Dear MDL'ers, Looking for your advice. I have 3 HP microservers which I would like to use in my home network: one for media sharing, one for general file sharing and the 3rd for PC backup. I would like to serve files to 2 Win7 desktops, a Win8 HTPC and 1-2 Win7 laptops. I am considering using Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard and/or Essentials. I used to have WHS 2011 on one microserver, but had to wipe the machine and prefer to migrate away from WHS since it is longer supported. I prefer to NOT set up a domain if not necessary. What do you suggest as the best way to set this all up cleanly? Domain/no domain? WS2012R2E as DC with other 2 WS2012R2S servers + the clients? All WS2012R2E or all WS2012R2S standalone servers?
One might think I inherited the servers from a virtualization setup and have repurposed them. Energy costs not so bad because the servers won't necessarily be on all the time (using lights out, etc.)