My other post about interest in Windows Home Server was mainly due to my strong desire to build an easily expandable huge data store for my home, though I would think any corporate environment small or large would have similar needs.
Here are my goals: 1) One single huge store of data in the 10-20TB range ( I can never find all the files I want, as they are scatted on many 500GB drives ) 2) Put to good use, all the various different sized drives I have lying around ( I hate wasting a perfectly good drive ) 3) Ability to simply add new drives to instantly expand capacity ( This rules out most RAID setups ) 4) Ability to hotswap drives when a drive fails. 5) Safety in case of a drive failure in the storage pool (ie some form of redundancy) 6) Ability to remove drives from the pool in order to recover files in the event the server crashes (ie you cannot read RAID drives outside of the RAID setup) 7) Inexpensive ( ie, perfer to build from existing parts rather than fork over for new hardware ) 8) Ability to have automated backup computers in my home (many of which have themselves huge drives 500GB) 9) Keep everything as Green as possible, so the server could be a fairly low powered energy efficient machine 10) Super simple, minimal fuss, idiot proof functionality, both setup and maintenance. 11) Reliable and stable ( putting all your data on 1 server is a scary thing, it must be super stable and have easy external backup of it's contents ) I was attracted to the marketing of Windows Home Server as it claims to address most if not all of my goals above. My biggest concern with it is #11, reliability. Realize that I would be building my own WMS from retired computers, rather than forking over 500$ for an HP MediaSmart machine, so the outlay of $ is a simple $99 fee for the OS. I am not sure if there are any alternatives that meet all the above goals, but I'm hoping you guys have some suggestions and thoughts? In researching a bit more, I found that Drobo came close to meeting my desires of an easily expandable storage pool (although you're limited to 4 drives only), however I've read several really bad reviews of it online about data loss and slow performance, plus the cost of the unit (500$ w/o any drives) all of which makes me less than thrilled about the idea. FreeNAS seems to be recommended often as well, but I've not seen any mention of FreeNAS having the ability to expand capacity and have data redundancy easily. On top of that, I've never loved linux command lines. I've not written off any of these 3 solutions, so if someone with experience wants to chime in about which way I should go, please do, or better, if there's a method I'm overlooking, please do tell. Thanks everyone- Steve _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
