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Home Server Help

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IanA2

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Decided I need to make life a bit easier with a server. Looking at HP EX475 and Fujitsu Scaleo 1900. Anybody have any experience of either of these? Am I missing a better option? I'll be running three machines.

Thanks folks.
 
Whatever you do, make sure your servers come with onsite support.

Without this option, things get expensive and/or cause huge disruption.

Support levels in my view are far more important thean the actual hardware itself. With this in mind, no-one comes close to Dell Business support.
 
Sp!ke said:
Support levels in my view are far more important thean the actual hardware itself. With this in mind, no-one comes close to Dell Business support.
Click to expand...

Spike,
How many servers do you have and what kind of support?
We have around 50 Dell servers with gold support (4H support etc etc) and we had few problems so far. I like Dell support, but they do make mistakes.
Like sending new RAID controllers (PERC 4) with outdated firmware which kicks out your disks... It is up to the customer to do firmware update - which requires downtime. Or replacing failed disk and rebuilding raid from the disk which wasn't working for 7 days...
By now I know most of the senior members of Dell Gold Support :)

(we do have quite a few with a silver support as well)

I have to say that I've never had to deal with IBM support (apart from AS/400 but that is a different league altogether - anyway, they've tried to sell me newer machine saying that my old AS/400 is YEAR OLD and not as powerful as a new ones - no, I don't need more processing power on AS/400). We have few HPs but again, never dealt with them eather.

Keep this in mind!

Cheers
Chris
 
I've forgot to mention that for a home server PROBABLY you don't need expensive support contract.
If something will be down, worst thing can happen is probably lack of entertainment.

You still need backup, still need raid with hot spares or 5.

Cheers
Chris
 
IanAlexander2 said:
Decided I need to make life a bit easier with a server. Looking at HP EX475 and Fujitsu Scaleo 1900. Anybody have any experience of either of these? Am I missing a better option? I'll be running three machines.

Thanks folks.
Click to expand...

What you planing to do with that server? What you expect from your server?

Cheers
Chris
 
It's really a question of storage & having everything in and accessable from one place. It's a wireless network. I'm fed up having to transfer things all over the place. Auto back up will be useful too. I understand that the two I've been looking at do all of that, are expandable, and can hold up to 4x750G which will be more storage than I ever need I would have thought, even with all my music and dvds loaded.

I was just wondering if anyone had direct experience of these Home Servers or could recommend another.
 
If all you need is centralised storage a "home server" might be overkill IMHO. Rather than a home server have you considered a NAS (network attached storage) device? I bought a Buffalo Terastation a couple of years ago and it's used exactly as you suggest. Backup options are available, as is expansion although it's often easier to just buy a second one! :)
 
Shude said:
If all you need is centralised storage a "home server" might be overkill IMHO. Rather than a home server have you considered a NAS (network attached storage) device? I bought a Buffalo Terastation a couple of years ago and it's used exactly as you suggest. Backup options are available, as is expansion although it's often easier to just buy a second one! :)
Click to expand...

I can recommend this too, we have a Terastation at work. Home server takes quite a lot of setting up and maintaining, more than would be gained by having it IMHO. The Terastation is accessible through a web interface and very easy to use/setup.
 
I have a Buffalo Linkstation at home, have had it for a year or so, works well, and you can daisy chain USB hard drives off it.

Linky

They come in various sizes and options.
 
columb said:
Spike,
How many servers do you have and what kind of support?
Click to expand...

In Europe we have maybe 200 windows servers. Mainly Dell but moving over to HP stuff now.

We had exactly the same issues on the Dell raid controllers. In fact we 're up to 14 file servers that went down with total data loss because of this. We have 4 hour gold support and Dell never missed this deadline.

On the HP kit weve never had the raid controller problem but support is patchy across Europe at best and regularly engineers turn up without the correct parts and the SLA is for the engineer to attend (not fix). Once he has attended they have met their SLA and sometimes the correct part can take a very long time to arrive - weeks in fact for one server.

HP blades are very delicate machines too. If you have a cooling problem, everything else stays up bar the blades that all fail with alarming regularity - usually PSU's.

IBM Support costs a fortune and will take 4+ hours of arguing on the phone before anyone will take an interst in the problem.

I didnt realise the OP was for a home media based server. That being the case, I'd be tempted to just build a silent media PC and stick it by the TV.
 
Last edited:
OK guys, I think some wires may be crossed here. I've looked at the Buffalo Terrastation and have concluded.

It does less
It does it slower
It costs more

Have I missed something? If not I think I'll go with the HP MediaSmart.
 
Sp!ke said:
What do you want it for exactly?
Click to expand...

See post #6. It's about keeping ONE copy of things centrally and accessable from any machine, anywhere. Auto backup is good, and I'd also like to store all my dvd's and music.
 
IanAlexander2 said:
OK guys, I think some wires may be crossed here. I've looked at the Buffalo Terrastation and have concluded.

It does less
It does it slower
It costs more

Have I missed something? If not I think I'll go with the HP MediaSmart.
Click to expand...
The TeraStation streams media and shares files and printers, that's pretty much it. Performance is not an issue as it's got a purpose-built OS (not windows!) for doing what it does. I don't think anyone has ever complained that it's slow.
It appears to be about £100 less than the HP MediaSmart.
 
The best price I can find fro the HP MediaSmart is about £400 for 500G.
 
+1 for the terastation.
One other good aspect of the terastations is you can do a back to back backup with zero server processing.
Kills the network tho!
 
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