Seems pretty good for the cashback price. I wonder how it would perform 24/7 with vms.

Can you get away with standard DDR 3?

http://www.serversplus.com/servers/server_bundles/203708-32gb also seems pretty good

What's the power @ wall numbers like?

​This. I'd be interested to see how the power usage compares to the Microserver

would this be any good for plex? streaming 2 x 1080p (to laptop and a new amazon fire tv box)

I have no way of measuring power draw, sorry.

I run plex server, on windows 10, in a hyper-v container, it manages to easily serve 2 devices at the same time - while several other VMs are running on the T20 box too.

similarly I'm running Plex on a Win 2016 VMWare VM along with a Win10 VM and a MacOS VM and it happily streams multiple 1080p streams to clients around the house at the same time.

Now I'm not sure how it would handle multiple Plex streams if they were all being transcoded at the same time but it's fine with the odd one transcoding. All depends on what format your Plex clients need. If they will happily playback the streams native then you'll have no issues.

Mine was bought as the lower spec Pentium dual core server then I picked up a cheap Xeon CPU on eBay (£35) as this works out much cheaper (Dual core T20 only cost me £75! and i had spare disk and Ram kicking around)

My VM's are running on SSD storage though which does make a huge performance difference and the ESXi OS is running from a 4gb USB stick.

wish I had the money the microserver gen8 has been retired in favour or a normal i3 pc it was just too noisy didn't like my 3tb hard drives they ran too hot and the graphics card noisy annoying thing this would be ideal

There's idle power draw numbers here

http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f101/dell-poweredge-t20-1031138.html

Have one of these its been on 24/7 for 18 months it has Windows 10 Pro, 16gb of stock DDR3 1866 which i think it downclocks to 1600mhz and 4x 3tb WD reds and a external 5tb drive and hasn't missed a beat. I run a Plex sever on it and serve 3-4 1080p streams no issue at all over the net to friends and family. I have another couple of HDD's to go into it but i had to buy a PCIE Sata card and some power splitters, its a rock solid server it replaced a HP N54l which ive got boxed for emergencies i had a bit of a issue installing windows onto it as some of the drivers are hard to get as its sold as a server and not meant to run a home OS but i had no choice because some of the apps i run wouldnt work but stuck with it and found them.

processor seems very close to the i5 6500 which was what I was looking for. Main difference is the i5 uses a small fabrication size so it runs cooler and uses less power. Anyone know anything else on the differences?

Home servers are to me like optical drives, no longer really necessary, unless you have a horrendous Internet connection. I have deprecated all servers in my house, they're all virtual now and all content is Internet based. Also as a home lab they're becoming redundant due to GNS3 and other software solutions. Death to home servers!

​thanks

can anyone recommend a raid card that actually works in these. Have tried a Perc H310 and it just blue screens when in Raid 1. Some mention of this on the interwebs but didn't find that until after purchase.

thanks

Well I'm going to try & flash this card to LSI firmware as it's just an LSI card anyways but cant find a guide to flashing it IR firmware, only IT firmware.

I agree...Even though my BB is 200Mbps fibre you can't beat low latency media streamed from a server on a local LAN and It's still easily accessible from anywhere using Plex and a port forward.

What do you have to hide?
Do you know how to hide?
What is your concern?
If you have something to hide then putting it on a home server is definitely not secure, the Police will search your house and take your server anyway.

The above illustrates that there's nothing to worry about unless you have something to hide and if you do it's likely criminal and if you're a criminal you know how to hide unless you're stupid or careless.

​I've got nothing to hide criminally speaking so not worried that the police will be raiding my house. LOL I'll know when I get to that stage and the server would be long gone!

