Anyone experimented with that HP MediaSmart Server thing ?

CallmeRoth · Post by **CallmeRoth** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 6:47 pm

Ive been kinda intrigued by that HP Media Server everyones talking about (mainly on podcasts).

I am very interested in buying one. However, I'd much rather run some other form of NAS due to the elimination of any proprietary hardware and software restrictions.

So I was curious how well the software on this device is, and most importantly how is it for temperatures/decibels.

I've noticed it has 2x 80?mm Fan mounts on the back.

Back view:

Thoughts anyone ?

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 7:50 pm

Well, Windows Home Server systems can be great, but the hardware varies wildly from OEM to OEM. HP has a good low-end WHS and it is readily available in the US.

However, if you are so inclined you can build your own by building a budget system and throwing a few large hard drives into it. You can purchase the Home Server OS from many online shops. The benefit of building your own is that you can use old hardware or new hardware of your choice to make sure it's quiet. The biggest downside of the HP WHS systems is that they are completely headless. If there is a problem and you can break the WHS Console (the actual WHS software) you have no way of fixing it without sending it to HP for support. If you build your own, you can have a video card and fix the problems yourself.

WHS is more than just a NAS system, which is good and bad. It's good because it allows you do so much more with the computers on the network like automatic backups, spyware/virus scan updates, file duplication, and many other things. It's bad because the file duplication feature prevents you from using a true RAID solution.

However, it's an extreme length to go to to get a NAS-type function.

aztec · Post by **aztec** » Fri Jan 23, 2009 10:30 pm

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/

Great site/for for the HP Media Server.

I'll be picking up one on the next price drop.

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Sat Jan 24, 2009 6:02 pm

Also, www.wegotserved.co.uk for addins and help once you get one up and running.

Towermax · Post by **Towermax** » Sun Jan 25, 2009 11:54 am

jhhoffma wrote: WHS is more than just a NAS system, which is good and bad. It's good because it allows you do so much more with the computers on the network like automatic backups, spyware/virus scan updates, file duplication, and many other things. It's bad because the file duplication feature prevents you from using a true RAID solution.

AFAIK, file duplication can be turned on or off at the folder/share level.

I personally have the system disk mirrored (RAID1) and use file duplication for everything else.

Here's pretty thorough discusion of the pro's and con's of RAID on WHS servers:

http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.ph ... 78&hl=RAID

jhhoffma · Post by **jhhoffma** » Mon Jan 26, 2009 10:16 am

Yes, you can turn off duplication for the shares individually.

However, while RAID1 might work on the system partition, it's pretty much useless for the drive pool as the system needs the indices (stored on one drive) and the cluster data (stored on another).