Windows Home Server

Sorry if this shouldn't go here - mods please move if that is the case but this is a hardware spec for a WHS build....

Ok, after a lot of research I have finally decided on a final spec.
Its not what I want, my brief was to get the smallest, most power efficient 4 or 5 drive system I could find with the option of multi-port aware e-sata for future drive expansion. But without spending ridiculous amounts of money, this won't happen as the kit isn't out there yet. The tranquil units are good, but so ugly and only one e-sata and I know from experience that you never have enough storage

My research left me with the following problems

mini-itx mobo - there aren't any with a decent amount of SATA ports. Habey and MSI both do itx boards with 6 sata, but project based and £200:mad:

Cases - this was a disaster, the choice is tiny. The Chenbro case is ideal,and I love it, but it doesn't take external expansion cards, only internal via a special riser, which means I cant add a multiport aware e-sata card for later expansion, otherwise, that case would be in my house now.
The Via NSD7800 is a nice case, but the included hardware is ***p and no e-sata

I have decided on the following - reluctantly

Coolermaster Elite 335 Case £34.49 - too big, ugly but the best of a bad bunch of choices
Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H £54
OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £18
Windows Home Server £100 saved as it is on MSDN
2 x WD Green Caviar 1TB (I have another 2 of these already)
CPU???
PSU???

What is the most power efficient CPU for this board, I plan to underclock the cpu to save power, but I can't see any of the energy efficient cpu's on the OCUK site such as Athlon X2 4050e or similar. Based on the choice they have, which CPU will be best?

The PSU is another sticky one, I was looking at a 380W PSU, but digging around, it would seem that they do not come with that many connectors for drives. - Are there any molex to 2 x SATA convertors, is it wise to do this?

Initially I will be OK, but that case can hold 11 HDD's (with a sata backplane) so I need to make sure anything I buy can handle that. The WD green drives take very little power, its just making sure I have the right number of connectors going forward. As I understand it, PSU's are not very efficient unless they are under load, the less load, less effiency = higher power bill (this system will be on 24/7) Am I right on this? Im worried that if I buy a 500/650W I will end up spending a fortune keeping the thing running - Im on key meter :eek:

Posting as a sanity check and for advice from the OCUK WHS community as I know there are guys out there with a lot more experience on this then me.
Im sick of feeling like Im going round in circles now - just want my server and lots of storage so I can fully digitise my home...

Over to you guys
 
If you only need 4 or 5 drives, have you considered the Asus Barebones systems?

My home server build is pretty much the same as yours (my spec is listed somewhere in this thread). I went for the 335 case because I already had too many drives for an Asus barebones. Although the 335 can take 11 drives, the top-most two 3.5" bays have no clearance between them, so any HD in there won't have any air space around for cooling. Because of this I'm limiting myself to 10 HDs, which with the 6 on-board SATA on the Gigabyte MA74 motherboard, means I can use a cheap PCI SATA card with four ports. The MA74 seems to be quite a popular choice for WHS builds.

I'm using a few molex to SATA connectors. As long as the PSU has enough power I can't see any problem in doing this.
 
I will have a look at them as I hadn't really checked them out a bit later on
The 4/5 drives is just for now to fit in a tiny case, if I rip my DVD's and all the familys music is on there I am estimating 4-5 TB with folder replication turned on, hence the need for e-sata expansion.
Cheers for the heads up, I will have a good look at these cases
 
The Asus Vintage barebones can be modified to take more HD's. There is room beneath the 3.5" bays for another HD cage with 3 or maybe 4 more drives. Extra cooling and a bigger PSU will also be needed.
 
edgedemon said:
I have decided on the following - reluctantly

Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2H £54
OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £18
Windows Home Server £100 saved as it is on MSDN
2 x WD Green Caviar 1TB (I have another 2 of these already)
CPU???
PSU???

What is the most power efficient CPU for this board, I plan to underclock the cpu to save power, but I can't see any of the energy efficient cpu's on the OCUK site such as Athlon X2 4050e or similar. Based on the choice they have, which CPU will be best?

