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ctopherc

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Everything posted by ctopherc

  1. Bissquitt, It's a custom built rack out of 3/4 plywood and audio equipment Raxxess rails. If you want the specs I could look for them but it was made to house my APC UPS being the deepest and enough room below for cables and a less deep top shelf to help with airflow. Additionally I mounted caster wheels to roll it in and out of my office closet.
  2. M, I'm curious what your main reasoning behind having a NAS and a WHS? From my understanding the Synology has a iTunes service which, from what I've read but have no experience with, should be able to provide iTunes service to your AppleTVs/iPhone/iPads. What other devices are you planning on using? You mentioned for heavy steaming, how many simultaneous devices are you planning to have running? You also mentioned using iHomeServer (which runs your iTunes as a service and now provides DNLA services) why not use that to provide for both iDevices and other streaming devices? I would additionally ask the following questions: 1. Will your WHS be a standalone server or used as a desktop? 2. What devices will need access to media? Is there a common media format between the devices? 3. Why the need for ISO and MKVs? Do you know those are not valid formats for iTunes? Is that why you mentioned Plex, if so that will only be used for non-iDevices? Why not encode with handbrake into a format that all devices can use? 4. Are you running any additional applications or services? example be VMs, handbrake, SQL, etc. 5. What are you data requirements? Total today and how much growth expected over the next year? Can you NAS handle that or will you need to upgrade drives or model within the next year or two? Will your current WHS be able to provide for all your data needs? I ask all those questions because you seem to be caught between using a NAS and a WHS, both are valid solutions but why not focus on one instead of having multiple streaming devices? How are you going to organize media between the two devices? A single solid WHS should be able to handle all your needs. Leveraging DrivePool you can have duplicate or even triple copies of data, provide a platform for hosting user shares, leverage a offsite cloud backup software solution and a streaming platform. You don't need a lot of CPU power to stream to multiple devices, I was using a old P4 quad to stream to multiple AppleTVs, iPhone, iPads and computers with no performance issues. But you need to determine what else your WHS will be used for. And regarding crashplan backups, depends on how much data you have, your outgoing bandwidth and timeframe to backup you are willing to accept, backblaze will likely be similar to crashplan. Just to give you a little background I have been using Crashplan for about 3.5yrs and currently have 14TB backed up. I spent roughly the first 6months backing up all my data. I've had to do a restore of about 10-12gb a couple of years into it, but I didn't have any issues doing a restore over a couple of days. The key is creating backup sets and organizing your data and setting priority. I currently have 5 backup sets created and in order of priority. This way the most important items are always backed up first and cascaded based on relevance to me and acceptable risk. 1. User Data & Pictures (this includes key user profile data like documents, emails, financial data, work documents, iOS backups and pictures) 2. Misc stuff (I have all my car photos, tune software, basically random but important items to me) 3. Software (basically any online purchased software, copies of software CDs, license keys, etc) 4. VMs (I keep quarterly backups of VMs. You will not want to have an active VM being backed up as the amount of changes will cascade and never catch up, if the VM if important consider every other day, week, or monthly backups) 5. Media (this is all my audio books, ebooks, music, movies, TV shows) And to add an additional layer I have all my important used documents and pictures stored on my desktop(used daily) which gives me local access. These items are scripted to copy to my WHS weekly into my user share, that share is part of my User Data & Pictures backup set. So now I have 3 copies saved, 2 local and 1 offsite. Plus this saves me of only needing a single Crashplan backup license but still having data being backed up from multiple computers going offsite. So I would suggest considering setting up something similar to leverage your local copies and hopefully a single repository to be used to backup to Backblaze. These are just some ideas to consider. Its taken me a handful of years to get organized and have my data coordinated and streamlined. If you are interested in my hardware you can see my post under the DrivePool > Hardware > My Rack Server post. CTopher
  3. drashna, I had a jail broken AppleTV 2 and had a horrible experience with it. Lots of crashes with it and XBMC. I've gotten to a point that I want my devices to work and not have to work constantly to use them. My configuration works flawlessly with iHomeServer, which is key to running a large iTunes installation. I will admit that there was a initial learning curve but once you move past it there is very little up keep needed. Having all my media consolidated under iTunes is nice. I have all the iPads and iPhones doing nightly backups and a easy point to sync any movies, tv shows or music on them. Additionally it's a central location for having CrashPlan to backup my media.
  4. Here is my configuration along with a custom built rack. Server iStarUSA D-412S3-MATX 4U Rackmount microATX Server Chassis Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge 3.5GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Intel Media DQ77MK Desktop MB, Intel Q77 Express Chipset, w/TPM Corsair Vengeance LP 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Intel 80GB 330 Series Maple Crest SSD Antec EarthWatts Green EA-380D, 380W Noctua Ultra Silent CPU Cooler Cooling NH-U9B SE2 3x Noctua NF-R8 PWM 80mm Case Fan LSI 9200-8e SASController Card, 2 x SFF-8088 mini-SAS External Connectors, JBOD only Windows Server Essentials 2012 R2 Stablebit DrivePool v2.1.1.561 Stablebit Scanner v2.5.1.3062 IHomeServer v3.1.76.0 (iTunes 12.1.2.27) feeding 2x AppleTV 3 Crashplan Array NORCO DS-24E 24-3.5" JBOD Enclosure Pooled Drives - 59.2TB 2x 8TB Seagate Archive HDD 1x 6.0TB WD Red 1x 4.0TB WD Red 7x 3.0TB WD Red 5x 2.0TB WD Green 1x 2.5TB WD Green 3x 1.5TB Seagate 1x 1TB WD Green Non-Pooled drive 1x 1TB WD Green - OS Backup drive UTM ARK IPC-1.5U1525 Black 1U Rackmount Server Case Intel S1200KP Mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 1155 Intel C206 BIOS Intel Core i3-2120T Sandy Bridge 2.6GHz, 35W Dual-Core Stock Intel cooler Noctua 60x25mm A-Series Blades with AAO Frame, SSO2 Bearing Premium Fan G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Intel 60GB 330 Series Maple Crest SSD 100gb 2.5 HD Intel Dual Port Pro 1000 PCIe NIC picoPSU-160-XT, 160w output, 12v input DC-DC Power Supply Ubiquiti Networks Unifi UAP-Pro Enterprise Dual Band AP Untangle v11.2 Dell PowerConnect 2824 24port GB managed switch Dell PowerConnect 2724 24port GB managed switch VMware ESXi 5.5 Home Lab server ARK 1U125 Black 1U Rackmount server case Supermicro A1SAi-2750 mini ITX MB Supermicro PWS-203-1h 200W 80 Plus Gold Intel Atom C2750 2.4GHz Avoton 8 core CPU 32gb Kingston DDR3 1600 ECC memory LeefSupra 16gb USB 3.0 flash drive 1x 480gb Intel S3500 SSD 2x 240gb Seagate 600 Pro SSD (200gb) 1x 128gb Samsung 810 SSD (cache) 1x 64gb Intel 330 SSD (cache) APC Smart UPS SMT1500RM2U 1000W 2U rackmount Ctopher
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