WHS - Where to start?

Oynas

Oynas

Oynas

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28 Aug 2005
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London
I'm looking to build a Windows Home Server in the coming months. Trouble is it's been a long time since I was last in the hardware game, so I don't really know where to start.

The server's purpose is going to be backing a couple of Macs, streaming media to several devices (Mac, TVs, etc.) and ripping and encoding DVD/Blu-Rays. Now I don't have any old hardware lying around, so I shall be starting from scratch.

It needs to be able to run the next version of WHS (Vail). It doesn't have to be quick at encoding, as I can leave it churning away. I was thinking maybe enough room to house at least 7 drives - 1 for the OS and three replicated pairs for data.

Anybody got any ideas in terms of hardware? Things I need to be aware of?

EDIT: not sure if this in the right location or not.
 
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Since it's Windows 2008 R2 you shouldn't have any trouble finding drivers etc. for most hardware.

A boggo 64-bit Dual core will be plenty of horsepower, more if you want to encode quicker. Perhaps also look at an Nvidia graphics card for some CUDA-assisted goodness (Or AMD if the software supports OpenCL and the like).
The only caveat I would add is, your overall system should have very low idle power simply because servers do nothing most of the time.

As for cases, something with drive bays all down the front of the case is the only thing that makes sense.
There are some budget alternatives to the Coolermaster Stacker floating around which would fit the bill nicely.
 
Thanks for the info.

This 'CUDA-assisted goodness' you speak of - is that something that will help with encoding?

Although the case is the least of my concerns at the moment, I was thinking about the Fractal Design Define R2. Do you guys think that would be suitable?
 
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I'm also looking at something similar, although mine is probably still at least 2-3 months away. The Fractal Design Define R2 is one of my favourites at the moment. It has 8 hard drive bays which makes it excellent for adding more hard drives. Only downside is I would have liked it a bit cheaper.

I was looking at something like this Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 (Socket AM3/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard [GA-M720-US3] as it has 6 SATA ports and not too expensive. Don't really know much else about this board.

Finding a low power processor seems to be a challenge. On OCUK the AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 245 2.90GHz seems to be the best to fit with above.

Again I'm not a real hardware guru so feel free to point out any flaws, just thought I'd start you off with something to look at as I have spend a little bit of time looking at the same type of thing.
 
i run mine on an amd x2 6000 2gb. i used to fold!

No need for raid. if you do, you are negating the biggest whs feature : the drive pool and folder duplication!

Get a mobo with at least 2x pcie slots, or a dozen sata ports. i gotan sli b- grade board cheap enough for mine.
 
jbs said:
I was looking at something like this Gigabyte GA-M720-US3 (Socket AM3/AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard [GA-M720-US3] as it has 6 SATA ports and not too expensive. Don't really know much else about this board.
Click to expand...

For some reason I can find this motherboard on OCUK today - was looking at it just yesterday. An alternative that I have found that also includes onboard graphics if you wish and still has 6 SATA ports -> Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H - even cheaper than the previous one.
 
Yes that is the one I was looking at. I have read that although you don't need much processing power it is advisable to have a dual core as otherwise your web interface into the server might become very slow if the server is using your only core.
 
Perhaps look at an i3 or mid-range i5 processor, since you'll be doing media encoding. This is one of the strengths of the Nehalem architecture.
Power consumption is a tad less than AMD's equivalent chips.
 
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If money is not a problem then the i3 route with the above is an option. Personally I would not go this route purely due to the higher cost. Also if it is mainly a server why would you worry about how long it takes to encode something? The 6GB/s SATA are the new faster spec, but I will be looking at some Eco/green drives which are not fast in any case and will not benefit from the better speed.

With my own little server projects I am trying to keep costs down to enable me to spend more on my main pc.
 
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