Hi,

I have been running 2 EX475 servers non stop for the last 10 years. However, one has now died so it is time to upgrade.

Basically, i use the servers for PC backups and streaming movies and music. Each server has approx 14TB of storage.

Can anyone recommend a replacement or would I be better off building one and would it be better to run 64 bit with 2011 server software and what specs - no particular budget in mind.

Steve

I am migrating to a Netgear readyNas 316 from a ex490.
It holds all my movies ,music and photos.
I use rasberry PI media players so I have not tried the media player options on the NAS.
As far as backups I installed easus on each pc and back them up to a folder on theNAS.
So far it is working extremely well.And Easus is compatible with win10 and makes a pxe boot disk to start a recovery of each client.

Still working on the best method to backup the NAS.

I don't think you will find a similar server to the mediasmart in todays world.
At least without spending big bucks on the software.

_________________
VGA/PS2 Keyboard/PS2 Mouse/Serial debug board
Popcorn C-200
Popcorn A-200
Dune HD Connect
Rasberry PI OSMC(KODI)
ReadyNAS RN316
Amazon FireStick
Amazon ECHO
AnyDvD
MyMovies

Hello, wow you got a good run out of those 470's.
I gave away my 470's years ago, bought 2 new and 2 used x-510, same hardware as the ex-490.
I am still running whsv1 on 2 of them, same thing you are doing basically, splitting the load. but I don't have near the data you have.
I made a decision long ago to conserve spare and have ripped all my dvd's to mpg @ no more then 2 gig per movie. The quality is not the greatest, but they don't take up very much space. So I am still inside the servers with my data.

If I was you,
1) I would watch ebay and try to pickup a good x-510 and see if you can find whs 2011 so you could use larger drives.
or
2) HP made a couple more microserver but they are kind of pricey. I built a DIY server and installed winserver 2012E on it for down the road when Whs v1 won't go anymore.
There are some pretty good builds in the DIY thread you might search through. There are also some great Ideas on how to hardware raid your OS that are very easy.
Not cheap though, hardware and OS I have about $1200.00 in it. Then you add the (2) 4tb red drives and stablebit drivepool for DE replacement. I use serviio for streaming and as far as backups, I have started to use windows builtin backups, I guess we will see how that goes the next client that dies.

But alas, there is no easy way to upgrade. Microsoft made sure of that when they abandoned the Home Server when they got greedy and wanted everybody to put their stuff on the cloud.

NAS is very tempting, I have a friend that I setup on Drobos N but the only thing about NAS is being able to access the data on the drives outside the NAS if the nas dies. With WHS that wasn't a problem.

Good Luck, hope this helps, let us know which way you decide to go, many others are in the same boat.

_________________
[X510 CPU/RAM/All 2 TB Red's] [X510 CPU/Sync'ed Backup/All 2 TB Hitachi's]
[X510 /2 in box]
[X710 LIAN LI DIY W2016E] Stablebit Drivepool [EX-503 LIAN LI 5-bay USB3 External]
Fear the Cloud

Yes, I do miss the readability of the drives outside of the NAS.
But I had to do something to get out of the storage drive limitations.
Currently I am using 3tb drives plus some 2tb drives.
I am contemplating going to 4tb or more.
Since the NAS supports 10tb drives.
I can't even begin to imagine how long it would take to replace a failed 10TB drive.

But I still have not come up with a least cost NAS backup solution.

_________________
VGA/PS2 Keyboard/PS2 Mouse/Serial debug board
Popcorn C-200
Popcorn A-200
Dune HD Connect
Rasberry PI OSMC(KODI)
ReadyNAS RN316
Amazon FireStick
Amazon ECHO
AnyDvD
MyMovies