building a server

sweat10

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Feb 16, 2015
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4,510
Hey guys, I am going to begin to get a shopping list together for a windows server. This will be my first server that I build. 2-5 users. I would be backing up files, saving files and games. Throw out some suggested builds. 500 to 1000 on budget.
 
Your price will greatly depend on how much and what kind of storage you want in your server. Budget $60-$100 per 1TB of NAS-class disk drives. If you want to protect your data against disk failures, consider RAID-0 or RAID-5 disk arrays. In any case, develop a backup plan for your data.
 
I'm looking at a mini atx or itx build 6 to 8 drives. I will likely be running the windows home server software. I plan on backing the server up on an external hard drive. I am trying to find a good motherboard along with cpu, any ideas would be a great help. I failed to mention that I would also like to stream movies from this system.
 
Your budget of $1000 will not reach for "6-8 drives", and unless you already have WHS license, you will need another $300 just for software. Windows does not need very powerfull CPU (I have mine installed on an Atom ITX board), unless your streaming will require transcoding as well.

I would go with big case (these 8 drives will generate plenty of heat), with good cooling (or separate storage enclosure with appropriate backplane). Finding a budget motherboard with 8 SATA ports will be also a challenge.
 
Windows Home Server used to cost well under $100 while it was offered. Microsoft, in their wisdom, discontinued it, and the cheapest server alternative these days is Windows Server Essentials, for about $350.

So, "Affordable" starts tending toward Linux. I was playing recently with Zentyal Communiti Edition, which appears to have everything one would like from traditional Windows Server. You have to add on top of that some streaming server, and think out how to backup your computers (WHS was really good here...)