I just don't want my pics/documents/life potentially being perused by the rest of the world.

if you upload to the cloud they own the files they can take a pic of your child and use it in an advert or whatever they want I don't upload anything I have a home server and store family members pics also because they are either too stupid to upload or don't often enough and lose stuff plus my server backs up to my old one at my sisters house in case my house gets robbed or whatever and she uses it to watch films on none the wiser my own cloud backup managed by me

I bought this in June, cracking unit, ended up putting Windows 10 on an ssd. then liked it so much I added an msi 1050 ti graphics card which only draws 75w. Runs great. I forgot about the cash back lol so I would recommend setting a calendar reminder so that you don't miss it.

Surely plex is a reason to have a home server?

I use Plex but all content is streamed. Plex is OK it works. As for the logic "well I have some media software that means I must get a home server", well that doesn't work for me. The only advantage for having content on a home server is you can always access it, since my Internet connection works 99.9% I have no need for a home server, ever.

​What cloud services do you use?

So what is your Plex Media Server running on?
As you need a host for PMS to run on it makes sense to me to just stuff the storage and PMS on the same device....
yeah a few thin devices like routers are now supporting PMS installs now but they don't have the grunt for multiple HD streams or transcodes.....
I'll stick with my storage at home for now....

FYI. Mine just rocked up. I went with the 32gig ECC variant. Quite a slim little machine - quite bare bones however.

I've shoved it in my rack - fits perfectly thank god. Silly me thought it was a quad core, sadly only dual :disappointed:

[edit] Take it back, it /is/ quad. Not sure why I picked that up.

​I was just going to say, you didn't order the Pentium one instead did you?

I never used the logic 'must'. But, some people, who might have an opinion based in rationality that differs from yours, and might really be into Plex as a hobby to serve content to themselves, family and friends might consider a powerful enough server to enhance their hobby.

Also, the idea that internet connections and cloud services are close to infallibility, and therefore no one needs a home server does not take into account that there are people in this country who cannot get reliable internet today and the legitimate security concerns people have regarding storing their data online. Also, there will always be a need for local intranet based content as the bleeding edge of media will always make it difficult to transfer large data using current internet connections (it took my brother four hours last night to update Star Wars Battlefront - 8.9GB - which whilst I know needed to be downloaded and could not be served locally illustrates the problems with your position). I wouldn't like to try and download a 100GB triple layer blu ray on a dodgy non optical fibre phone line for instance (feel free to say something like 'the only reason to ahve a home server is if you are a pirate').

The answer here is horses for courses. You sound like a smoker who quit after 40 years on 20 a day.

As an aside, I wouldn't rely on google exclusively for your cloud services.

http://www.dansdeals.com/archives/98444


It's unlikely to happen, but if google nuke your account, you lose access to everything.

They also dislike chargebacks and things like peoples hijacked accounts being used to run up large unpaid bills on their cloud services

As is always the case though, If your data only exists in one place then it doesn't really exist.

Cloud services are all well and good but should never be the only copy of your data.

Resorting to insults not very classy dude. Nothing more to debate with you here. Please move along.

I didn't realise I had insulted you. I was merely creating a comparison between your intransigence over your perception that home servers are redundant and that of a smoker who after quitting despises smoking. I had a co-worker a while ago who was the most lovely intelligent person, but was an ex-smoker, who when you brought up smoking would lose it as there was an emotion attached to the topic. If an insult has been hurled it is that I am 'not classy', an ad hominem attack that didn't address my fairly reasoned reply.

Anyway, as Uridium asks, if you use Plex and stream that content (whether it is transcoded or not) it means you either run a server at home, pay a fair whack for a remote server where you have privileges to run software like Plex on, or leave a PC on 24 hours a day which as far as power is concerned might be inefficient. So which is it?

​And if so, as I asked before, what cloud service do you use?

You're too fond of assumptions. I use a remote server which doesn't cost a fair whack less than £100 a year. The content of which far exceeds the capacity of most people's home server. I'm not at liberty to give the details, however as people know on here, I don't lie or exaggerate for effect. I only use streamed content, I do realise there is a place for some people to use a home server, however if your Internet connection is stable there's little reason to serve media from an antiquated server.

