I decided to consolidate my NAS and my Minecraft Server into one. I picked up a copy of Windows Home Server 2011 for $35 and installed it on what used to be my Linux Minecraft Server. I am actually fairly pleased with what $35 gets you. It has a pretty nice dashboard for setting up client backups of other PCs on the network, as well as setting up media streaming and remote web access. It is also running a (limited) version of Windows Server 2008 under the hood, so you can add roles such as Web Server (IIS), Windows Server Update Services, DHCP Server, & DNS Server. I now have the server monitoring all of my PCs, backing them up, sending me alerts, and streaming/transcoding media for my various devices. There is even a nice app for my Windows Phone that allows me to remotely access my media, and do some administrative tasks such as trigger manual backups of PCs on my network.
Oh yeah, it also still runs Minecraft.
- Biostar AMD A780L3C
- AMD Athlon II X4 640 Quad Core Processor
- Kingston HyperX Red 8GB Memory
- Corsair CX430
- Corsair 200R
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
- Intel PWLA8391GT Gigabit NIC
- 1x 500GB HDD (OS/Applications)
- 2x 3TB WD Red HDD in Raid 1 (Media & Document Storage)
- 1x 3TB WD Green (Client PC Backups)
- Windows Home Server 2011