The PSU is another sticky one, I was looking at a 380W PSU, but digging around, it would seem that they do not come with that many connectors for drives.

Initially I will be OK, but that case can hold 11 HDD's (with a sata backplane) so I need to make sure anything I buy can handle that. As I understand it, PSU's are not very efficient unless they are under load, the less load, less effiency = higher power bill (this system will be on 24/7) Am I right on this? Im worried that if I buy a 500/650W I will end up spending a fortune keeping the thing running - Im on key meter :eek:
Click to expand...

Any ideas on which CPU to get if I plan to underclock - does it matter?
Whats a good PSU, as economical as possible?
 
alle said:
...Trying to install WHS on a p5nd2-sli with a pentium D 2.8 and a 400gb sata hdd.

Always seems to restart, freeze or bsod at various points. Could be installing devices, registering devices or random places it would seem. Blue screen include PFN_LIST_CORRUPT or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or just a STOP screen etc. Could get to 24 mins to go, 19 mins or once was actually 8 mins before it froze, crashed etc. It never actually finishes :(

Tried with an 80gb sata hdd and everything went OK all installed fine.

Assuming its failing on the bigger drive (400gb, also tried 160gb same failures) because of the size and I need to load something at the beginning or after the first reboot (f6 option) what am I looking for?

Never had a problem with an OS before so any help would be appreciated :)

Thanks.
Click to expand...



...No joy with that so bought one of the Ml115g5 proliant servers for 199 quid.

Installed 1st time on the same drive that I tried before.

All running OK now :)
 
finally got there...

Had to order the CPU off another site as I wanted an Athlon x2 5050e, added 2Gb of cheap RAM to get free delivery



Order Information

Order number: OC783344
Date and time of order: 5 Apr, 09, 2:03 pm

Products and Shipping Information Shipping service: FREE SHIPPING (DPD Next Day)
Shipping Cost: £0.00
Delivery date: Tuesday 7th April 2009
Product Name Price Qty Line Total

Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (WD10EADS)£72.99 1 £72.99
Gigabyte GA-MA78G-DS3H AMD 780G (Socket AM2) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard£63.99 1 £63.99
Seasonic Silverpower 400W Power Supply£39.99 1 £39.99
Coolermaster Elite 335 Case - Black (No PSU)£25.21 1 £25.21
Noctua NF-S12 1200RPM 120mm Silent Case Fan - 3 Pin£11.99 1 £11.99
LG Vaccine 4GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive (UB4GVLNPB)£10.99 1 £10.99
Order Cost Summary

Sub Total: £225.16
Shipping: £0.00
Total Vat: £33.77
Total inc Vat: £258.93


Roll on Tuesday - cant wait..
 
edgedemon said:
Im going to use it for the install, boot off it, slipstream my SATA drivers and install the OS.
Click to expand...

You probably won't need need the SATA drivers.

I installed my WHS straight off the DVD. The only drivers I installed off the motherboard CD were the network (now upgraded from Realtek's website), video and sound.
 
Got my WHS box up and running and seems to be working fine, but have a few questions if I may...

1. Within the automatic backup time window, does the server/connector wait for the machine become idle for a certain time before initiating the backup? If so, what determines at what time during the window the backup takes place?

2. Is there any way of forcing the automatic backup to run at a specific time rather than just specifying the window?

3. Is there any way to get the server to wake the client machines from "fully off" using WoL rather than having to hibernate them?
 
Vertigo1 said:
3. Is there any way to get the server to wake the client machines from "fully off" using WoL rather than having to hibernate them?
Click to expand...
Not sure how WHS would do it, but on a normal server/client model i'd enable WoL in the BIOS of the client machine then get the relevent server side software.
So what im basically saying, is that yes, it is possible to do. :p.
But how WHS handles it, not a clue. :p
 
Yeah I know I can use WoL from the server and there's even a WoL add-in for WHS but what I don't know is whether there's any way of integrating this with the backup system so it uses WoL to fire up the client machines rather than trying to wake them from hibernate or standby.
 
