Storage server options

My HP Mediasmart box with Windows Home Server is dying and I need a replacement. I was currently browsing between the HP Microserver G8 and a Dell Poweredge T320 with the higher end G8 not being very different in price from the Dell once the discounts are applied. The Poweredge has a RAID card and 8 hot swap-able bays. For just a little bit more on top of that I can bump up to 16 GBs of RAM and a 6 core xeon and do batch photo processing on the server. Or I could go really cheap with the G8 that's $500 since the WHS was mainly just file storage and didn't do anything that required a lot of processing....or really any at all.

So thoughts on these or other options?

So I purchased a HP G8 Microserver with Xeon processor and 2x 1TB drives.

I installed a 3rd TB and installed Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials on it. It wasn't as straight forward as a basic server install but it was still fairly simple once I did a little reading. I partitioned a 250GB portion of drive 1 for the OS leaving 2.75TB of storage compared to the 2.75TB total I had for the WHSv1 install on the Mediasmart. I then installed Stabilebit's Drive Pool onto the server and created a pool out of the remaining drives/partitions. That was straight forward and easy. It works like Drive Extender did in WHSv1 and only cost $30. I'm quite satisfied with the purchase. Then I copied the 1.45TB of photos and other media to the drive pool and have a new fully functioning server.

The 2TB external drive will remain as a back for now. My plans are to eventually purchase and install a 250GB SSD into the optical drive spot on the G8 and replace all drives with 4TB drives using all 16TB for storage. This will be done in incremental upgrades. Other HDDs will be used as onsite and offsite backups in case of loss of data / etc...

It cost me $700 for the Microserver and it's pretty much a more mature direct replacement for the Mediasmart server. For one, it's more powerful. It also has the capability to be set up as a RAID with the internal RAID controller (which I didn't do). It also has an expansion slot where a better RAID controller will eventually be installed with an external SAS port for my onsite backup solution. It DOES NOT come with an OS like the Mediasmart did. WHSv1 was a great OS for what it did at the time, but Server 2012 is obviously a more powerful OS and with the better hardware will serve my needs better. The G8 also has somethinge called iLO, which I gather is for remote access and trouble shooting over an internet connection. The box itself includes 2 1gB ethernet ports which will be good for data streaming when I get my home network totally setup. It's also fairly quiet after it boots and the fans settle; that's comparable the the Mediasmart box. I was looking at a low end Dell T320, but through my experiences at work, it's physical footprint is larger and it's much noisier.

The drives will be the other expensive part. 4 4TB WD HDDs will run about $600 unless I can find some discounts and sales. The SSD will probably be at least another $150.

Why don't you think about a cloud hosting service? It is the best way to save your money and resources. Nowadays you can get VPS cloud servers at cheapest price and most of them offer unlimited storage and bandwidth. Here at my company we use Webpal cloud server from Stage2data. It is powerful and efficient for different types of applications.

Not really sure why you'd get a full fledged server for file storage these days. I've got a server at work for networked video and 3D rendering (tasks that demand a dual Xeon setup). There's quite a few good NAS systems that have RAID configurable drive bays. Here's an example of an appropriate one (they also have boxes that go up to 8 bays):

B&H Photo, Seagate 4TB NAS

Personally, I've got RAID setup on my workstations/servers..​..if I want extra backup, external 2 or 4TB USB 3 drives are so cheap these days that I just collect stacks of them for particular types of data.

Bradley Brown wrote in post #17741079
Why don't you think about a cloud hosting service? It is the best way to save your money and resources. Nowadays you can get VPS cloud servers at cheapest price and most of them offer unlimited storage and bandwidth. Here at my company we use Webpal cloud server from Stage2data. It is powerful and efficient for different types of applications.

I wouldn't trust a cloud service to store my files and if I were to abandon some type of file server, I'd have to delete local copies.

davesrose wrote in post #17741158
Not really sure why you'd get a full fledged server for file storage these days. I've got a server at work for networked video and 3D rendering (tasks that demand a dual Xeon setup). There's quite a few good NAS systems that have RAID configurable drive bays. Here's an example of an appropriate one (they also have boxes that go up to 8 bays):

B&H Photo, Seagate 4TB NAS

Personally, I've got RAID setup on my workstations/servers..​..if I want extra backup, external 2 or 4TB USB 3 drives are so cheap these days that I just collect stacks of them for particular types of data.

Eventually I'll be using it for streaming and multi-media duty. Plus I've had some bad experience with trying to retrieve data from NAS devices that have failed.

davesrose wrote in post #17741158
Not really sure why you'd get a full fledged server for file storage these days. I've got a server at work for networked video and 3D rendering (tasks that demand a dual Xeon setup). There's quite a few good NAS systems that have RAID configurable drive bays.

This. It sounds like a Synology will do what he wants. You don't need power hungry Xeon processors and gigs of RAM to access data files over a LAN or play videos on the TV.

Village_Idiot wrote in post #17741340
Plus I've had some bad experience with trying to retrieve data from NAS devices that have failed.

Well, that's why you back up.

The G8 Microserver is pulling 28-42 watts depending on options enabled. that's not very much.