englishjohn

The dumb questions are those you dont ask... usually.. the datastores are where you store the "virtual disk images" for any guest OS you have. you do not need to buy SSD's. in most cases you can just use a mechanical drive depending on your use. I chose SSD's for pure performance. (I also have a ZFS storage array on the server for more datastore storage, thats a bit advanced for most people) It is usually recommended that you use a "raid array" on a SANs or NAS and have ESXi map to it via NFS or iSCSI for the datastore. I chose to keep it more of an all-in-one build. it is much simpler for my build. plus it is one less server to have on and cheaper both parts and electricity. if you only plan to have unraid and maybe a few windows/*nix guests. a 120-250GB mechanical drive might be all you need. Thanks for this. As the WHS will only have mymovies, itunes server and thats probably about it on it I guess a 128GBish SSD will do just fine, and have the speed to boot. Now I just need to stomach buying all the stuff, I don't suppose anyone has the winning lotto numbers they wish to share? Regards.

Hi excuse what everyone will probably think is a stupid question, but: ESXi Datastore Drives you have two of them both 200+Gb what are they actually for, why two and could I use smaller? The recommended ssds seem to be the only ssd drives which have not fallen in price, which is typical! I ask this because I keep putting off building a copy of your server. I am not overly technical at this stuff so hope to breeze through it using your guide! (Many thanks for the great post, and 40+ pages)

OK so I am amount to load up the credit card and thought I better post what I am looking at to hopefully get some constructive feedback. I would like to have the unraid and whs server in one box. I have been reading the Atlas build, though I don't know if I will be able to pull it off especially as I have never used unraid or whs. I am going to store and use it for all my dvd/blu rays, itunes server/music, mymovies ect. So the parts I have looked at are: Motherboard: Supermicro MBD-X9SCM-F-O http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?region=GB&prodID=B666946 CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1240 http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?region=GB&prodID=2115532 Memory: Kingston 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3-1333 ECC CL9 KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G http://www.lambda-tek.com/KVR1333D3E9SK2-8G-Kingston-8GB-2x4GB-DDR3-1333-ECC-CL9-Therm-Sens~cs/1855675&viewSpec=y#productTop Power Supply: Corsair AX750 Professional Series Gold 750 Watt http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?region=GB&prodID=2017085 Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 3TB http://www.ebuyer.com/319640-barracuda-3tb-sata-3-5in-7200rpm-64mb-6gb-s-in-st3000dm001 I have already purchased a IBM M1015 from ebay for £48 which should give me faster parity checks apparently? I already have 9 X 2tb Western Digital green hard drives I am not going to bother with a case at the moment as I can not decide if i want a Lian Li or a Norco equivalent, and I have perfectly good desk to lay everything on!! Any feedback thoughts will be much appreciated and the winning lotto numbers so I can pay my credit card. John