6 Drive Server

Status
Not open for further replies.
T

Trepidati0n

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Oct 26, 2004
Messages
9,269
1. First thing, I am rackmount. It really isn't a negotiating point.

2. I will be running WHS. Why? I work 60 hours a week, nearly every week and rarely home on weekends. Therefore admin time must be kept to a minimum and I need a community of like minded people if I need support.

3. Because I'm using WHS, raid is not needed...nor do I want it to be needed. Between the size of the backups WHS from the machines in our house and the space left, I more or less will be operating @ 3 drives per 4 used.

4. I do not need massive space. My other boxes have the space they need. I really don't want to treat this like a SAN, but more of a NAS. Therefore things like my Sage box have 1TB of space but I really only need to backup the "core" of the system. If I lose a years worth of TV shows...who cares, just record again.

I always kept looking at the controller versus motherboard. Most multi SATA port motherboards were really cheap for 4, and stupidly expensive for 8. At that point, it was becoming cheaper to by a dual PCIe slot motherboard, put in two $19.99 2 port controlers and with the four onboard.

However, with the 740G motherboards and a certain rackmount case I found on the egg, all of a sudden, I had a way of getting a moderate sized storage system for a reasonable price.

Mobo - Gigabyte motherboard @ $70 shipped
Case - Rackmount Case @ $160 + $30 ship

The review on the egg makes me pretty condfident on this case.

CPU - 4800 Brisbane - @ $62
RAM - 2 GB of DDR2 667 @ $20 shipped AR
WHS - WHS @ $150
PSU - Seasonic 400W 80+ PSU


optical drive will not be installed since it is not needed after install (i have a couple I keep around that rotate during builds)

Drives installed will be what ever I feel like. Thought about going after the 1 TB's @ ZZF...but missed out. The 640's @ $0.13/GB at the egg aren't bad either.

The questions i'm trying ask are

1. Is there anything, for a system of this complexity that I am missing?
2. Is there any part you would have an alternate recommendation for do no increase the price?

My goal was $500 w/o drives with support ofr 6 drives. If put in all 1TB drives, the cost would then be about $0.25/GB of NAS type storage.
 
People will say that 2 gigs of RAM is overkill for WHS, i would tend to disagree.You overpaid on the SATA controllers, 20 bux will get you a 4 port PCI card, SATA150, but youre not going to dump 300gpbs from 6 drives over the PCI bus, just not going to happen.

Do you really need a rack mount case or are you getting it for the nifty SATA backplane in it? The hotswap cages, i mean.Running a wholly separate drive for the system to install itself on would be slightly beneficial, to prevent slow-downs during extended writes/reads.

Are you really dead set on an AMD system? Just curious.
 
Hey that all looks great. your going to love WHS ive been using it for about a year and a half now and its so easy, you dont have to do anything once it is set up. Only thing I might change is the mobo/cpu....I only use intel stuff now, used to love AMD but they have just gone downhill as of late and im not sure i can trust a product from a company who is going bankrupt.
 
xenotype said:
People will say that 2 gigs of RAM is overkill for WHS, i would tend to disagree.You overpaid on the SATA controllers, 20 bux will get you a 4 port PCI card, SATA150, but youre not going to dump 300gpbs from 6 drives over the PCI bus, just not going to happen.

Do you really need a rack mount case or are you getting it for the nifty SATA backplane in it? The hotswap cages, i mean.Running a wholly separate drive for the system to install itself on would be slightly beneficial, to prevent slow-downs during extended writes/reads.

Are you really dead set on an AMD system? Just curious.
Click to expand...

Good point on PCI. For some reason had in my head using PCIe.

Yes, rackmount is key. I have a 40U rack at home. A very nice on at that. Already installed is an 8 port Compaq KVM with keyboard control as well as a 1U keyboard/mouse/LCD. The price ws right though...FREE. :eek:

Not dead set, but I'm trying to find a base system (CPU mobo) that gives at least 6 SATA ports for sub $125 shipped. This is all I really need/want. My arm could be twisted, but it would have to be a value proposition. I know after seeing the Galaxy/Plut type builds it is really hard to not want to play in their shoes.

Ockie said:
I'd rather go for this case, same price, but much better and you get more hotswaps.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219004
Click to expand...

