Home server spec

RobTi said:
WHS 2011 has a 8Gb memory limit, also you would need a graphics card when installing it, although you can run headless after its set up
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Ah cool. Thanks for the info. :) I've just upgraded to an HD 7850 on my main PC so I have an HD 6770 spare now.

imb4tman said:
Wouldn't he just use the onboard graphics?
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Once it's in use I'm sure. Although I do wonder why if I can run it headless why can't I install it headless? :confused::p
 
MarcLister said:
Once it's in use I'm sure. Although I do wonder why if I can run it headless why can't I install it headless? :confused::p
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When you're installing it you will be prompted to select a drive to install it on, enter the product key etc so you would need a monitor to see what you're doing as there won't be anyway of logging in remotely until after WHS is installed.

Edit: Missing sarcasm fail. lol
 
imb4tman said:
When you're installing it you will be prompted to select a drive to install it on, enter the product key etc so you would need a monitor to see what you're doing as there won't be anyway of logging in remotely until after WHS is installed.

Edit: Missing sarcasm fail. lol
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The onboard graphics would work though, as you suggested? :p
 
OK, I got some gear yesterday and built it all up last night. The machine even booted up first time!! :eek: This was at about 2am this morning so I left it there and I've yet to install WHS2011. I've got my two HDDs in the machine that were my external HDDs. The 500GB one is going to be the drive I install WHS onto and the 2GB one will be my initial storage drive. There's tons of stuff on there so do I need to copy it over to my main PC before I install WHS? In other words, will WHS format/wipe the storage drive when it sets everything up?

Once I've got it all running then I'll post back with the specs. ;)
 
I'm pretty sure WHS does format/wipe drives when adding them. I've never actually used it but pretty sure its one of the things that put me off in the past.
 
Well I set it all up last night. My 2TB drive didn't get formatted/wiped and I've shared some of the folders I use a lot and have been able to access them through the network. :)

The spec I went for is as follows:

Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) 1 £45.82
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard 1 £44.99
Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 64Bit (1 Server & 10 Client Licenses) - OEM (CCQ-00128) 1 £33.32
Intel Celeron G550 2.60GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail 1 £26.66
Crucial 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10600C9 1333MHz 240-Pin (CT51264BA1339) 2 £39.98
OcUK Tech Labs - Zaward Golf III Fan 120mm ZG3-120TL TRIPLE PACK 1 £6.66
 
Have a look at stablebit for a couple of apps if needed drivepool and disk scanner, if you buy 1 you get discount on the other you also get them fully functioning for 30 days (try before you buy)

Robert
 
RobTi said:
Have a look at stablebit for a couple of apps if needed drivepool and disk scanner, if you buy 1 you get discount on the other you also get them fully functioning for 30 days (try before you buy)

Robert
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Cool. I like the look of the Drivepool app. I'll have a look at both apps in more depth later.
 
The great thing about DrivePool is that you just add drives, and you don't need to worry about what files go on which drives.

I am using the equivalent of DrivePool in the original WHS, and my "Videos" share is about 3TB, and is spread across 3 drives. When I run out of space, I just add another drive and hit a single button - and it automagically uses this additional space, without having to do anything else.
 
How does DrivePool work regarding drive failures? If one drive fails do you lose everything or does it have some form of redundancy built in?
 
If you don't set up any duplication, you lose whatever was stored on that physical drive.

You can set duplication on a per-folder level, which will ensure that a copy exists on 2 separate physical disks.
 
DrivePool also has different balancing plugins, so you can choose what to do.

You can have it just put the next file on the drive with most space, put all files that are copied in a batch on the same drive, put all new files onto a "landing disk" and it'll then spread them out afterwards, or - you could even write your own balancing plugin which does it exactly how you want it to!

I'll be setting up a WHS 2011 system with DrivePool this weekend, to replace a WHS v1 setup :)

My advice as always, is get the system with the most SATA ports you can when you first build it - and make sure that it support drives >2.2TB - my "old" S775 G41 chipset motherboard didn't - hence my upgrade now to an H67 chipset board with 6 SATA ports. I've also got "only" a Celeron G550 but I could upgrade this to an i7 if I need more CPU power.
 
Confused.

Have you considered a dedicated Sata controller a dell Sas 6 i/r is £52 new gives you 8 ports, support for >2.2tb drives and will be a little more stable/quicker on speed
 
I might think about something like that as I go forward - I had been thinking about migrating from S775 to 1155 anyway (as the rest of the machines in the house are now 1155), plus, the old motherboard was ~4 years old, so I thought it best to replace it whilst it's still working, rather than risk it failing.
 
Fair enough.

A little off topic and should probably have posted this is the xbmc thread, but do you know of any equivalent to argus tv for bsd specifically freenas?
 
Holy thread revival Batman! :eek:

So 7 years, 1 month and 7 days after the last post in this thread, I've been having some issues with the server. The CPU (Intel Celeron G550 2.60GHz) overheats quite quickly to over 100oC. I have the stock Intel cooler applied to the CPU and I've just blown the dust off it and cleaned the case up. The CPU temp is currently moving between 43 and 62oC due to the processor being at 50%+ usage. The task has now finished and the CPU usge is at 0% but the temp is still hovering between 45-50oC. I know I could take the cooler off, apply some thermal paste and things would probably be OK but I have bought a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo that I plan to fit anyway as I doubt the stock cooler is up to much and if I have a third party CPU cooler to hand I might as well use it.

As it is a 2 core/2 thread CPU I wonder if it is a bit slow and could do with being replaced? I'm wondering if it would be a good opportunity to replace the Celeron G550 with a faster LGA1155 chip? I have found some Core i3 chips for a reasonable price (3240, 3225, 2120, 3220, 2100) that I could get. Would it make sense to do this so that when I fit the new heatsink, which I will do regardless of replacing the CPU, I can drop the new CPU in? My long term plan is to get a NAS like a Synology DS918+ which is a much smaller device than the Antec 300 case the server is currently using so I don't want to spend lots upgrading the CPU. The chips I've found would cost me no more than £10-15 including delivery and, along with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, is a good enough purchase to make to extend the life of the server for a bit and make it a bit more resilient to its task.

I would be very appreciative of your thoughts and suggestions on whether or not I should upgrade the CPU. :)
 
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