I'm in the process of putting together a possible spec for a home server. It's a recent idea as I currently have a 1TB NAS on my network that has all my HD movies, photos etc on it. I just feel a server would give me more functionality with regard to backups, scalability etc Plus, I really like the home server interface

Does anyone know if it's possible to stream media without the use of an extender (ie an xbox 360 or a PS3) as I was planning on outputting via HDMI to my TV using a cheap graphics card....seeing as it would then contain all my digital media. Would it be possible to stream MKV's for example?

It's eiher this or I'll bite the bullet and go for the Western Digital HD TV unit instead :)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-269-WD

Thanks for any advice folks
 
Vertigo1 said:
Got my WHS box up and running and seems to be working fine, but have a few questions if I may...

1. Within the automatic backup time window, does the server/connector wait for the machine become idle for a certain time before initiating the backup? If so, what determines at what time during the window the backup takes place?

2. Is there any way of forcing the automatic backup to run at a specific time rather than just specifying the window?

3. Is there any way to get the server to wake the client machines from "fully off" using WoL rather than having to hibernate them?
Click to expand...

From my understanding and my running of WHS.

1&2 It doesn't wait for the client to become idle. As this computer i'm on now just did it at the start of the back up window time, WHS sent a message to this computer and a prompt came on the screen. 'Back Up about to start, click here to postpone'.
If you decide to postpone it will retry again in a set time amount.
The back up window is there so that if the PC is switched off at the start of the back up window but is switched on before the end then the back up will start, otherwise it will always try to start the back up at the start of window time.

Regards

Taff
 
xander_uk2 said:
I'm in the process of putting together a possible spec for a home server. It's a recent idea as I currently have a 1TB NAS on my network that has all my HD movies, photos etc on it. I just feel a server would give me more functionality with regard to backups, scalability etc Plus, I really like the home server interface

Does anyone know if it's possible to stream media without the use of an extender (ie an xbox 360 or a PS3) as I was planning on outputting via HDMI to my TV using a cheap graphics card....seeing as it would then contain all my digital media. Would it be possible to stream MKV's for example?

It's eiher this or I'll bite the bullet and go for the Western Digital HD TV unit instead :)

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-269-WD

Thanks for any advice folks
Click to expand...

By stream do you mean plug a TV straight into the WHS?

If so then this should be possible as you can run avi/wmv etc in the home server itself and disply to screen.

Not tried it myslef as I have a HTPC taking the feeds from my WHS and putting them onto the TV.

Don't know in particular about MKV's as I've never tried them.

Also I'd highly recomend setting up a WHS, I moved from a NAS box set up similar to yours and I find the WHS much better, especially the back up capabilities of backing up all you other networked computers and the internal back up capabilities to protect your data.

Regards

Taff
 
Ok sounds good so far :) How about this system: ASUS V4-M3N8200

All I would need is a CPU (already have 2 x 500Gb SATA drives and 4gb memory) as a basic server I guess it covers all bases?

It would be sat near my TV and connected via it's HDMI port
 
xander_uk2 said:
Ok sounds good so far :) How about this system: ASUS V4-M3N8200

All I would need is a CPU (already have 2 x 500Gb SATA drives and 4gb memory) as a basic server I guess it covers all bases?

It would be sat near my TV and connected via it's HDMI port
Click to expand...

All looks fine, one thing i would recommend is that before you commit to WHS that you get hold of the 120 day evaluation version so that you can test it all out before you spend the real money on the actual WHS licence. It's not a fully upto date version but should give you a good overview.

Regards

Taff
 
Alternatively, if you can get hold of a copy of the media, you can install the full product without a key and it'll be fully functional for 30 days. You can thus test it out and, if you decide to go for it, just buy a copy and plug the licence key in and activate, without reinstalling.
 
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