Itching for a bit of a home server project, not sure what to do

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Hey all,

So a little while ago my ancient computer I used to store files on gave up the ghost. After some research I went and bought the cashback offer HP Microserver N40L, a 2TB hard drive and WHS 2011 to replace it.

I thought that was the end of that, but no. After reading some of the other awesome stuff other people have done with their Microservers, I fancy doing something a bit more exciting with it.

I was thinking about buying another HP Microserver since the cashback offer has been extended again and turn this into a NAS box. I'm thinking about giving FreeNAS a shot, but open to suggestions.

I would then turn the other Microserver into a ESXi host, installing WHS 2011 and Ubuntu Server (web development environment). Mainly to play around with virtualization and linux.

With this set up I'm hoping to use the NAS box to store my media/htdocs files and have WHS backup client machines to this box as well.

The only real stumbling block that I'm not sure about is RAID options. Worth considering? Hardware or software? Any suggestions welcome.

Ultimately I'd like to learn more about RAID, building a NAS and virtualization and hopefully end up with a decent storage solution, which is easy to maintain & recover if anything fails.

Don't want to spend any more than an additional £500-£600 if required.

What are your thoughts? Any suggestions, recommendations welcome. What would you do? I'd be interested to find out what other people have done with their microservers.

Cheers,
Scott.
 
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Have you thought about Crashplan for ensuring you've got rock-solid backups and running FreeNAS in a VM to get to grips with it before investing cash on some hardware?
 
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Thanks for your reply and suggestion. Just took a look at Crashplan, it looks good. I don't know anything about it so I'll do a bit of some research.

I've already experimented with FreeNAS very briefly running on my ESXi host, but I'm still pretty new with it so still in the learning phase. It looks like you can do a lot with it.
 
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I've used crash plan for number of years now and have found it to be excellent, backing up to crash plan central and also a disk on my parents mac
 
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Hey all,

So a little while ago my ancient computer I used to store files on gave up the ghost. After some research I went and bought the cashback offer HP Microserver N40L, a 2TB hard drive and WHS 2011 to replace it.

I thought that was the end of that, but no. After reading some of the other awesome stuff other people have done with their Microservers, I fancy doing something a bit more exciting with it.

I was thinking about buying another HP Microserver since the cashback offer has been extended again and turn this into a NAS box. I'm thinking about giving FreeNAS a shot, but open to suggestions.

I would then turn the other Microserver into a ESXi host, installing WHS 2011 and Ubuntu Server (web development environment). Mainly to play around with virtualization and linux.

With this set up I'm hoping to use the NAS box to store my media/htdocs files and have WHS backup client machines to this box as well.

The only real stumbling block that I'm not sure about is RAID options. Worth considering? Hardware or software? Any suggestions welcome.

Ultimately I'd like to learn more about RAID, building a NAS and virtualization and hopefully end up with a decent storage solution, which is easy to maintain & recover if anything fails.

Don't want to spend any more than an additional £500-£600 if required.

What are your thoughts? Any suggestions, recommendations welcome. What would you do? I'd be interested to find out what other people have done with their microservers.

Cheers,
Scott.

Take a look at Deanos thread regarding the Raid controller as I have outlines a few thoughts / options there.

Unfortunately they do not sell the Microserver over here. Still waiting for my Teir 2 HP reseller status to be activated and then I may see if I can push them to change their minds :D.

Good luck and enjoy.

RB
 
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