Windows Home Server

[cavemanoc]

Finally got around to installing the RC on my server box. So far so good - pretty painless installation, and seems to be running smoothly.

I had to use XP drivers for most of the hardware as 2003 ones weren't available - and given how well they work I am wondering if the 2003 references in it aren't a porky - seems to be built on XP to me with a bit of a server add on

Has anyone else tried it yet and what are you using it for. The networking works flawlessly with my machines (Vista and XP pro) and I'm quite looking forward to the remote control side of it - though I'm pretty sure that could have been achieved with remote desktop?

I like the fact that it will do incremental backups of all my machines, and significantly saves on space by 'amalgamating' all the common elements of your backup - looking forward to testing that bit! Does anyone know how you do the restore across network if you lose a machine?

What else are you using it for - thinking about it as my media centre sine the server is tiny and nearly silent

 

[cavemanoc]

i've tested restoring across the network with it. it's very good indeed. you just boot from cd (one of the 3 isos you downloaded) and it takes a matter of just a few minutes to do a complete restore.

Brilliant - thanks for that - nice to know it works. Just need to get a decent sized drive in there now!

Will have to have a dig through the docs and see what else I can do with it. I was pleased that the box doesn't have to be logged on for it to run across the network - have it fully remote now and it would have been a royal PITA if I'd have had to attach a keyboard and monitor everytime I reset it.

 

[cavemanoc]

I've heard that the full version is out now. Can't seem to find it anywhere though.

And the connector thing don't work on x64 versions of windows at the moment so MS have released an unfinished product. That's not like them is it?

I'm not running xp64 any more unfortunately so I can't test that - but the standard connector software works beautifully - they try to bully you into setting up matching user name/passwords, but having given the advice a good ignoring it seems to work fine. It does exactly what it says on the tin - which is nice - I may well buy the full version when the time comes!

 

[cavemanoc]

Just put in a wanted in the wanted section - loads of us have bits and bobs 'in the shed' - I think I've still got a couple of 512mb sdram modules kicking around - you'd be surprised what gets forgotten at the bottom of the box (In fact I might even have a couple of 256mb modules as well which you can have for the cost of postage if I can find them!)

 

[cavemanoc]

Or a couple of Blu-Rays at up to 100Gb a piece? You'd be amazed how quickly space gets eaten up when it's available! Especially as everything moves into Hi-Def... Even at a conservative 20Gb/hr, a single series of 24 would wipe out nearly 1/2 a Tb of space!

On a side note - Wow - I just added another 1Gb F1 drive to my box - was fiddling around on the main box trying to work out how to activate it when I had a brainstorm and followed the advice on the opening screen ("...you shouldn't be here - you might break something...") - went to the console - clicked add drive and voila - how simple is that. I really really love WHS

 

[cavemanoc]

Best Anit Virus for Home Server?

I'm currently running a mix of AVG and NOD32 on my PCs and need to buy new licences so I was going to buy a multi pack to have a consitent AVG/Security suite across all PC's.

Out of the AVG's on the market is there one that is better suited for WHS out of AVG or NOD32?

Taff

Depending on how many machine you have, ESET (Nod32) do a very nice package that covers your server and 4 or 5 other machines - I'm saving up to buy it as we speak!

Funny you mention your UPS Easyrider - my belkin was recognised but doesn't load the drivers properly for some reason - must try it again.

 

[cavemanoc]

Slightly new direction...

I've run out of Sata slots on my WHS box. So far I've added one of those cheap Chinese fleabay sata cards (pci) with the extra 3 ports that allows me to add another 3 drives in JBOD. Obviously I'm not thrilled to use a cheap/nasty card in my only backup server so what is everyone else using?

I'll be looking to add a couple more drives soon so need something better. How about a SAS card - how much do the extenders cost - presumably I could have near unlimited drives off a good one? Is there a better/cheaper solution?

 

[cavemanoc]

Thanks for that - is that the SYBA 4port SATA host raid controller card by any chance? Found one at a nice price and was going to get it.

edit: I'm guessing that the software raid function means it does support JBOD?

