Viewing the movies is done from my Samsung TV in the office over DLNA (via Plex) or on my main TV or bedroom TV on an AppleTV. The only caveat with iTunes is that you have to manually add new music and movies (which means I have to VNC into the server and add them manually – Plex will auto-scan for new titles). I also installed Handbrake to let the server handle all the encoding responsibilities, and Subler to attach metadata to ripped movies. I’ve installed a few pieces of software on the devices – Plex Server for sharing music and movies over DLNA to supported devices, and I keep iTunes running in the background for sharing to the two AppleTVs in the house, as well as all the iDevices (iPhone, iPad). The VPN stuff works well, except for when the unsecured WiFi I’m trying to use blocks VPN, defeating the purpose of using their unsecured WiFi in the first place (unsecured WiFi transmits everything in the clear, including cookies necessary to provide security on websites like Facebook and Twitter, unsecured WiFi is always a bad idea). This allows it to serve as a VPN endpoint as well as a Time Machine backup target for all the other Macs in the house. The OS itself has been upgraded to OS X Server. I also used Liberate to share folders on the ZFS-formatted file system over AFS (instead of SMB). I need to benchmark the array when I find more free time, although one blog post found that when using Mac ZFS, ashift=12 worked better on 4K advanced format drives. I still haven’t figured out if ashift=9 or =12 is the right configuration. ![]() I’m using Zevo ZFS to put the drives together in a RAID-Z2 array. It has four bays, each one is filled with a 3TB WD Red HDDs designed for home NAS usage. The extra storage is provided by a CineRAID USB 3.0 external storage array. The core is a 2012 Mac mini base model, upgraded by me to include a 64GB SSD (in addition to the 500GB drive it came with) as well as 16GB of RAM. What I ended up building is a Mac mini-based file server. I thought about going the NAS route (Synology or something similar) but I wanted the functionality of a full computer in addition to file storage. I realized the time was running out on that hardware and I would need to replace it. But it served well (no pun intended) up until 2012 when I had to send it in to replace the power supply at a cost of $125. ![]() It was supposed to support Time Machine backup support, but that never worked right. It was good, I expanded it to 3.5TB of storage space (about 2TB usable due to data duplication). I eventually upgraded to a HP MediaSmart Server. I built my first WHS box with two 750GB HDDs, it was good, but I outgrew that storage as I realized that I could rip and encode my DVDs and then store them on the iPhone, then play them on my PS3. Ahyoung Baek on Batteries in Five Yearsīack at CES in 2007, I was ecstatic to hear about Microsoft and HP designing a Home Server platform for people who wanted to have a centralized file storage system in their house.Brad NaPier on Tesla will miss their Model 3 $35,000 target price, but not for *that* reason.Uncle Roger on Oddly Specific SMS Spam/Phishing Attempt.Bill Nye on Oddly Specific SMS Spam/Phishing Attempt. ![]() Things that are actually risk factors for Tesla.All about that base (model): Tesla’s $35,000 car is here.Good-bye $35,000 Model 3, which we never knew.
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