I'm toying with the idea of purchasing one of these AVS-10/4 servers to replace our existing (self-built) unraid server. We use our unraid server for basic file storage, storing backups of networked computers, and media server functions only. No plugins besides unmenu. I don't run Sickbeard, Sabnzdb, Time Machine or any other third party apps on the unraid server.

 

Questions:

 

Is the Intel Atom CPU offered sufficient for basic file sharing and media server tasks or are there reasons to consider a more powerful CPU?

 

Which AVS-10/4 configuration did you get? How do you like it? Any reviews, observations, suggestions, complaints?

Tom has stated that the ATOM server is sufficiently powerful for core UNRAID file tasks.

I have a server I built with the exact same motherboard Tom uses in that new offering, and it runs very well.    I've got 6 3TB WD Reds in it (15TB of storage), and writes are in the upper 30's, reads over 100MB/s.  Parity checks take just under 8 hours.

 

It's been absolutely rock-solid since I built it just about a year ago.

 

Can the 4 trayless 2.5" SATA drive bays used for additional array drives or is this really meant for cache drives or other?

 

You can use the 2.5" drives for whatever you want => you simply assign them as desired in the Web GUI management page.

 

They can be array drives; a cache drive; or even the parity drive [although parity would be unlikely, since the parity drive has to be >= the largest drive in the array, and that's not likely to be a 2.5" drive]

 

I'm toying with the idea of purchasing one of these AVS-10/4 servers to replace our existing (self-built) unraid server. We use our unraid server for basic file storage, storing backups of networked computers, and media server functions only. No plugins besides unmenu. I don't run Sickbeard, Sabnzdb, Time Machine or any other third party apps on the unraid server.

 

Questions:

 

Is the Intel Atom CPU offered sufficient for basic file sharing and media server tasks or are there reasons to consider a more powerful CPU?

 

Which AVS-10/4 configuration did you get? How do you like it? Any reviews, observations, suggestions, complaints?

I recently added an Ordering FAQ section for the AVS-10/4.  There's a table there, but the text reads "For most applications, we recommend the Intel Atom, which uses the least power and is perfect for archiving as well as using as a media server (e.g., streaming movies to your TV). If you need the ability to adapt digital files so they can be viewed on different playback devices (transcoding on the fly), the Core i-3 and Xeon have the performance necessary. Finally, if you want all of the above, plus virtualization (providing access to many users at once with different platforms), we recommend the Xeon."

 

TomH