 

[cavemanoc]

those of you with SIL RAID card and the like, what sort of transfer rates do you get over your Gb network ?

Mine averages out at about 40 - 50 mb/sec.

Sounds about right - get around that on mine - think it's more down to the network setup rather than the card though

 

[cavemanoc]

I spent the last week convincing a friend that I should build him a WHS box out of his old bits, and had a bit of a pause on the 'do I really need it?' question. It's amazing how many of WHS's features you take for granted when you've got it - in many ways it is so easy to use, that you don't realise just how simple it makes life!

I barely use half of the functionality of WHS (again part of the appeal is that you don't have to be a server admin to benfit from it, and you can take or leave it's features as you need them!) - but I love the following:

• Folder duplication - soooo simple, and a nice 'first step' to protect your important data
• Media plug-in: Still getting to grips with this, but it'll be nice to have everything integrated into the WMC shell
• 'Incremental' Backup - the fact that I have 4 machines on Windows 7 now means I can back them all up on the WHS box, but it takes only a fraction of the storage space that individual backups would need.
• Automatic drive balancing - didn't even realize it had this until I plugged in my new 1.5TB drive and it started shuffling in the background - very nice!
• Plug and Play storage upgrade: Wow - just wow - one click on the connector console and it's in the cluster - nice!

I do love the fact that you can restore nuked machines from the server as well - so simple - even if I do tend to re-install anyway

The point above is well made - you can do all of these things with other software available to the market, but I don't think any of them combine all the functionality of WHS in such a neat, easy to use, package, with so much flexibility offering feature for the casual home user, and die hard server enthusiast alike!

 

[cavemanoc]

Is there a simple way to migrate a WHS install to a different machine? I'm thinking of changing boxes and upgrading from my old P4 to a nice shiny new s939 build and wondered if there was a simple way to do it?

 

[cavemanoc]

So one should start a re-install with ALL the storage drives and the (new) system drive connected?

That's what I'm going to try - plug all drives into new machine and insert dvd - cross fingers and perform the usual ritual chicken dance

 

[cavemanoc]

I'm having a little trouble with transfer rates on my WHS and was wondering if anyone had some good diagnostic tips/tools to troubleshoot the root cause.

I'm running:
WHS (fully updated)
P4 3Ghz (ish)
512mb Ram
3x Samsung Spinpoint 1Tb
1x Samsung Spinpoint 1.5Tb
Cheaptastic Sata card (pci - 1x 1Tb and 1x1.5Tb)

I get the following:

That's transferring over wireless (54Mb/s), but I get about the same over the Gigabit ethernet. There is definitely a problem with the server - transfer rates go up and down quite considerably. The drives are sound (ran full Samsung diagnostic runs previously). I'm not sure the sata cable are connecting properly - but the nature of the case makes it hard to be 100% certain

I'm probably going to tear down the server and rebuild on my PhenomII 550 (it's gathering dust, so might as well ) as it has enough native Sata connections to do away with the horrible sata card. But I wouldn't mind doing an investigation and learning a bit more about my network along the way if someone would humour me...

 

[cavemanoc]

Is there a simple way to migrate a WHS install to a different machine? I'm thinking of changing boxes and upgrading from my old P4 to a nice shiny new s939 build and wondered if there was a simple way to do it?

Right - I have gone ahead and moved everything across to it's new home (huuuugely overpowered now on a Phenom 2 550, but at least the mobo now has 6 sata ports and gigabit lan!)

However - when I power up with the disk in the machine, there is no option to repair the installation. I can have a 'fresh installation' and that is my only option There is a drop down list, but clean install is the only option in the list. I had a sudden - very horrible - thought, my WHS discs are OEM, have I just been punked by Microsoft and my inability to read or am I missing something?

edit: The option should be "Server Reinstallation" - I don't get given this option... not sure why?

 

[cavemanoc]

Yep - turns out google really is my friend - I shuffled the disks around and made sure that the System disk was the first in line and the option magically appeared - thank goodness - busy installing as I write

 

[cavemanoc]

Another quick question - is WHS still limited by the speed of the system disk? The early white papers stated that all transfers went through your system disk before being allocated to which ever storage volume they ultimately ended up on - this meant that your write speed was limited to the speed of your system volume (you also needed enough space on it for the full file being moved or you would 'run out of space' - irrespective of how much free space was on your various storage drives.)

