NAS or Lite Server?

[tno]

Hey guys,

Not sure if this is the right place for this but I'm looking into putting together an alternative to my current storage set-up.

Current set-up:
Two laptops, one gaming rig (Q9300@3, HD4890, 320GB HD) and an HD HTPC (E8400, 4 HD tuners, 4 SD tuners, 9300 onboard, ~4TB HD space). The HTPC basically serves all of my media (iTunes, Recorded TV, HD Movies and TV). The result is that to keep my media available to my other computers, the HTPC stays on all the time. Not a terribly efficient system. Additionally, any torrenting happens on my gaming rig and is then uploaded to my HTPC, so that I don't have to muck around outside of the 7MC interface.

Future set-up 1:
Some sort of NAS that can be configured from another computer, that will look like a network drive on all of my machines, that uses very little energy, is very quiet, and will run torrents.

Future set-up 2:
A lite server build, probably Celeron or atom mini-itx, that runs ultra quiet, ultra efficient and does all of the above, while also allowing me to use it as my iTunes host, updating my podcasts automatically and working entirely headless.

Which would you guys recommend? I know that the NAS will probably be more energy efficient, but would it also cost more? Would it be able to run an iTunes client? What OS would i run the server as?

Thoughts?

Jason

 

[Muse]

I'm on board as I've been researching this for over a year and still haven't made my move. Am currently using one of my wirelessly connected laptops for data feed to my other laptop and my desktop HTPC/general use machine with loads of HD space. None of the machines stay on all the time, not even the "server" machine. It's not very satisfactory, but it beats what I was doing before (pretty much sneaker-net).

OP: You might consider the new Pine Trail systems that will be appearing. You can get a D510MO motherboard for around $80 (Provantage, I think), and put it in a mini-itx enclosure. Passive cooled Atom dual core 1.66 GHz CPU, should be ultra quiet, very energy efficient. That's probably the way I'm going to go, but I don't know what kind of enclosure I'm going to want, so I'm probably going to wait until integrated Pine Trail systems appear (should be real soon) and choose from them or riff off the reviews in assembling my own system.

 

[JackMDS]

You can take the long run.

Which is choosing Future set-up 1, and after a while realize that you have to switch to Future set-up 2.

Or start with Future set-up 2.

.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I would say a server. That said, I would also look long term with it. In the long term, you know disk space needs will continue to grow, so you want to get something that will be easy to add disks or upgrade existing disks.

 

[tno]

Thanks for the replies. Particularly Muse, it's nice to know I'll probably be mulling this for a while. Pine Trail sounds mighty enticing. Could I use a mini itx enclosure and some sort of drive array attached by eSata? Does this kind of array exist?

tno

 

[Rifter]

server hands down. Pinetrail sucks. i would go with a e series chip from AMD with a 785G mobo.

 

[skyking]

I went the server route with an imbedded VIA 5.25" motherboard. It clocks from 400mhz to 1ghz, has a couple of sata ports and 4 gigE. Uses 28 watts with two 1TB WD green drives.
Downside? it only moves files at ~35Mb/sec.

 

[Emulex]

i use a q6600 and let it clock down as far as it does (quite a bit!) - nas, torrent, tmpgenc transcoder (scripts), vista media center(drm ftl), webcam xp for 10+ network ip cameras, 4TB of storage with rsync replication.

don't really care that much about power usage since if thieves break in and steal it and other items - all those power savings would be negated - good luck finding the machine - it is extremely well hidden. stacking several tasks together lets me reduce the power footprint that UPS waste - most ups are extremely inefficient so you may save 30 watts on your rig to only feed it with a 70% efficient battery backup putting off 100F temps 24/7

 

[Muse]

Thanks for the replies. Particularly Muse, it's nice to know I'll probably be mulling this for a while. Pine Trail sounds mighty enticing. Could I use a mini itx enclosure and some sort of drive array attached by eSata? Does this kind of array exist?

tno

Yes, I think you can. The D510MO mobo has eSATA slot. Read this thread for lots of juicy details (later on Alyarb advocates for this mobo, suggests add-on card(s), etc.):

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=29280907#post29280907