I am thinking of planning for moving my PMS from my main desktop, and to its own device. I currently have about 9TB of data (movies, tv, music, pictures, home videos, etc…). I am running it on my Linux Mint (Cinnamon) desktop, but would like to move it to a leaner distro on the new device. I’m not interested in anything other than Linux (Win or Mac), so don’t bother. I want to be scalable for at least doubling my storage (eventually), and adding duplicity or RAID (I’m fine with either, as the data isn’t changed very often). My current desktop is only Fast Ethernet, so a Mobo with Gigabit Ethernet will help.
I’m thinking something like the PowerEdge T30 MT, so that I can run two sets (duplicated) of 10TB 7200rpm HDDs, however I’d have to forego the optical drive (a slim bluray would be nice) in order to add a (or 2) 2.5" SSDs. I was thinking I could use one of the PCIe ports for one of those M.2 SSDs, but don’t know much about them, or if they’re bootable. Like I said; I’d want to run a Linux distro for the OS running PMS. I know the SSD would only speed up navigation of PMS, which is fine by me.
Biggest considerations; it needs to be CHEAP, as I have 4 kids (one in college, one in daycare, and two in elementary school…). It also needs to be scalable with the storage, as I want to implement backup/raid/duplicity soon, but also want to be able to expand without additional hardware (other than maybe buying additional 3.5" HDDs).
I’m open to other things I haven’t thought of, but my main concern is moving PMS off my main desktop, making sure it’ll hold all of my media, streaming it to all of the devices in our house without any problems. …and of course; cost.