Is this still the case? Was considering a raid 5 setup - but this would render it pointless?

 

[cavemanoc]

RAID5 is pointless with WHS. Why bother not using the best feature on the OS.

And I believe that the landing zone was patched out.

Fantastic news about the landing zone! Was a little concerned about the longevity of my box if this were still a feature.

Correct on both counts. WHS does JBOD rather than RAID, which is sensible given it's mantra as a server where any average user could buy another HDD, chuck it in and have it just work. And yes the landing zone no longer exists.

Quite simply - Speed - (and I'm running out of Sata ports )

At the moment the server it limited by the Hard Drives (3x1Tb Samsung Spinpoint F1s and 1x1.5Tb Samsung F2 Ecogreen) - My max output rate is limited by the read speed of the HDD on which the information is stored. The only way to improve this is to either add faster HDDs or use a RAID solution - each has pros and cons, and from past experience I choose Raid 5 as the correct level of Redundancy vs Speed for a given Price

Everyone will find themselves at a different point along that sliding scale, but for me, a decent raid controller and a Raid 5 setup is about the sweet spot (loved it with my old Cheetah 15k/Scsi 320 setup on my previous non-WHS build!)

The other real issue is the fact that I am running out of SATA ports - I'm going to have to get an add-in card, I've tried a cheap one and didn't like it, so if I'm going to get a decent one (SAS) then I can't help but feel it would be a waste not to use the functionality build into it. Just because WHS is aimed at simple add-in drives for the lowest-common-denominator home user, doesn't mean we can use it in a more advanced way that better suits our needs?

I'll be posting a similar thread in the HDD section, but I may as well post it here too - anyone got any recommendation on a good SAS PCI-e card that will allow me to grow my server with a RAID-5 array (Guessing the LSI is still the preferred, or an OEM equivalent?)

 

[cavemanoc]

Used to own the Old Dell Perc 4e/DC card back in the day (upgraded RAM and everything!) they are great cards and can be had quite cheaply - love the fact that you get LSI quality at knock down prices

Speed wise it's transferring off the server that really annoys me. I often have guys popping round to grab things from my box, and it takes forever to complete the transfer. Granted, at the moment there are very few external enclosures that can sustain writes over 100MB/s (the current limit based on my Gigabit and HDDs) - but over the next year or 2 that is all going to change - Sata 3 and USB 3 (now available for external drives!) is going to seriously open up the limits and even Gigabit is going to start creaking.

On a more immediate note - my laptop has raid 0 SSDs in it so I could quite easily soak up up to 200MB/s from the server (assuming I get NIC teaming working ) - So I guess it's a combination of future proofing, and bling'ing up the system because it's Overclockers, and that's what we do

 

[cavemanoc]

I would have thought you could automate that process? Set it to Hibernate/sleep after X minutes inactivity, with a wake-on-lan letting other machines access it when required. You could then schedule it to wake up for all the backups etc... Should give it enough time to sort out all of the server administration as well?

 

[cavemanoc]

hey guys, If I reinstalled WHS on a different machine and brought all my data store hdds could I just add them to it and all be fine and dandy without losing information ?

v2 looks like itll kick my idea of a power friendly unit using an atom processor to the curb .....

You can do this (had to do it when I swapped my box onto it's new hardware) but you need to do a server rebuild, rather than fresh install. You cannot simply do a frsh install and then plug in the old drives - when you add them they will be wiped (AFAIK)

If you scroll up a couple of pages you'll see my reinstall which eventually ended well - but there are a couple of traps for players. Essentially, your Windows System disk MUST be the first device on the system (Sata port 1) (This was the case for me - might not affect you). Plug in all the drives, put the DVD in your machine, boot up, select Server Re-installation and off you go. Fantastic guide HERE - if you don't get the option for Server Re-Installation then you need to make sure that your system disk is first device recognised by your system (at a 'BIOS' level)