There's a big push towards serverless architecture. As we know in computing technology moves at an exponential rate. Don't forget that TCP/IP was not designed for the traffic of today, it was designed based on the technology at the time, one day in the distance future TCP/IP will be replaced, currently a very big task to undertake.

The reason I say death to home servers is because of the options/alternatives available. Freeing myself from a home server is one of the best things I ever did. I save time, I save money, I win. Everyone should strive to be a winner, I'm one step closer.

To be fair, my second assumption was correct then. As it appears you have some sort of privileged access to a 'good/great deal' that you can't buy off the virtual high street as your next comment suggests.


So you do indeed run a server, it is just in someone elses "house" (see air conditioned custom building somewhere). So all this is rather academic, unless you can point us to deals where we can all pay less than £100 for root access to say 6TB of server space with the ability to run VM and things like Plex on then on that count a home server might still be a viable option.


Streamed from your special access server and Netflix et al yes.


A fair point, which you made before I got involved to be honest.


We will have to agree to disagree on that. There will always be a need for offline local storage for a myriad of reasons, Plex being just one.


If you can point me to a company like ZXPlay (https://zxplay.co.uk/) that will give me what they are charging £480 a year for (Plex server, 2tb of space, 8tb bandwidth per month - £40) I might listen.


Honest questions.

How does having a remote server save you time? For instance, If I want to securely backup my DSLR photo collection of 20GB from my laptop it would be much faster doing that to my home server over LAN than it would uploading it to a remote site (even with my relitively decent Virgin 100mbps down 6mbps up broadband package).

How does it save you money? Unless you can show me GB for GB a cheaper way of securing data in a RAID environment, comparing initial investment in a home server that would say last five years, compared to five years of access to a root access server with the same capacity/ ability to support multiple 1080p streams then I am going to struggle to agree with you.

How do you win? (Ok, that was a bit snarky).

If the future brings exciting changes that make your proposition viable I might be in too! I don't have shares in QNAP.

Why would you want to backup large chunks of data at once? Unless you're a professional photographer you won't have generated that much content so quickly, so you would be backing up much smaller amounts of data on a regular basis.

I don't run a server, I stream content using someone else's server which is not my responsibility. Why would I point you to ZXPlay or similar service and why do you need what it serve, it's not relevant. If I don't want a home server then why would I want a remote server that does the same thing, surely I'd just have a home server which I don't want anyway as you probably gathered. ZXPlay is irrelevant to this conversation.

You're really over complicating things here, I don't have any privileged access, what I have anyone can access, they would need to find that out for themselves though as I choose not to reveal the source, but it's not Kodi and it uses Plex. Kodi is a terrible media solution, everything about Kodi stinks, the complexity, the fact that it's all bodged and was never designed from the ground up to do what it does. All I need is Plex, cloud software for backup, it's straight forward and simple.

i have everything backed up in the cloud on multiple cloud servers. If I need a backup locally I can stick it on a 2TB HDD or even larger if I so chose.

You keep mentioning Plex but it appears you don't have any real experience with remote Plex servers, if you did you might appreciate what I'm saying.

Not having a home server means absolutely zero maintenance, it means all the content I wish to access is still available to me the caveat being Internet access. I have no mission critical data from which I must have the facility of local storage.

Maybe I'm an exception, but I find it easy to work as I do with a bog standard 40Mb Fibre connection. I do understand the advantages of a home server, I just go with simple, simple works. Don't have server at home, don't maintain a server, don't do server. Even Microsoft realise this when they deprecated Windows Home Server, and that was some time ago. Amazon are at the forefront of serverless technology. Embrace simple, for me a home server is second hand knowledge, it's not thinking for yourself, it's "I need a home server because that's what I need isn't it? That's just how things are done." Nope it doesn't have to be that way, there are options which work and that's what I employ.

