Should I Go For Whs? Or Nas? Or Freenas?

[bonoz]

I want:

• * Have all my external HDDs and internal HDDs be centralized and be consolidated together as one block of space rather than divisions of 250GB or 1TB or whatever. I want many HDDs to come together as one.
• * Need good/fast audio/video streaming from within my home network and from internet.
• * Be able to connect to various media devices such as PS3/XBOX/Phone/etc.
• * I want to be able to access data not only from my home network, but anywhere where I have internet connection. Maybe even access from my Android phone.
• * Be able to download torrents/podcasts directly to itself? Create wiki server? etc.
• * Good backup utility.
• * I want to keep it simple. Use old PC components, keep cost low, etc. Be a headless unit.
• * Some extras would be nice also. Such as, PC monitoring, firewall, printer share, etc.
• * In an effort to keep things simple, is there a way I can set something like this up and integrate it within my already existing PC? Would that make much sense.

Now having said all that, what should I go for?

Thanks

 

[symboint]

What you're describing, for the most part, is very much along the lines of WHS. I put together a nice machine just for WHS and it can do most of that (and probably all of that with Add-ins).

However, I'm slowly transitioning out of WHS because it appears pretty much a dead-end system without it's excellent drive extender feature, which Microsoft has removed from the next generation of WHS. I have no plans of upgrading, and will let this machine gracefully die on the current version of WHS. As it is, the current version of WHS will no longer get support in less than two years (I believe its support cycle ends January 8, 2013 according to MS website), at which point drive extender will be truly, utterly dead. And the next generation of WHS does not have drive extender, and, from what I understand based on the latest public test release, it won't even have the share duplication feature, which was also a great, simple, and effective feature. So, because of Microsoft's lousy choices on this, I'm slowly migrating off this machine to the NAS direction. I'm hoping to be off WHS completely by the end of the year, and if the WHS hardware lasts longer, that's great, I'll probably keep it running.

I looked into the Freenas direction as well, but the purpose-built NAS products out there are so good now (power efficiency, features, stability, etc.), it made more sense for me to move the NAS direction. If you want to salvage older harder, Freenas might be a great choice.

Three of the best NAS providers I've seen in my research so far, seem to be Synology, QNAP and the NETGEAR ReadyNAS series. There are other good competitors, but I've narrowed it down to those three as a great balance of performance, features and quality (at least from the reviews). My first NAS will most likely be a ReadyNAS due to its superior built-in backup options, then likely a Synology later this year to finally replace the WHS.

Good luck with your decision! If it weren't for Drive Extender's demise, I'd say WHS was almost a perfect match for you (as it was for me), but at this stage, you're only going to get a limited amount of time with it (less than 2 years of official support, unless MS extends the service agreement with it).

 

[bonoz]

What you're describing, for the most part, is very much along the lines of WHS. I put together a nice machine just for WHS and it can do most of that (and probably all of that with Add-ins).....

What is Drive Extension?

Would a cracked version of WHS provide the same functionality? I ask this because I really just want to try it out before the next version comes along and I have to shell out for that as well.