Hey all,

First post so sorry for the length but I wanted to get some advice. So I was planning on putting together my first home media server and have slowly been gathering the parts. Anyways through various deals (Microcenter bundles and hard drive sales) I ended up with the following parts:

Antec Nine hundred case
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
MSI 880G-E45
8GB (2 X 4GB) G Skill Rpjaws X
1 64 GB Kingston V+100 SSD - OS Drive
Antec TruePower Trio 650W Power Supply
2 - 2TB SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI
2 - 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 5K3000
1 - 1TB Samsung (don't remember what it was, at work now)

So here is my dilemma. I originally was going to use WHS 2011, however I keep going back and forth with all the badmouthing everyone is doing (specifically the loss of DE). Since I never used WHS v1, I really don't know what I'll be missing, but it seemed like DE made things simple for the most part. This has me leaning towards making an unRaid machine, which I know that the above really is overkill for the system. However, the features that are in WHS and the potential for add-ins to solve the DE dilemma sway back towards a WHS system. And I heard even if I feel that Add-ins aren't a good solution, using RAID-5 maybe one. I haven't really used RAID before not from lack of understanding but from sheer laziness. But here are things I want out of this server

Requirements:
- Want my computers at home backed up to something, but I know probably will do an . I currently have a HTPC and macbook pro laptop (so would need to backup the mac as well)
- Want easy access to my media with my other devices (have an xbox 360, iphone and ipad as well)
- Obviously a simpler system the better, will sacrifice price for simplicity to a certain degree

My HTPC is:

Silverstone Lascala Case
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
ASUS P5Q-Pro
ASUS EAH3650
6 GB of RAM
1 500 GB Seagate PATA Drive
1 500 GB Seagate SATA Drive
1 64 GB Kingston V+100 SSD - OS Drive
Antec TruePower TP-550 550W Power Supply

Also, I was thinking, if I was going to do the RAID-5 method, I was considering using the onboard RAID controller with Intel RST that I have for my HTPC to save on costs of a RAID controller and I heard great things about Intel RST (want to know peoples experiences).

Here are some other important details that should influence a decision:
- As you can see I don't have alotta of computers on my network
- I plan to do some transcoding for some of my movies that will be added to the media share (I guess thats really why I bought the AMD chip), but this can be done on the server or on the HTPC, doesn't matter to me.

So here is what I'm looking for as far as advice:
1) Which setup: unRaid vs WHS 2011?
2) Which machines (server and HTPC) should take which hardware (i.e. you have all the above available hardware, what do you do?)
3) Would hate to do the following, but should I just build 2 servers, as I have seen many people with an unRaid server and WHS system.

Long post I know. Thanks for any help you can provide me.

This is really a hard answer.

Based on the hardware you have:

The motherboard/cpu/ram combo would be best suited for a WHS2011 server.

The mixed drives eliminate raid. but not unRAID.
the SSD would be wasted in unRAID (might be a nice cache drive) and is to small for a system drive in WHS2011. A 160GB is required for install.

WHS2011 is still to young to make a future proof decision at this time.

unRAID is really designed just a storage solution with parity.
It has been around long enough that some people have ported some applications to it since the base is Slackware linux.
most of these apps are not officially supported, only community supported.

Over time this will happen with WHS2011.

WHS2011 is based on 2008r2, many existing apps that run on 2008, should work on WHS2011. although i am not sure it is a good idea at this time to start installing extra stuff on WHS2011 until it is better tested. I am sure we will see things modified as proper whs2011 add-ins.

If you just have the hardware sitting there collecting dust:.
I would install both options, put in all the add-ons you need and make a decision for yourself.
unRAID has a 3 drive free version, WHS2011 has a 30day download.

highlights from my personal experience:
I run both.
They each have strong points and weaknesses. I leverage the best of each and use that to my advantage.
Either one could work as an all-in-one solution for anyone though.
To me WHS2011 could be a stronger candidate if i could only have one or the other.
It also would depend on the hardware i had on hand when i make the decision.

I'm sure i missed a few points, here what is on the top of my head.

WHS2011
-better network performance. (due to to unRAID overhead of parity drive. if you have an unRAID cache drive, this is not as noticeable. If you have a fast raid on 2011, 2011 will win hands down)
-supports RAID
-RAID (if used) requires all drives to spin to read/write even for a single file. (this can use a lot of electricity and generate a lot of heat. especially if you have larger 8 - 24 drive arrays.)
-excellent bare-metal client backup and restore.
-remote access.
-based on windows (for those not comfortable in Linux command lines).
-has server console for management.
-you loose a 1 drive to 1 dive ratio for using the 2011 backup strategy as intended.
-Microsoft support
-Price (about $100US)

unRAID
-built in parity for help in preventing data loss in case of a failed drive (this causes slower network data writes unless you add a cache drive)
-You only loose 1 drive for data parity (no data backup options)
-drive pooling (all drives look like one to your client)
-only drives you are actively writing to or reading from (plus parity drive during writes) are active. the rest can spin down. this saves in power consumption and heat. especially when you have 22 drive arrays.
-Client "data only" backed-up using 3rd party crashplan (manual rebuild and restore).
-unsecured (do not expose to internet).
-bit of a learning curve if you don't know Linux
-No Gui OS
-has a web based setup/status that can be run from web capable device.
-can mix and match any drives
-can run on low end or recycled hardware.
-No official support, it is forum based community that is very active.
-price (varies with number of drives) $0-$119. you can get a second license for only $30 bucks more then a single one.

for your Mac:
WHS2011 is supposed to have Mac support, I have not seen anyone use it yet. (my mac is dead ATM.)
unRAID 5.0 betas have AFP so time machine should work natively. some people are having issues, it is still beta.


My original idea:
Build a norco 4224 with a sandybridge Xeon and put ESXi as my base OS. Then install hosted versions of WHS2011 and unRAID on the same server and use RAW device mapping to the drives for each OS.
Use the WHS2011 for client backups and the unRAID for low power drive pooling. I have yet to do this. It is a bit late now since my box is now in production. It would be a lot of work and testing to get this working smoothly.

For now, I ended up with 2 boxes. (I might still pursue this)
your hardware should support this option.

_________________
Servers:4x MSI 6676-003BUS
2x CHENBRO E8600 4Gig 1x2.5 4x1.5TB
1x CHENBRO MBD-X7SPA-HF-O 4Gig 1x2.5 4x2TB
1X Shuttle Q9550 4gig
1x i7-960 16gig
1x Norco 4220 E6550 2gig Areca w/16x2TB
1x SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPA-HF-O 4Gig 1x1.5TB 5x2TB
Clients:11 PC 1 Mac

Here's an example of why I don't miss DE (and one of the many reasons why I'm sure MS dropped it). I used the Tivo utility from HP to download files. For whatever reason it held files open. Would throw constant DE errors. I didn't even have the folder with the Tivo files duplicated - DE was just trying to get to them to migrate the files around to spread the load over the disks.

On folders I had duplication turned on, again I would get constant and seemingly random errors.

I think there are far better ways to get drive pooling - and I'm excited, now that Microsoft isn't sucking the oxygen out of the room by offering DE by default, to see what the third parties come up with. I'm not sure what's up with FlexRAID - I can't tell if it's open source, just free, or just free while it's in perpetual beta - on the surface it looks good but I haven't a chance to really figure it out yet.