What is the best software for a Win10 file and media server?

[Imacflier]

Hi, All,

Title says it all. My main computer is being repurposed into a file and media server. All computers on my net run Win10 Pro.

Lots of power in the computer (I5-4670k) and 15TB of storage. So, what software would you recommend....and why?

Thanks In Advance,
Larry

 

[Scottray]

Take a look at this ebook: https://store.wegotserved.com/collections/windows/products/building-a-windows-10-home-server-anniversary-update-edition. You can use Windows 10 as a file/media server. This keeps things simple with an OS you already know. Another alternative is FreeNAS, if you want to go the Linux route.

 

[derekullo]

Personally for a file server I'd switch to the Nas4free/Freenas OS instead of Windows 10.

Nas4free/Freenas are based on FreeBSD not linux

Even with Windows 10 Pro you still can't have more than 20 people connecting to a share at the same time, in order to encourage businesses to upgraded to Windows Server.

Nas4free/Freenas has no such limitation.

Nas4free/Freenas is a much better performing file server than Windows 10 due to the ability to use the ram of the computer hosting the data as a read cache, called the ARC, along with transparent compression of data, LZ4 compression is most popular due to its good compression and low cpu usage. (The i3 I use for my NAS4FREE running as an ftp server works perfectly even when saturating its gigabit connection.)

You can even use a solid state to increase the capacity of the read cache, called the L2ARC, or add an optional write cache for times when the NAS will be used for heavy writes, called the ZIL.

There is a bit of a learning curve, but once you have it all setup you won't need to buy another off the shelf nas again.


For instance, lets say your computer has 32 gigabytes of ram.

1 gigabyte is reserved for the OS, NAS4FREE in my case, and the rest can be used for cache'ing commonly accessed files.

This gives you 31 gigabytes in read cache, ARC, that can be accessed from ram instead of the hard drives allowing for incredibly fast reads, limited only by your gigabit/10gigabit connection assuming the data is in the cache.

Adding a solid state allows you to extend your ARC with an L2ARC.

Lets say you added a 256 gigabyte Samsung 850 Pro, this is layered behind the 31 gigabyte arc allowing for more files to be cached once you exceed 31 gigabytes.

It won't be as fast as reading from ram, but much faster and lower latency than having to read it from a hard drive array.


You can also use deduplication if you have a need for it.
Assuming you have enough ram or L2ARC to contain the dedup tables.

 

[USAFRet]

Hi, All,

Title says it all. My main computer is being repurposed into a file and media server. All computers on my net run Win10 Pro.

Lots of power in the computer (I5-4670k) and 15TB of storage. So, what software would you recommend....and why?

Thanks In Advance,
Larry

Residential or business?
How many users?

 

[Imacflier]

Residential....six users.

What about Windows Home Server 11?

 

[Scottray]

Unfortunately Windows Home Server is dead. However, I'm still using it for PC backups and file sharing. It's still working fine for these uses. Media streaming and remote access are probably weak points, though. That's why I recommended Windows 10 for you - home use, low learning curve and regular updates by MS. The NAS OS's are good if you're looking for a project and want to expand your computer knowledge.

 

[Imacflier]

Well, Scott,

You wore me down and I ordered the book you recommend....seem to be having trouble with their server though....we shall see if this old dog can manage to learn new trick!

Thanks,

Larry

 

[derekullo]

Just know that with Windows 10 Pro you can't have more than 20 people accessing your file server at the same time.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/95b6c143-f769-472c-a52f-df845b0642ea/increase-maximum-number-of-connections-limit-for-a-shared-folder?forum=w7itpronetworking

Windows 10 Pro is fine for less than 20 people, any more and you may start getting access denied messages.

This doesn't mean per file it means accessing the share in general regardless of any file any user wants.