Building a home server........Help?

Ok guys, I have a few questions for the people that have done this in the past.  So I am would like to build a home network server, (not sure if thats the classification), to house several hdds of movies, music (preferably iTunes) as well as other media like documents and pictures.  I would like all of this to be ready accessible from smart TVs or from a HTPC or other devices.  

First will I be able to do this using a lag 775 set up.  the mother board is a MSI G41m-p33 with a Core 2 duo E8400 3.0ghz.  The mother board does support ddr3 ram up to 1333 and I have 8gb of ram for it as well as i 16x pci slot.  

Question,  will this set up be enough to run a dozen hdds with my media on it and will it populate a terabyte switch if I had a pci card with a full nic port in it.  

I do not want to run the hard drives in a raid configuration, I would like to individuals populate them with all of the data. I am not worried about a hard drive crashing since all of the data will be backed up either in a cloud or on a stored dvd and other storage formats.  

So my end goal is to have a server that will house all my data, that is networked through a switch, and from the switch out to individual interfaces (i.e. HTPC, Xbox, Playstation, iPads) 

Question,  I have what operating system should I use for the server.  I would like to find one that would power down the hdd when they are not being used and would put the computer in a sleep mode to save some power (power draw is not a big issue nor is the heat out put).  

Question,  do I really need to run 3 or 4 data line from the server to a switch, and what benefit do i gain from doing that, when from the switch to each interface position I will only have one data cable or will be using wifi to retrieve the data from the server.  

Question,  I would like to learn a lot more about setting up a home network, maybe to use as a personal cloud, media streaming (both at home and away), and maybe building a centralized gaming rig to stream my games to other devices.  Where could I go to find any information about this.  When looking at the internet and reading about this, it seems that so many people call what I want to do by a dozen different names, so I am confused with where to start.  Can someone please help by pointing me in the right direction 

 

Thanks for all the help, you guys rock.  

I feel as though I have a similar setup and might be able to answer some of your questions. My build consists of a basic ASUS P8H61-I, which I have a Core i3 2130 and 8 GB of DDR3 1333. In my build I have 2 16GB SanDisk SSDs in software raid 0, strictly for the OS which I'm using Debian 7.0. For my media storage I have 2 2.5" laptop 1TB drives which are also in software Raid 0 which works for me, but it's completely preference on how you want to do that. All of this encompassed in an In Win IW-BP671.200BL which sits at the bottom of my desk and runs nearly silently 24/7.

1st question, as I mentioned, I use Debian, but this is also completely preference. Most popular server applications are available across almost all OSs and if no there's likely replacements. Debian is capable of shutting down the disks when not in use but this will cause a bit of latency whenever you want to access media on the drives since they'll have to spin up. I also mention that mine runs 24/7 but doesn't have very high power draw when not in use. You're going to run into issues with having the machine sleep after some time, since it'll be unavailable until you manually wake it up physically, or with WOL, which can be buggy from outside the LAN.

2nd question, 3 or 4 data lines? You mean just LAN connections? In the case of gigabit ethernet, which your board supports, I would say that that should be completely fine. In most cases, there will be some bottleneck within the system that will restrict you from transferring any amount of data faster than a whole gigabit. Interface bonding (using multiple connections as 1) can be a pain and is only supported by a handful of consumer level switches, so I wouldn't worry about this on an entry home server level.

3rd question, home networking is easy as long as you have the hardware level setup. I would recommend a more recent router if you want to have the best speed and throughput to all of your devices from the server. I currently have an ASUS RT-N66U and it's great base for my home network. I can ideally get a true throughput of about 180-200mbps throughout my house and of course 800-900mbps directly to the server over ethernet, which is expected. It works great for nVidia game stream which I use between my gaming machine and nexus 10 using Limelight. As far as accessibility with the server, I have a main SMB share using smbd on debian. I also use Plex which is like the greatest thing ever for my media streaming. Plex has a self-hosted web server which you can access on any device with a web browser, and also supports DLNA which is used on all devices that don't support web browsers and/or flash for smart TVs, consoles, and just about everything else. Plex also supports streaming over the internet.

