Windows Home Server

cavemanoc said:
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?
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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 :confused: 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?:confused:

edit: The option should be "Server Reinstallation" - I don't get given this option... not sure why?
 
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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 :D
 
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?
 
PhillyDee said:
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.
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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.
 
PhillyDee said:
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.
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Fantastic news about the landing zone! Was a little concerned about the longevity of my box if this were still a feature.

SiD the Turtle said:
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.
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Quite simply - Speed - (and I'm running out of Sata ports :p)

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?)
 
Speed you say? Out of curiosity what are you doing that has a need for speed? I ask as my WHS is a Atom based server with two Samsung green drives and it has no trouble streaming high-def video to multiple rooms at the same time, transfer speeds are decent etc.

As far as a SAS card goes, Dell Perc cards are a good choice, but they can cost as much as a WHS on its own!
 
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 :p
 
If you put a full drive in, you have 2 options:

1) Move the files to the other 2 drives, then add the drive to the storage pool.
2) Add the drive to the storage pool, and lose all the files.

So - if you've got space on your current drives for the data that's already on the new one - then move it across first.

Else - you'll need to find somewhere else to stick the data before you install the drive.
 
Ah, I found out why utorrent screwed my system drive, and thought it useful enough to post:

uTorrent takes care of my P2P, podcast and other downloads. Bad news is that uTorrent kind of breaks Drive Extender from time to time. It writes to the disk to fast and shadow copy service can't follow.

The trick is to have a separate drive that is not controlled by WHS and let uTorrent use that as a download location.
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Ugh I'm having the System Share problem again, 640GB is being used up.

I'm going to have to reinstall soon anyway (trial key is expiring) so I hope that will fix it.
 
Do you need to have whs running all the time, I only want to power it on occasionally is it ok to use it like that or does it do stuff in the background so will need to left running all the time ?
 
It is designed to run 24/7, as the demigrator runs when it needs to (Thats what is responsible for drive pooling and duplication).

There are those out there that do do it though! Mine is always on.
 
I don't have mine running 24/7, but bring it out of hibernation when required, after doing all that I need to do, backups, copying over movies etc, I generally then let it run for another while so it can balance drives etc, then put it into hibernation again...
 
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?
 
Lightsout addin allows you to:

1) Shutdown/hibernate/standby whs on a schedule
2) Shutdown/hibernate/standby when no clients are connected for x amount of time

Also allows you to
1) wake up your home server when certain clients are turned on
2) Prevent your computer from shutting down if clients, network addresses are using x amount of bandwidth or if a backup is in process.
 
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