Too many chars in that last post so here's the last paragraph >

It amuses me that people go to the lengths of fretting over the filesystem, should I use ZFS or Btrfs? How should I configure everything? How much RAM do I need and how many VM's do I need to achieve all this. How do I configure everything when a disaster happens, how do I rebuild the array, OK I used ZFS but something bad has happened and it's taking me ages on stackexchange, reddit etc to work out how to repair this mess, the RAID array is borked but I thought this would be easy to fix, arghh etc. How about not choosing to configure anything, absolutely nothing. No home server, no messing about, more free time. Keep it simple people and always have a plan.

Lastly if you're learning networking try >https://www.gns3.com/

Bloody hell what am I reading if you are on this thread you are looking for a server to use at home if you set it up properly it takes care of itself I never have to do anything with mine at all. stream everything everyone can look at pictures backup to it family members included it costs sod all to leave on 24/7 no one knows what I have on it or can use what is on it for their own gain because it's on my server. everyone has a different use case for dat, streaming or whatever. if you are looking for a descent home server probably the current best option at the moment is this if you change your mind, can't configure whatever you can sell it and get most of your money back then pay for some online service that we all know get taken down, caught or just rob you no one knows where they are you have no protection at all

Basically Fishmaster is paying for access to a Private Plex server full of pirated material. Access can be bought to Loads of them on eBay/Reddit

Yep Perc H310 flashed to Dell IR firmware has solved my instability issues. Go figure, Dell's own card with it's own software is not stable in its own product. Typical Dell.

difference is I get to choose what media is on my server...your stuck with what the server owner downloads ;-)

Not true. I go away for a fortnight and easily fill up two 64gb cards with stills and video. Then when I get home that may condense down to 20gb after deleting the stuff I don't want to keep. There, you have a reasonable example.


No it isn't. Your proposal is this, that it is easier and cheaper to store your data in the cloud and also to use Plex. I ask for a real world example of this and you cannot provide one. Uridium (the OP of this deal) could.


Thanks.


You do have privileged access. Paying for a service gives you the privilege to use it. And I agree, KODI/XBMC sucks. I use to run XBMC on the oroginal xbox when it was actually quite a technological leap, when streaming stuff from say an FTP/Samba share to your TV was not as prevalent as it is now. Now the interface is showing its age. It is disorganised and not intuitive at all with a lot of redundant options and pathways. It needs a complete redesign. Plex is so much better.


Such is your choice. Some people prefer the sovereignty of maintaining their data at home, paying for hardware and electric as opposed to monthly subscription fees.


You are correct. Whilst in my younger days I was subbing to private FTPs even when on dial up (downloading 700mb divx rips was not fun in those days), and then I moved onto usenet (which is all but dead thanks to DMCA), I now mainly stick to private torrents using a good VPN. I do enjoy organising my collection using plex on a private home server too (well at the moment I have a very basic buffalo NAS connected to a raspberry PI running Rasplex and it serves me well, but I am looking at something a bit meatier). It's never occured to me, I'll be honest that someone would host PLEX servers for profit. I don't know why as I am conversant with linux box SAT card sharing schemes and CAMS etc. My finger must not be on the pulse.


True.


Bingo.


You don't but others might, which is why a sweeping statement that just because Microsoft wants to monetise could based storage home servers are an irrelevance is a daft statement to make.



Horses for courses, like I said.


We agree then.


Some people like the hobbyist portion of that statement. You neglect that in your denouncment of all home servers..


They saw the future of monetizing cloud based services that's all.


Second hand knowledge? I think that cloud-based services for data backup are the primary method which the non-tech user uses; it is integrated and encouraged into IOS, Android, Windows 10, OSX etc. Home servers have always been the preserve of the enthusiast, and nothing much has changed in this regard. Most people who don't know about data backup will be puched toward the cloud, that is the second hand knoledge.