I looked at that one. But I keep hearing about it frying drives. The one thing I cannot be sure of was it user error or poor product. However, 25% of user reviews are 3/5 or below does cause me some worry. Also, I only need 5 swap type bays since the primary drive in a WHS rig does not change...it should also be the largest. A WHS primary drive is a 20GB partition for the OS and then the rest of the drive is made for the "pool".

nitrobass24 said:
Hey that all looks great. your going to love WHS ive been using it for about a year and a half now and its so easy, you dont have to do anything once it is set up. Only thing I might change is the mobo/cpu....I only use intel stuff now, used to love AMD but they have just gone downhill as of late and im not sure i can trust a product from a company who is going bankrupt.
Click to expand...

I used WHS a lot during beta. But after the bug destroyed my itunes collection (I had it backed up thank goodness), I stopped using it and waited for the power pack. Well, the power pack is here :D

I'm not sure what you are talking about with AMD. It terms of reliability, I have not seen much difference. If you have some numbers that would indicate that AMD equipment doesn't last as long as Intel equipment, I would be curious to see it.
 
Trepidati0n said:
I looked at that one. But I keep hearing about it frying drives. The one thing I cannot be sure of was it user error or poor product. However, 25% of user reviews are 3/5 or below does cause me some worry. Also, I only need 5 swap type bays since the primary drive in a WHS rig does not change...it should also be the largest. A WHS primary drive is a 20GB partition for the OS and then the rest of the drive is made for the "pool".
Click to expand...

I ran mine for little under than a year and it worked great. Also, if you are concerned about newegg reviews, be sure to check out reviews on that hot swap unit thats installed in that rack case you are looking at, the reviews are much lower... keep in mind the case you are getting is a regular rack case with a 5 in 3 hot swap unit, not a real storage solution such as the norco.

Another thing you should be aware of, you have plenty of additional drive spaces into the norco case to add your static system drive, so you don't need to occupy the hot swaps if you do not want to. And even if you used your system drive in one of the hot swaps, thats not an issue as you can't accidentally bump the hot swap unit open as you can with the case you are looking at.


Anyways, thats just my recomendation. Newegg reviews are terrible, most people who gives this a review are either noobish, expect way too much, or don't even have the product. I bet a lot of people who hard hard drives failed never bothered to check the cooling fans, they most likley were either stacking the case (blocking the top cooling fan vents) or their fans were unplugged, jammed, or simply bad.

Trepidati0n said:
I'm not sure what you are talking about with AMD. It terms of reliability, I have not seen much difference. If you have some numbers that would indicate that AMD equipment doesn't last as long as Intel equipment, I would be curious to see it.
Click to expand...


I would recomend AMD for a budget application or smaller file servers, that is what I run. You can't argue with the cost of AMD chips :D
 
Ugh...been doing some math.

Been running some math

6x500GB drives @ $75/each = $0.15/GB = $450
4x750GB drives @ $120/each = $0.16/GB = $480
3x1TB drives @ $160/each = $0.16/GB = $480 (from zzf)

However, average HDD idle power is ~9.5W for the 500/750s...but only 8 for the 1TBs

6 drives = 0.0095 kW * 6 drives * 24 hours * 365 days * $0.15/(kW*hr) = $75
4 drives = 0.0095 kW * 4 drives * 24 hours * 365 days * $0.15/(kW*hr) = $50
3 drives = 0.0080 kW * 3 drives * 24 hours * 365 days * $0.15/(kW*hr) = $32

The easy math for me, is each watt of idle power costs me $1.30 per year. With the tight pricing of HDD's right now, $/GB is not the end all number for a system even with a few drives.
 
Trepidati0n said:
I'm not sure what you are talking about with AMD. It terms of reliability, I have not seen much difference. If you have some numbers that would indicate that AMD equipment doesn't last as long as Intel equipment, I would be curious to see it.
Click to expand...

I never said that they are making bad products, i just said i dont trust their products due to the financial company's performance.
 
nitrobass24 said:
I never said that they are making bad products, i just said i dont trust their products due to the financial company's performance.
Click to expand...

amd and intel go back and forth all the time. yes intel has the advantage performance wise, amd for cost.as for the company's financial performance??? LOL most companies around the world are hurting in one form or another. if you only buy from companies that are booming then good luck to you, but i seriously doubt you'll find that many to serve your purposes, especially in the computer market.
 
Ockie said:
I'd rather go for this case, same price, but much better and you get more hotswaps.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219004
Click to expand...

I have to agree with Ockie here. I'd also recomend not using the reviews on newegg as they generaly suck.

