[dba-Tech] Windows Home Server update

Is that the HP Media Smart Home Server? I just looked it up on Amazon.co.uk, and it'd cost me the equivalent of $900 to buy it here. That sucks. Looks like I'll be building my own...


Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Gary Kjos
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 4:42 PM
To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Cc: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Windows Home Server update


I ordered the HP one just a moment ago. Interestingly enough I had a
hard drive crash Tuesday evening on my Vista box. It was the second
drive so it was only my data that was lost. I did have a pretty decent
backup strategy on that particular system - using th FILE BACKUP that
is built into Vista to backup on a weekly basis to an external USB
drive. Ironically it was the backup process failing on Tuesday morning
that alerted me to the drive problem. So I replaced that drive
yesterday and the data restore was running this morning when I left
for work. But I got to thinking that I don't have adequate backup
strategies for my laptop, my wife's laptop or a couple of older less
often used systems. So this morning I started looking at building a
server to run the Windows Home Server on and came to the conclusion
that I wasn't going to be saving much by rolling my own. And since I
haven't done that on a regular desktop system, perhaps geting a
prebuilt one that has the proper components that all work together
correctly might be a better choice for ME, myself and I. Well and my
wife. I mentioned to her that we hadn't backed up her system recently
this morning and she indicated that she really wouldn't want to lose
all of her e-mail and music. So I have her backing on spending the
$600. Amazon has it for $577 with Free Shipping.

GK

On 12/20/07, jwcolby <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com> wrote:
> I have ordered pieces to build my own.  I have pieces and parts (including
> the X2 processor I was going to give away) that I can use to build one of
> these things.  I did a spreadsheet to discover how much it would cost me to
> build what HP is selling for $600 and it turns out that the HP box is a
> pretty reasonable price.  It would cost me about $500 to build what they are
> selling for $600.  Of course my build has a dual core and 2 gigs of ram
> instead of a "celeron" level single core and 512M memory.  Other than that
> the specs are pretty similar, and those changes cost about $50.
>
> That is the point though is that if you build your own you can do what you
> want with the thing.  This is a Server 2003 core OS and according to what I
> saw yesterday, with RDT you can actually get in and see the OS as a true
> Windows 2003 machine instead of using the "simplified" interface that they
> provide.  This server will have "plug-ins" that can do other things like
> serve AV feeds or anything else that a server can do, so having a more
> powerful CPU and more memory might be useful.  For example you could also
> have the server do virtual machines, run SQL Server in that virtual machine
> etc.  IOW get more use out of it than just a windows home server.
>
> So anyway, I should get delivery of the OS and parts required to build one
> of these and with luck will have it done and working by the Monday.  the one
> thing I am really looking forward to is the complete and automatic backup of
> all my machines, on a "raid like" system (duplicated storage).  They claim
> to have a complete system restore form a boot CD.
>
> I'll let you know how it goes.
>
> John W. Colby
> Colby Consulting
> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> dba-Tech mailing list
> dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com
> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech
> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
>


-- 
Gary Kjos
garykjos at gmail.com
_______________________________________________
dba-Tech mailing list
dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com
http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech
Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com