Windows Home Server Advice

Mark1989

Mark1989

Mark1989

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5 Dec 2008
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Well hello people i thought id ask for some tips here :P

Well im contemplating on having a seperate PC as a dedicated home server, Now a) Will it improving streaming hd films to my PS3/360 as my current pc obv is used for everything b) i know you can remote access to them but are they quick or is this dependant on the hardware c) do torrents work well with the server

I ask as im a n00b when it does come to servers :P
 
I, like you, toyed with the idea of a server for a while.

Now I have one I would never be without it.

In response to your questions however:

a) this will depend more on your network than the server. The server will have no trouble, but having a decent wired network will provide the biggest advantage, wifi can be problematic with HD. (I dont stream HD, I have my HD films on my HTPC hard drive)

b) what do you mean 'remote access'. I connect to my WHS though the WHS console, which is excelent for what it does, though RDC for direct access as if I was sat infront of it (again, excelent for what it does), and also over the web using the web access to files, which is great, although Ive found little use for it.

c) I have uTorrent setup on my server, with Web Access enabled so I cn view and administer torrents and everything from any PC connected to my network though a browser. I also have a little application called Send2uTorrent on my PC that means when I download a torrent file it automatically opens it, sends it to my server and starts it downloading, which is great. (I also have a desktop gadget that monitors the torrent downloads aswell.)

While it does all these things very well however, the most impressive things about WHS that I have found are the storage mirroring and the backups. Ive got 2 HDDs in my server and it flawlessly accepts new drives, and ensures folders I have set to duplicate are on atleast 2 drives in case any of them fail, all automatically.

The backup side of things is the most impressive however. It simply astonished me. I wrote more about it HERE.

Bottom line, they are great, get one.
 
Cheers for that awesome reply :D what i meant when i said remote access was for example if im at work but wish to log into it from their and set a torrent downloading so its ready for when i get home is that possible?
 
Yes, by a few means.

The remote access page allows you to RDC though a virtual network to any PC that is on and capable of recieveing RDC connection... this doesnt however include the server (the server itself doesnt appear in its own list of clients).

You can however launch the WHS Console from the web access page, and there is a uTorrent plug in that will allow you to add a torrent from within that.

You could also make the uTorrent Web Access page accessable outside your network with some setup on your router so you can connect straight to uTorrent and add a new torrent that way.

Or you could make your server RDC connection available outside your network with some router config and sign in to it from work to the desktop and add the torrent then.

Im also sure there are other ways aswell, so yes, its possible, you just have to decide how. I personally havent done this yet, but id probubly take the RDC directly into the server route, or use Log Me In to log into my server and do it all from the desktop. Mean work wont trace you connecting to torrent sites :)
 
Oh yeah, completely forgot about that trail. 120 days is pleanty of time to see if WHS is right for you.

Also, you dont need to shell out for a new PC for it either. Ive got mine running on an old SFF with an nForce2 mobo, AMD Athlon 2100+, and since 1 stick of RAM died, only 512MB DDR RAM, and it runs flawlessly. It was my old PC from years ago that sat unused for a good 18 months and was nearly chucked out!
 
Just a couple of other things;

b) Remote access - this will be limited by the upload speed of your internet connection for the Server. This will be a lot slower than the download speed on the connection many ISPs only give 512kb/s.

c) You can get addins for WHS which enable it to manage downloads/torrents etc. Sorry not too specific, as I don't use them, but I've seen them on some of the popular WHS sites.

JonRohan - I don't recommend using WHS in a VM for anything more than evaluation, especially if you are going to use multiple VHDs as the balancing/migrator software used for the storage pool could get messy.
 
Linux is certainly an option to look into if you have the patience/skills and is free.

I was just thinking, I don't recall seeing a "retail" version of WHS, only OEM versions? I suppose you might not change the server hardware very often but if you start with a small system and find it is not powerful enough you'd have to buy WHS again if you replaced the hardware.
 
theheyes said:
Linux is certainly an option to look into if you have the patience/skills and is free.

I was just thinking, I don't recall seeing a "retail" version of WHS, only OEM versions? I suppose you might not change the server hardware very often but if you start with a small system and find it is not powerful enough you'd have to buy WHS again if you replaced the hardware.
Click to expand...

it's unlikely you're going to need much power. I built mine (a K45 Shuttle, Celeron 2ghz, 2gb ram) and to he honest it's overkill for what it does. If needs be I can put a c2d in there, but I've yet to see the need to.
 
theheyes said:
Linux is certainly an option to look into if you have the patience/skills and is free.

I was just thinking, I don't recall seeing a "retail" version of WHS, only OEM versions? I suppose you might not change the server hardware very often but if you start with a small system and find it is not powerful enough you'd have to buy WHS again if you replaced the hardware.
Click to expand...

You'd most likely know straight away (before you'd activated it) if it wasn't powerful enough. There's not much going on on these boxes, even with the add-on's - I've not seen any that need much horsepower. Reasonably fast disks and network are usually more important than CPU and RAM - especially if you're streaming BD-HD/HD quality stuff.

Most likely you'd want to buy a bigger case and more drives, but that wouldn't need a new OEM version.
 
ChileanLlama said:
Jon, what are you using the server for?
Click to expand...

Not really sure yet. Ideally I'd like something to centralize my storage and use as a backup. WHS and linux can do this easily. The plus side for WHS is the nice extras you get such as remote desktop in and automatic W7, Vista, XP backup.

However, linux I can customize and do what I want with which will lead me to breaking the unit and having to restore all my files. :D. WHS is probably the best bet as I'm less likely to break it.
 
That's definitely what they're good at - they just work - and pretty reliably too.

Don't underestimate them either, under the WHS front end they are Windows 2003 server, so there's quite a lot you can do if you're feeling ambitious. Also some good addins.

The backup system is good, just been playing with a new SSD and made a mess of something, a bare metal restore over the network in less than an hour :)

I'm not a big Linux fan, mainly because I don't have the patience for configuring it, but it sounds like either solution would be good for you.

Good luck :)
 
I think I will take a look at WHS as frankly for what I need it is perfect. I'll throw in 750, 400, 300 gb drives knowing that every file is on at least one drive and have a perfectly working file server and backup my machines. Can't really go wrong.
 
Best thing about it is, it just works. So easy to clag in another drive. I started with 1.5TB of storage on 3 drives. I now have 8 in there for a totl of 6.5Tb. Everything is duplicted. It would take months to re-rip all my DVD's so I even keep a copy of all them.
 
WHS is great but the utorrent add-in I'm afraid isn't.

Its better to run utorrent as a service and setup webui, this way you can manage it from anywhere and also it can just sit there and you can forget about it if you set up RSS and folder monitoring...
 
ChileanLlama said:
PhillyDee - snap! - gone through a similar curve with mine, are you using MyMovies for DVD playback on MC?
Click to expand...

This sounds interesteing, does it work streaming DVDs over wifi?

Qu3 said:
WHS is great but the utorrent add-in I'm afraid isn't.

Its better to run utorrent as a service and setup webui, this way you can manage it from anywhere and also it can just sit there and you can forget about it if you set up RSS and folder monitoring...
Click to expand...

I agree, RSS to pick up TV downloads and Send2uTorrent on all my PCs for one click torrent starting, and my desktop uTorrent monitoring gadget and the WebUI make it excellent
 
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