Hi,

I'm looking at building a DIY WHS box. I'd like to use it safe storage of ALL of my media files (so some type of redundancy is necessary in the storage configuration) in addition to all of the other features it has (backup, media streaming, etc).

What's the average cost for a typical DIY server in this category?

Thanks!

Welcome to the gang Dan

Honestly it it hard to say regarding the cost as a lot depends on what you have in mind, components you choose, etc... Several of us have built 16-20+ HDD WHS and cost was probably in the $1000. Depending on your likes/needs though this price could be greatly more or much less. WHat do you have in mind as far as specs?

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Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

There is no such thing as an average cost for a typical DIY server. Cost can vary widely, First, you've not given any specs as to how much storage space you want to have available. Hard drives can be the biggest cost of a DIY home server depending on how much storage space you want to have. Second, what kind of case, tower or rack mount (again could be determined by how much storage space you want available? Third, CPUs, mobos, & PSUs vary widely in cost depending on what you want and again how much storage you want to have.

I wish mine cost only $1,000.00. I've spent over $3,500 on hard drives alone for Andromeda.

Yeah, sorry, I should have clarified that my figures did not include HDDs, I was just thinking hardware vs a premade solution like the MSS.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

I have a client that built a DIY for around $500 -- he was trying very hard to beat the cost of a NEW EX475 a couple years ago. Granted, he coud do it for less today but today he probably wants more...

I have another with a couple grand invested.

Don't start by looking at the money. Read the various topics around here (and elsewhere) to determine what you want to do.

THEN, and ONLY THEN, can you start to work into things like the number of drives needed; that helps decide the size of the frame. Then look at the amount of processing; that will guide you on CPU(s), cores, etc. Then look at whether you want this to be an HTPC (or GP machine) in addition to being a server; that will drive the video decision. Where you are going to locate it will drive the cooling decisions. All that drives power.

At that point you can start to look at the highest end available and the LOWEST that meets requirements.

That cost differential needs to be weighed against your expected growth and current budget.

No one's requirements are average -- except those who buy a solution (e.g., an EX4xx) and do not change, upgrade or configure.

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Thanks for all the info.

I'm looking for something in the 6-8 TB range. I'm going to use it primarily as storage for movies to stream to my HTPC, and for the backup capability. Though that's the available storage space, I'd need probably more HDD space as I'd like to make sure that everything is backed up (is setting up a hardware RAID 5 or 6 a cheaper/better solution than the folder duplication?).

As for the case, it doesn't really matter as it's going to go in my unfinished basement beside (or on) my network rack.

I've debated about using it for other purposes (web, ftp, maybe others), those would be secondary roles that I add later.

I'm just trying to get a feeler for what everybody thinks a setup would cost me, so I can start setting aside money to buy components.

I'm really new (as in never before used hands on) to the WHS software. I know from that past experience that costs for servers vary greatly on features ... I'm just a little clueless as to what a DIY WHS requires in terms of hardware vs. other types of serves (I'm mostly familiar with servers used in larger IT environments with Active Directory).

Thanks for all the advice and help!

Take a look at the SuperWHSII thread. When I am done, I will have less than $500 in it but it just shows what can be done. This kind of build isn't for everyone but with careful selection of components and use of the used market can result in a bullet proof system far out stripping the capabilities of prebuilt system solutions. Today's used market is very robust with many companies going out of business and dumping the IT equipment on the market. Many of the parts available have had little or no use.

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HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

The aforementioned SuperWHSIII thread is at: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6813. (And there are a couple other high-end builds described in this DIY area: Andromedia, ....)


I recommend against this -- and I have used RAID in my main PC for about 3 years now. With RAID the disks really need to be matched, especially in size. If one is larger than the others the extra space is not accessible. If the RAID hardware fails you often need to replace it with EXACTLY the same hardware. Easy today, but 3-5 years from now will newer versions be backward compatible? Very possibly not -- and then your data would be lost. (I would NOT be able to replace mine today.) The Drive Extender logic ha two major benefits: (1) it will utilize any/all size drives, intermixed, (2) the disks can be read by any NTFS-compatible system so your Shared Folders are never unavailable, even if your server is down for other reasons. (There are many other discussions around here in other threads that get into a LOT more detail.)

You specifically mention RAID-5 so a comment on that... RAID-5 has the advantage of actually being faster as it stripes the data across multiple disks (and adds error correction with an extra disk). In a 4-drive configuration you can store three times the data as on a single disk and still recover from the loss of one. The speed is probably not going to help you for most WHS tasks as the limiting factor is the network speed. You need to do your own cost-benefit analysis for storage efficiency vs cost vs mixing drive sizes vs NTFS formatted drives. I would probably NOT set up a WHS system with RAID (with the POSSIBLE exception of using RAID-1 for the System Drive).


It sounds like you might ultimately want to use the server for some more complex tasks. Based on that You'd probably tend to the high end. You want a VERY ROUGH budget number -- $1000 PLUS the costs of the drives.

But is that the way to start given your experience? Maybe not.

Do you have an old desktop hanging around? Why not get a copy of WHS ($100, but you can also have a 30-day free evaluation!), install it on that, and play around with it for a month (or more) to determine what you really want? May well be worth it in your case... (Many of use around here did just that playing with the beta copies of WHS on some of our old hardware!)

_________________
....JBick

EX475, 2 GB, LE-1640
PC1: Vista-->W7 Ultimate/32, (D-Drive RAID-5 Array)
PC2: Lenovo Laptop, Win XP Home SP3
2xLinksys WRT54G v1.1 and 2xNetGear GS105 Gbit switch

Thank you for the advice and help. I do have an old PC laying around (several of them actually ...). I'll get WHS installed and play around with it some before I make any decisions.

I asked about RAID b/c in my previous job (IT manager at a large public university) that was the only thing we used on production machines. Everything ran in a virtualized environment on a hardware RAID 5 or 6. Unfortunately that's where my knowledge lies alot more than the smaller scale stuff that's practical for in home. I've briefly toyed with the idea of running WHS in a Virtual environment (probably with Hyper-V) so that it's not bound to a particular hardware set, but that's way too grand of a scale to start with.

Thank you all for the comments and help. This site and forum have been a HUGE help in learning what all I can do with WHS and it's add ons.

Consistent with John's suggestion, I built my first WHS on an old desktop machine, ran it for almost a year, and just recently built my first purpose-built WHS. Some of the story is here:

viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6517

My total hardware investment, including just the 1TB WD Caviar Black system disk, is about $600, and that's with a dual core Intel E5200, an optical drive, and a full tower case with the potential to hold about a dozen-and-a-half hard drives. Of course my actual investment is more if you add in the other 6.25TB of disk, but that's going to be a moving target for everyone who does this.

So, if you think of my machine as a single drive 1TB E5200 WHS with a huge expandable case, the all in cost is pretty close to $700 (including the WHS operating system). Not bad, I figure, compared to the price of the HP units which can hold a maximum of 4 drives internally (including the system drive).

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MGannon
DIY WHS "NorthStar" - viewtopic.php?f=22&t=6517
Intel E5200 Pentium Dual Core
2 GB RAM
19.25 TB Storage