2012-04-10, 02:50
I recently purchased a Dell 1950 on ebay for $240 to play with VMware. I've installed ESXi 5 on it already, and I've started to build out Linux servers. My plan is to virtualize my existing media server (sabnzbd, sickbeard, couchpotato, headphones, and Plex). One VM will serve media to XBMC and Plex clients throughout the house, and my plan is to build other VM media servers (thinking Plex) that a few family and friends can stream the content from and have their own library that pulls from the same source.
I'm stuck at trying to decide on a backend for storage. Right now I have HDDs connected to my media server (750GB usb, 1TB esata, 2-750GB sata). I have another custom tower with 6 bays that I plan on using. It's dual core, 4GB ram. I'd like to move all of my drives to the one box and make a NAS solution. Free would be nice, but if it's worth it I can spend a little money for the software. Currently I'm looking at unRAID, FreeNAS, FlexRAID, nexentastor, and SnapRAID (maybe). I'm getting 2-2TB drives donated for the project, so I could wait and build with new drives, move the data, then add the remaining drives (if possible). What I'd really like is speed and redundancy for drive loss. Would virtualizing any of these make more sense than putting it on the box? Maybe using 2 solutions together, one virtual pointing to physical (iSCSI)?
Any help or pointing in the right direction would be awesome. I think I'm reading about too many solutions and probably over thinking what's needed.
I'm stuck at trying to decide on a backend for storage. Right now I have HDDs connected to my media server (750GB usb, 1TB esata, 2-750GB sata). I have another custom tower with 6 bays that I plan on using. It's dual core, 4GB ram. I'd like to move all of my drives to the one box and make a NAS solution. Free would be nice, but if it's worth it I can spend a little money for the software. Currently I'm looking at unRAID, FreeNAS, FlexRAID, nexentastor, and SnapRAID (maybe). I'm getting 2-2TB drives donated for the project, so I could wait and build with new drives, move the data, then add the remaining drives (if possible). What I'd really like is speed and redundancy for drive loss. Would virtualizing any of these make more sense than putting it on the box? Maybe using 2 solutions together, one virtual pointing to physical (iSCSI)?
Any help or pointing in the right direction would be awesome. I think I'm reading about too many solutions and probably over thinking what's needed.