You're looking at desktop and wondering if you could turn it into a central way to share data on your home network.
A network attached storage solution is a perfect way to provide multiple services for your family home or small business. In my case it allowed a way to provide a file server, multiple VM's, Plex media server and a DNS Sever (Ad-Blocker).
Existing equipment is nice or at least handy, but not specifically specked out for a NAS solution. In my case I used a desktop to build a NAS. I did this because the price of RAM is really high right now and I was under utilizing my desktop due to a new laptop purchase.
I would have gone with an eight core Xeon processor and a mother board that supports more hard drives. My current configuration seems to be handling the load well.
Another benefit is consolidation of data from multiple systems onto a single file storage that has redundancy built in. In the example above you will notice a striped set of disks that copies the data across three drives. If one drive fails you still have a working file storage.
With a mirrored storage volume, each drive has a complete copy of the data. Shortly after the storage pool was brought on-line I had a drive failure. The above storage pool is in a degraded state, this indicates I have to replace the highlighted drive soon or I will lose data. This storage pool was specifically built for virtual machine use.
A file server is a great way to get everyone in your family or business to keep important data in one location. It is important to make sure all your data from multiple devices is safe and sound on a redundant file structure. This also is a great way to collaborate and share information, stream lining work-flow. Centralized file servers are heavily used in business applications, but easy to provide at home as well.
A plex media server is an out standing way to share media (movies, music, video, photos) in every room of your house and on every device you own. Plex will organize and download important information that makes your media use more enjoyable. FreeNAS offers the Plex plug-in and can serve your media from a central NAS solution
Pi-hole, is a DNS and ad-blocker that removes unwanted ads from web traffic. It also keeps your family or business from going to unwanted sites. This is a very easy to use, well built application and does exactly what it says it will. I highly recommend pi-hole to keep your family safe and making web traffic faster.
I consolidated six separate pieces of hardware into one solution. This should make operating cost much lower over time. Being able to centrally manage and collaborate all of your services on one devices will streamline and make management of your data much more efficient. FreeNAS is an open source application that is free. I highly recommend donating if you use FreeNAS long term.
In the image above you will notice all of those services are running efficiently and won't require a new CPU yet.
Take some time to build a FreeNAS system for your home or small business, you'll be glad you did!