I'll go ahead and cut it off here, go ahead and ask me anything if you have further questions. Here are some relative links.

https://fanart.tv/2014/01/building-nas-media-server-part-two-operating-system/

http://lifehacker.com/5162026/best-home-server-software

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/roll_your_own_home_server2013

I would look into FreeNAS if you need lots of disks and redundancy. You can run "apps" like Plex and OwnCloud on FreeNAS too, so you should be able to find most of what you need. As far as bandwidth, you'll need to judge based on how many PCs you have. If you've got 10 devices with gigabit NICs, you'll need at least a 10gig link to the NAS for all of them to use it maxed, although you could likely get away with much less. It really is your own judgment there, bear in mind multiple Ethernet lines with link aggregation will need a somewhat fancy switch to handle it, so you'll want to factor in a smart or managed switch into your budget. I've got a little 8 port Linksys gigabit smart switch that works great, but there are other options.

Question,  will this set up be enough to run a dozen hdds with my media on it and will it populate a terabyte switch if I had a pci card with a full nic port in it.

more than enough. You can get by with an Intel Atom or AMD E-350. Also only 1 nic is needed. considering you have a switch/router you use already.

I do not want to run the hard drives in a raid configuration, I would like to individuals populate them with all of the data. I am not worried about a hard drive crashing since all of the data will be backed up either in a cloud or on a stored dvd and other storage formats.  

So my end goal is to have a server that will house all my data, that is networked through a switch, and from the switch out to individual interfaces (i.e. HTPC, Xbox, Playstation, iPads)

Dunno why you don't want some from of raid though. It's really not hard to get it running either with a program like unraid of for instance ZFS. However you don't need to use raid so it's your choice.

Question,  I have what operating system should I use for the server.  I would like to find one that would power down the hdd when they are not being used and would put the computer in a sleep mode to save some power (power draw is not a big issue nor is the heat out put).

Whatever you like, It doesn't really matter if you use Windows, a Linux distro or a form of BSD. All have their pros and cons.

Question,  do I really need to run 3 or 4 data line from the server to a switch, and what benefit do i gain from doing that, when from the switch to each interface position I will only have one data cable or will be using wifi to retrieve the data from the server.

No. The only benefit would be that instead of  copying  +-100MB/sec you can do double,triple or quadruple that speed. For playback you don't need it at all as uncompressed Blu-ray doesn't use more than 50 mbit/sec so that less than 7 MB/sec

Question,  I would like to learn a lot more about setting up a home network, maybe to use as a personal cloud, media streaming (both at home and away), and maybe building a centralized gaming rig to stream my games to other devices.  Where could I go to find any information about this.  When looking at the internet and reading about this, it seems that so many people call what I want to do by a dozen different names, so I am confused with where to start.  Can someone please help by pointing me in the right direction

Personal cloud: look into owncloud (owncloud.org) and btsync(bittorent sync)

Media streaming: If away is important you need a decent uplink to begin with, but if that's not an issue then look at Plex, Serviio and Subsonic. If it's just home then I would still say XBMC/Kodi.

Game streaming: Only Steam has an option that does that, but it does seem to work with non steam games.

As for setting it up well depends on the OS you choose so it's still a lot of searching.

Hey guys, thanks for all of the information and for all of the help.  I really couldn't ask for a better community of people.  

 

As I am unfamiliar with Windows or Linux as used in a home server setup, I would recommend FreeNAS. 

There are some videos on the site that explain the hardware build, and give a general overview of the software.  Be aware that FreeNAS has a bit of a learning curve, especially for those with limited networking knowledge, as I found out for myself.  That being said, building, and configuring my own NAS was a great, low cost learning experience for me, and can be for you if you are using existing hardware.

If nothing else, FreeNAS should be considered for its ZFS file system alone

 

you could use FreeNas, I personally would recommend something like Debian or CentOS, if you wish to purchase a licence then SUSE.

Debian is a little more out dated but stupidly solid, possibly more solid than FreeNAS, CentOS is Red Hat based, and is very well documented via Red Hat them selfs.

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/6398-howto-create-your-own-linux-home-server-using-debian/