As I said, people like to tinker. A home server is a hobby as much as it is a functional thing. You could say "why get a raspberry pi when you can buy off the shelf solutions?", to a variety of technological problems you may want to solve. People like messing. I like messing. You are the fish master. If I told you to go to Asda to buy your fish as buying rods, reels, and bait was a watse of time and money you might well tell me to get lost, as you like fishing.

Yes I can buy into the Apple ecosystem and have eveyrthing taken care of for me, and pay through the nose for the priviliege. I don't want to. I want a setup custom built for what I want. So, I want a home server.


Thanks.

I'm giving an example of I've been there done that, had the home server, had the lab, had the configuration, virtualisation is an option to replace home servers as a lab and as local storage.

I'm sorry but I must have missed an example I wanted to give, I spoke about Amazon and serverless architecture but I negated to mention their unlimited cloud storage for £55 a year. Possibly the best deal out there currently.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/clouddrive/home

Uridium is right you get to choose the media if you're in to downloading films etc, however a decent Plex service is open to request and fulfilled within 24 hours.

GNS3 is a virtual networking lab. I've seen people actually buy Cisco routers for their lab, it was the right thing to do possibly in the past, now things have moved on GNS3 takes care of that.

My passion has and is I.T. when I was 17 (i'm 46 now) there were no Internet web pages, no resources, I was a self taught hacker and I deconstructed comms interfaces and also wrote comms programs when none or hardly any existed. I was then able to get on to my school network and on to Bulletin Board Systems, by interfacing a circa 1967 acoustic coupler to a Tandy TRS80 Model III so I come from a pedigree that understands, and I understand everything you said about home servers and I agree with you, except I'm offering an alternative and that works for me. I know that one size never fits all :smiley:

Thanks. It's given me something to think about, especially now I know that subbing to a plex server is a thing. I've just looked and might take a punt.

I've tried them myself...some offer a decent enough service but quality can be a bit hit an miss. I just use https downloads now via a good cheap multihoster and that way I know what quality is on my Plex server.

in a similar vain to fishmaster I've been dabbling with kit for nigh on 30yrs now and as a day job look after datacentres full of Win/ESX/Linux servers . I actually only use my T20 a test box and ESXi host before moving stuff over to my main server.

the T20 makes a good If a little basic home server, I actually prefer the old HP Proliant ML110 as a home server but sadly that's been discontinued. the ML110 comes loaded with a ILO3 card and dual NIC as well as front drive bay access. a good alternative If you can find a cheap used one kicking about

Got a 4gb ecc module if anyone wants? Give me an offer!

This thread will give you more than enough information http://www.hotukdeals.com/misc/nvidia-shield-tv-owners-club-2337013 and ignore the fact it's based towards Nvidia Shield TV you don't need to use one, you just need anything that runs Plex. It looks like a few Kodi addons got shut down, Exodus etc, I just hate Kodi. Direct apps are all you need Mobdro is essential for TV and visit rawapk if you have Android the main movie apps are on there, in fact if you Google rawapk the links to the main apps are shown. Streaming is legal in the UK but selling Kodi boxes isn't.

Let me know which charity you collect from? Will get it sorted

Plenty of release scene sites post links, I still use jdownloader now...it has plug-ins for the multihoster I use (Real-Debrid)

If it's a 4GB module from a T20 or gen8 microsever, they sell for £20-£30 on ebay

Include the part number: HMT451U7BFR8A

I collect for 'Vastly inflated RAM prices just before Christmas because we know we can and they won't go down after Christmas because Intel and AMD ​are releasing new CPUs and chipsets in January so you're stuck with it' Please donate generously we're milking it as much as we can but a little more always helps.

I use mine for MS Active Directory, a SIP phone system, file storage and a Sage database for a small office. Been a fantastic worker.

Is the cashback still on? Doesn't say so any more on the Servers Plus web page but it does on the Servers Direct one - https://www.serversdirect.co.uk/p/1027832/dell-poweredge-t0-xeon-e3-15v3-3.-ghz-4gb-ram-1tb-hdd-tower-server