[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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