Longtime lurker here, but I'm a relative newb when it comes to servers and I need some help with setup. I've been searching the forums and couldn't find anything that fit my needs completely.
I just purchased a Lenovo TS140 (xeon 1225 v3) on sale and plan to use it as a central server/Plex machine when I move to my new place.
I plan to add WD reds, some additional ECC Ram, and possibly an SSD for the OS as I can afford along with an external Blu Ray drive for rips.
I want this machine to be able to do a few things:
1) Serve as central file storage for multiple devices: including 3+ laptops.
2) Automatically backup 3 said laptops (at least one being iOS, the others Windows) on the server.
3) Serve as Plex Server and be able to transcode up to 3 streams simultaneously to A) XB1 w/projector, B) Samsung HD TV, and C) Ipad/other tablet.
4) Function as occasional workstation (research/word processing).
The question becomes; what software should I run to accomplish this? Can this be accomplished simply with windows? I'd prefer either windows 7 or 8 as I have keys, or free, because I'm a poor student.
Windows comes with a nice, basic backup system that should cover you. It'll be set up on the clients, though, not the server. iOS devices aren't as backup friendly out of the box, but I bet if you dig around you'll find cheap/free software that will work. OS-X laptops have time machine. My Synology diskstation came with a package that time machine would talk to, so there will likely be something out there that'll do the same for windows. Web browsing and word processing are some of the least resource-intensive computer tasks nowadays. I doubt you'll have any issues there.
Thanks for the reply! I'd like to set it up so that the backups are not on the clients, if possible. Could this be accomplished if I used a Linux-based OS? Or is the answer going to be the same (have to set it up on the clients) across many OS?
There will always have to be something set up on the client. Even enterprise-level backup requires installing agents on the clients, or at least it did when I last worked with it (~ 2011). If you're willing to invest the time & effort, I'll bet there are open source solutions that will do the job. I'll also bet they're a huge PITA to get running, and centralized backup is a giant pain in its own right, IMO.
There's probably also a way you could arrange drive shares so that the server can access the client drives, but again that's a lot of work and moving parts. I wouldn't expect it to work reliably for more than a few months, or even weeks, at a time.
It'd probably be easiest and most reliable of all to set up cloud backup. There would be a fee, of course, but that keeps dropping all the time.
I have somewhat of the same setup, however instead of using Plex as a transcoder/streamer for my main TVs im using it strictly for mobile devices. I use it to stream 16 bit apple lossless audio cd collection and transcode my movie and TV show collection to my iPhone and iPad on the go.
As nice of a setup as this is going to be, I would highly recommend going the extra step and connecting OPENELEC with Kodi via an Intel NUC to your TV and stream 1:1 audio and video to your main tv's from your main computer without transcoding, especially if you have a nice TV and surround sound system. BTW I am using the NUC with the Celeron processor and it does the job beautifully.
As nice of a setup as this is going to be, I would highly recommend going the extra step and connecting OPENELEC with Kodi via an Intel NUC to your TV and stream 1:1 audio and video to your main tv's from your main computer without transcoding, especially if you have a nice TV and surround sound system. BTW I am using the NUC with the Celeron processor and it does the job beautifully.
What would the advantages of Kodi be over Plex? I would really like to stream 1:1 if possible to my projector (with XB1, which I believe transcodes MKV files now), but the other main TV is only a 40" in the family room without surround sound, so that wouldn't need it. Would the Nuc really be required in my case? And if not, would you still suggest OPENELEC with Kodi? Thanks!
I can't recommend using something like Spideroak or Crashplan enough. Both will let you backup your clients to a local server and their online storage as well. Backups are only as good as the number of locations you keep them in. Both are easy to setup and almost maintenance free once running.
Thanks for the heads-up, Robnix. I checked them both out and they both offer good products, Crashplan's local and offsite backups should be plenty for me. I'll most likely go that route.
Macs use the same drive sharing protocols that Windows does, at least last time I worked with them. Even if 8 radically changed things, they'd still need to support older systems to maintain compatibility. My Synology server came with a server-side piece that my mac uses to put time machine backups on. I'd think similar software would be available for windows, but I'm not sure of that. So there's two data points for you.
OK, I'm not sure if you're a bit over my head, or if we're just not quite on the same page. I'm looking for a way to use the thinkserver that I have to be a shared space between the Windows and Macs; as in both with write and read capability (and the ability to back themselves up into that space), and with some redundancy (Windows Storage Spaces is capable of both RAID1 like recording and RAID5) But I was under the impression that Macs use a different file system? Am I wrong in that thinking?
I have a relatively high-end NAS and it is capable of backing up my other machines, but I found it much easier to just use OneDrive for a variety of reasons.
I appreciate the input, but I'm not sure that would be the best solution for my needs. That's kind of the situation that I wanted to avoid at this point purely because of the money situation, and the things that I need the system to be able to do (sharing AND provide transcoding for multiple streams at the same time). From what I've read, a NAS would have difficulty with that. Is that correct?
I pay $10/month for Microsoft Office 365, which gives each member of my family a terabyte of space on OneDrive. I set up all of the computers in the house with Windows Account login, so each person gets all of their e-mail, contacts, calendar and documents regardless of where they log in. Everything they save is automatically backed up to the cloud. I also have all of our phones set up to back our photos up to OneDrive. I have zero worries about data loss. It is extremely simple to set up and effortless to use.
I bought a pretty beefy NAS that I use almost exclusively as a media server. It has a quad-core 2.0Ghz Celeron with 8GB of DDR3 memory, four gigabit Ethernet ports, a direct HDMI out connected to a dedicated VM running Kodi and support for VPN and multiple virtual machines. I run Plex Media Server and Logitech Media Server directly on the NAS and run Sonarr with NZBGet on a Windows 2012 R2 VM. This server supports four televisions inside my house via Roku, in addition to several phones and tablets and also serves a Roku box at my parent's house. I have had zero performance problems so far, but I am not using uncompressed Blu-Ray rips. Everything I have is H264 .mkv or .mp4 video with AAC or DD/DTS 5.1 audio. When I rip Blu-Rays, I generally compress down to somewhere in the 10-12GB range. I do this for playback compatibility across the widest range of devices without the need for transcoding.
My NAS does have built-in hardware transcoding capability, but Plex does not use it. I know my NAS can handle at least one uncompressed rip at a time on CPU alone.
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