Does anyone have any home network projects for this year?

[Jay]

Any details on specs of the 7W power draw server ?

Sorry mate, its 27W I only just noticed that typo.

the board is a Gigabyte GA-GC230D

[Sinizter]

rebuilding the server and at the same time using open solaris and zfs. giving it a new role as well as a myth-tv backend. i'm also wireing up the house to keep the cables out of the way.

Can you please post the full specs ?

Thanks

[alsenior]

Opteron 265
Asus k8n-dl
2gb ecc ram
4x 250gb hard drives
dvb-t tv card
cheap pci-e grapics card
hiper 530w psu
opensolaris with zfs raidz1

[manwithnoname]

Jay how many ports are you putting in each room?

I put RJ45 sockets in my house when I got the electricity re-wired. The original plan was for 2 ports in each of the 2 down stairs rooms and 2 ports in the 2 bigger bedrooms with all the ports leading into the other bedroom(study). I ended up putting an extra port in each of the down rooms and a port in the kitchen, as I'd put in backplates for the telephone sockets there.

It's a bit of overkill at the moment as all my computer stuff is in my study, hope to get a media pc in the front room soonish to justify all the effort. My thinking was put too many ports in rather than too few and it was a perfect opportunity to do it as I was getting the house rewired and decorated.

[peterb]

<--snip-->

It's a bit of overkill at the moment

<--snip-->

No it isn't! As you have correctly said, re-wiring the house is a perfect opportunity./ It isn't that you will wnat to use all the ports at once, but it gives you flexibility to re-arrange things as you want later - use a patch panel at the central hub (or hubs) and you can activate the ports as you need them.

If I was starting from scratch, I'd be putting at least 4 ports in main living areas (depending on size) two at each end - possibly a couple in the middle. Even if you don't put the sockets in, run the cabling. That gives you scope for multmedia, applications, VoIP and so on in the future.

[Funkstar]

Jay how many ports are you putting in each room?

for me it entirely depends on the layout of whatever property I get. But there will be a lot more than 2 ports per room. Probably two ports in every location I can think of having a network device at some point in time. If I take my current living room as an example, there would be two ports in each alcove beside the fireplace, two on the wall between hall door and kitchen door, and two in the far corner next to th window. That makes 8 in one room.

excessive perhaps, but that way I could put two network devices anywhere without network cables running in front of things.

[Jay]

2 in each location apart from behind the TV where I will put 3

[Sinizter]

2 for each place I might want to watch hi-def video over the network cables (audio+video over cat5) + 1 for any media device at this location. 2 for any network stuff - computers, whatever. And one for any place where I might want a phone.

I dont think you have can have too many ports.

[Aden]

You sir have to much money. Why not share with us?

[Jay]

I work in IT so I use quite a bit for work.

[Aden]

I work in IT so I use quite a bit for work.

Oooh nice.. Fair enough then.

I'd like to get a NAS Box setup sometime in 2009, aswell as a media PC in the lounge.. whether i can find the funds for that or not is another story.

[PeteSmith]

Becuase I am out of space as it is, it should reduce noise and it will cost less in Electricity. up to now I have spend £120 and I expect that the VMs and low power server will save me that in 12 months of electricity.

**EDIT**

thie Synology DS408 costs about £450!

£400 if you buy it direct from Synology and cut out the middleman, closer to £700 with 4 x 1TB drives. But it needs to be done as i'm running out of space and i too want to save space/power.

[Jay]

you must have money burning a hole in your pocket!

All the same my new VMWare server is probably going to be a dual quad core so I guess we are both guilty.

[Jay]

Well I have just finished the FreeNAS install, I still have a RAID 5 to setup but that can be done when my rack comes (maybe tomorrow)

The rackmount KVM arrived, its pretty cool.

anyway......





This is using an SSD for the OS so when the disks go to sleep its silent apart from one tiny 30mm fan that cools the PSU (can only hear it if you put your ear on the case)


The DVD is so you can see the actual size of this home made NAS. Freenas is pretty cool, FTP, Torrent, time server, xbox360 / PS2 encoder. I just wish it could be a DNS server, that would be the ultimate!

[Moby-Dick]

I love my freenas box

[Jay]

I love my freenas box

whats it like to update the software?

ps

My g/f asked if we could do somthing on Sunday, as a joke I said "yes, we could run some CAT5 cable round the house" and she said "yes, sounds like fun!"

She has done it before with me in work on a night shift once.

I am also going to be getting a new VM server with 2 x Quadcore in it and for a test I will be folding for Hexus for a few weeks. I can't afford to run it 24/7 but I can runit for 2 weeks just as a test