[clue] media server/NAS build

Dennis J Perkins dennisjperkins at comcast.net
Fri Dec 27 13:12:51 MST 2013


Maybe this will interest some CLUEbies.  Criticism and suggestions are 
welcome.


CASE

I want it small so I can put it under the TV.  I chose Fractal Design's Node 
304 case, available in black or white.  It is designed for a mini-ITX 
motherboard and can hold 6 drives.

The power supply is mounted in an unusual place... under the drives instead of 
in back.  The case comes with a power cable to connect the external cable to 
the power supply.  There is a filtered vent underneath the power supply and 
another vent on the side of the case, so heat from the power supply is not 
vented into the case.

If you like larger cases, you might want to look at the Corsair Carbide Series 
Air 540 ATX case.  I think Microcenter sells these.


MINI-ITX MOTHERBOARD AND CPU

I found that most mini-ITX boards do not have 6 SATA connectors but I found 
one from ASRock that does and takes an FM2/FM2+ AMD CPU.  I might replace the 
APU (integrated CPU/GPU) with a Kaveri when it comes out.  It's supposed to be 
low power.


POWER SUPPLY

There are a few mini-ITX power supplies but none of them have 6 SATA power 
connectors.  I probably could have used adapter cables, but I decided to use 
an ATX power supply for now.  After the build is done, I plan to measure power 
usage and see how big a supply is actually needed.


HARD DRIVES

I want to use RAID for the data drives.  I might use an SSD for the OS drive 
later on, but if I do this, it's been suggested that the hard drives should be 
green drives to help save power.  I'm planning on using Linux's software RAID, 
not the motherboard's RAID or an external RAID card.  I don't think speed will 
be an issue, so simple mirroring is sufficient and reduces the number of 
drives necessary.

Maybe use LVM?  Disk encryption?



SOFTWARE

This was more interesting.  There are a few offerings available:

FreeNAS			Based on BSD.  Nothing wrong with BSD, but I want to use 
Linux.
OpenNAS			Based on BSD.
LinuxMCE			For home automation, but it also handles media.
VideoLAN			Media player
XBMC			Not really a media server.
Plex				Server is proprietary.
OpenMediaVault	NAS, but it looks like people are adding ownCloud to it.  
				Based on Debian.
Amahi			Home server.    They call it a home digital assistant 
				(hda).  It can act as a NAS, media server, VPN, etc.
				Requires Fedora or Ubuntu (latest version might not work 
				with Ubuntu yet.)


I plan to play with Amahi, mainly because it might fit what a couple of 
friends would like.

I've also found a few packages that can be used to build a server.

miniDLNA		Background media server.  It can handle video, music, and 
			pictures.  XBMC can use it, so you could put your movies on
	 		one computer and use Raspberry Pi with XBMC to watch movies.
			Someone is working on adding media converters to it.  If XBMC 
			is available for Android or iPads, you could also stream to 
			them.

MediaTomb	Another media server.  It already has media converters.

DNSmasq		DNS/DHCP server.  If you are using OpenWRT, you are probably 	
			using this as your DHCP server.  The DNS server speeds up 
			Internet accesses by caching DNS.  You can also use it to 
			assign network names so you don't need to type IP addresses.


Add a firewall, OpenSSH, and VPN, and maybe more, you could access your media 
remotely.  I haven't looked into remote access yet.

Add an email server if you want to keep your email private and secure.  (The 
govt seems to think email left on the Internet is not private.)  I know a few 
people in the group are Zimbra fans, but I don't know what it would be like to 
set up.




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