Home Media Server – The Finale
Over the course of this home media server project, I’ve talked about the different home storage solutions currently on the market, outlined my thought processes while picking the parts for a custom build, and have taken you through a few stages of said build with various un-boxing, assembly, and tweaking videos.
At this point, the home media server is fully assembled, the operating system and drivers are installed, patched, and up to date, and the system’s hardware and BIOS have been tuned to my liking. The server has also been secured with Symantec Endpoint Protection 11, and it’s ready to daily use.
The server is only part of the equation, however. A server isn’t much use without client machines to access it. But the client machines must also be secured, otherwise you run the risk of passing malware from one machine to another, and potentially to the server.
I didn’t want my client machines to be bogged down with a bloated, overbearing security suite. Thankfully, Norton Internet Security 2009 proved to be just the opposite. Before I installed the suite, I recorded some performance data and found that with a “clean” OS installation on one of my client systems (one without any applications installed), it booted in about 38 seconds and had about 2.58GB (of 3GB total) available. Keep in mind, some of that memory is used for the system’s integrated GPU, so it’s not all being consumed by OS components and services.
To see what kind of effect installing the Norton Internet Security 2009 had on the system, I checked the same attributes and found that the system booted in only 41 seconds and had 2.49GB of memory available.b I should also note that my daily dealings with the server haven’t been adversely affected either–file copies to and from the client are just as speedy and there is no perceptible impact on performance with the client machine connecting to server.
This was a fun project to take on, and the ultimate result was a killer home media server. I hope you’ve all enjoyed seeing the system come to life as much as I have enjoyed detailing the entire process, and I hope that you all got something out of my posts. Until next time…
