm annoyed but not too surprised.

Haswell

I don't have a dedicated home media server. Instead, I installed Plex on my computer, then I stream all of my media to a Roku box connected to my TV. It works out great, and the Roku box only cost about $60. It's a lot cheaper then then a dedicated home media server.

MiikeB

tbgree00 wrote: »

How does WHS 2012 work as a time machine backup target? Does it do DLNA? Actually that probably wouldn't matter since my DLNA device is an xbox.

I have a spare desktop but it has a motherboard problem so it doesn't work very well. It's also significantly bigger than the space I have for it. One of the small boxes barely bigger than 2 drives would work (the original HP home server for example) but I'm suddenly getting wet feet about spending the money.

It's really interesting that my personal laptop died as I have been working on this. I was able to get the 30GB of personal data off of it but it's basically kaput. I'm going to send it in to Squaretrade to see if they can figure it out and fix it. It was a cheapy from Office Depot so I'm annoyed but not too surprised.

From what I have read doing time machine backups to network shares is possible, but my experience has shown them to be erratic. My recommendation would be to download Starwinds free SAN emulation software which will allow you to create a LUN on one of your drives then install iSCSI initiator from Apple on the MAC and map to the LUN. Then time machine can back up to it as if its a local disk.

crrussell3

I have XBMC setup which connects to an Unraid server on the backend that stores all my movies.

knownhero

Having a quick look through this thread, I must be the only one here using a MacMini as a media server.

My Setup:

MacMini
Mybook Live 2tb
XBMC

I also use the XBMC official iPad app as my control and browser of files.

Down the line I'm going to upgrade the RAM to 16gb and let it run my VMs constantly as well. At the moment it has windows 7 running that I use for things OSX cant do.