The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men

So here is the plan. I am going to be building a whole new system for the home server. This system is going to be utilizing an AMD A6 Quad-Core APU. This is a 2.6 GHz chip with integrated graphics. The integrated graphics will be needed for the initial setup, but then will run headless. I will be pairing this with either 4GB or 8GB of DDR3 RAM. I plan on starting out with a 32GB SSD for the Ubuntu OS. A SSD is lower power, and lasts longer than a mechanical drive. The storage will be handled with two 2TB drives to start out with; I will have the option to add another 3 large capacity drives. One will be dedicated to tv shows, and another to movies. Music isn’t really a concern with services like Spotify and Pandora. Maybe a small portion will allow us to stream music if there is a large enough base to be worth the trouble of ripping CDs. All of this will be housed inside a case, and currently the front runner is the Rosewill R5 Mid-Tower case. This case holds 6 hard drives, with the capacity for 10 fans. I like the option of having fans that blow air directly over the hard drives. This will keep the hard drives cool under pressure. To keep the CPU cool, I am looking into the Cooler Master Hyper 212 [+ or EVO]. $30, high performance. Sold.

On the software side, Ubuntu 12 is the OS of choice. In here, Plex will be running 24/7. Why Plex? The Media Server side is compatible with Ubuntu. And the client software can be installed and stream media on Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and the Roku player. That covers everything in my planned future house. Sold. For the networking, I am going to be setting up a media network. I believe that the internet is coming with us, and I want to build off this. The main can be used for guests, and general browsing. I want to use a separate router, switches, and boat loads of cables to set it up. I want to dedicate this for the media server to minimize usage, and to maximize the bandwidth available for streaming. Plan is set.

I want to test out the combo of Ubuntu and Plex on a old system to work out all the bugs, and to learn about the setup and performance. This will make the final build and setup easy as ever.

Crashplan

Crashplan is answer #2!!!

PLEX!

PLEX IS THE ANSWER!

Upgrading my digital life.

I have a few spare computer parts laying around in my life. So I have decided to make a home server. I don’t plan on using it currently in our apartment setup. I do plan on testing it and getting myself familiar with the setup needed and networking skills. I know for certain that at this time, we don’t have the infrastructure that is optimal for this network. I think I might use my parent’s house as a test bed, so to speak. But I have a few hiccups at this time. I have my elder AMD Athlon 64x2 2.7 GHz CPU with 4GB of DDR2 RAM. I am going to be using a few spare small capacity HHDs for the learning curve. On the other hand, I have a spare AM3 board that I could purchase a AMD Phenom IIx6 CPU and 2 or 4GB of DDR3 RAM to use. I will try it with the current hardware that I have on hand to see what the base performance will be. I want to use it to store all my media [Movies, TV Shows, Music, etc.] and stream it to my HTPC and any other computers and devices in my future home. My physical concerns are cooling. I want to keep the hardware cool but while minimizing noise. So I’m considering a new case for the build. Something inexpensive but with hard drive space. A full tower would be ideal because of the generous space for hard drives. This is still undecided. But I will be looking into lining the interior of the case with foam. This will reduce the amount of noise that will escape from the case from the fans, but will also reduce the amount of vibrations from the fans and spinning hard drives. As for the fans, I will use low noise, high air movement fans. On the software side, I will be trying out Ubuntu 12 as the basis for the first trial run. I think that this will do just fine due to its low hardware requirements. I just hope that this will not limit the streaming power. But if I am correct, I think that the heavy lifting for streaming content falls upon the device that is playing the content. So this is heavily in my favor. I am going to be throwing together a system in a case and getting the testing started. The fine tuning will occur when implemented in my future residence as some of it will require using features of the wireless router that will be used. Hopefully the ISP we choose lets us use our own router, so I will set up a second network to use for our own streaming, and allow the other one to be used for guests. Who knows. This will be decided as the time comes.