Either case if a good option though. I'm going to end up ordering one of those 1star cases with the doors on the front this weekend to rebuild my home test server. Got a 5x3 hotswap bay to upgrade from my old 3x2 one and realized it will not fit in the case because my server case has support lips in it between drives. Now I'll end up having both sets of hotswap bays sitting around. The istar I was looking at seems to have the same hotswap bays in it I ordered too. Hell if I noticed it before I ordered the bays to begin with I would have just got it with the intent to remove the hotswap bays for my case and use it for something elce.
 
4x1TB Seagates order from ZZF (Back in Stock). The power savings alone makes them very attractive. This means I can look at other options (i.e. by a PCI/PCIe card later) for the CPU/Mobo/RAM. I have a DFI board with a 3700+ San Diego & 2GB of RAM laying around. Think I'm gonna use that. Need to find me a cheap PCIe card though.

Have an old 8500GT laying around as well. So, gonna use the old hardware. It is free. Bought the I-Star case (will take pics when I get it) and WHS from the Egg. Should have someting worth writing about mid next week.
 
Ditched the 1TB's and went with 4x750 @ $100/each. Used my old 3700+ rig w/ DFI motherboard (has 2 PCIe slots 1x16 or 2x8 and three PCI slots).

I got the case from the egg I first linked. And honestly, it is pretty nice. Much better than I expected. The hot swap bay feels rugged. Also, the thing that newegg doesn't show is that there is a SATA cable in each bay. This saved me a few bucks (about $10) from monoprice. The only bad thing, as mentioned in the egg reviews, is no doors. I can live with that. Might be able to find them elsewhere.

The motherboard area is a pseudo tray which means you can yank it out from the inside but not the outside. There is a TON of screw mount options which pretty much means any mobo you can think of (except maybe fullsize server boards) should fit nice. My ATX board fits pretty good. No documentation....but that seems to be a given from Istar.

Tomorrow it should be up and running. I will post pictures then.
 
You could have gotten pretty much the same case with doors. You loose one 5.25 inch bay though as it has 3 on each side(with one side being taken up by the hot swap bay).

Anyway they make some good stuff. Have 2 of their server cases for home use.
 
Server is up and running. My old 3700+ would have done the job, but I was having problem with the SATA drivers getting installed. So I pretty much have the mobo/RAM/CPU/Case + 750's. Found an old FSP PSU that is doing the job just fine.

Currently cost is about $400 (drives) + $370 (case, whs) + $180 (new cpu/mobo/ram) = $950. So right now I paid about $350/TB formatted. If I add in 2 more 1TB drives (when they hit about $130) the cost will be right around $300/TB of formatted space w/ complete HW/SW, which was my goal.

whs.jpg
 
Glad to hear it, its nice to see projects go from the drawing board to an actual box. :)
 
I've got a similar WHS setup. Mobo is an old socket 939 6150 w/ a 3800x2 and 2 gigs of ram.

System disk is one of the WD 640 drives. I just swapped over to this over the weekend and I'm really happy with the improvement in speed. rest of the drives are 2 750s (one Samsung, one Seagate) and a Seagate 500. I've got it in a Coolermaster 330 case.
 
Congrats, I can't wait to get my new WHS box up... such a great product.
 
Ockie said:
Congrats, I can't wait to get my new WHS box up... such a great product.
Click to expand...

It truely is because there is someting I didn't mention....my wife installed it and she isn't super computer savy. She setup users, mapped the drives, setup the backups, etc. All very simple stuff. :eek:

The only thing I did was install the missing drivers. If you bought WHS as an OEM box...pure bliss.
 
Ouch....

Well, I started actually moving large groups of data last night, and to say...right now, I am a bit disappointed. However, I don't know what the true root cause is yet. When you are moving 100 GB of Hentai and 500GB of Anime...well...speed is nice :)

1. I only have 100 MBit LAN right now (theoretical max of 12.5 MByte/second...probably more like 10-11 with overhead)
2. I have folder duplication turned on.

When I copied a large quantity of data from a local machine to the server, I was getting maybe 4-5 MBytes per second. :( It wasn't this bad in beta (but I was running single drive) Even when I was copying from share to share I was maybe hitting 7 MByte per second. That 100GB copy took 4.5 hours @ 6 MByte/second :eek:

I need to do some investigating to see if it my network (I do have SageTV and a couple of extenders running), folder duplication, or the server hardware is just somewhat ugh. Some things I do know.

1. Duplication happens almost immediately and thus will eat up system capability
2. Balancing happens all the time (i.e. it is moving data to another drive after it hits the landing pad almost right away).
3. I am not actively monitoring the system from the host (i.e. logged directly in).
4. All drivers are installed and "believed" to be correct.

I will try some things tonight.

1. Disconnect all other items from the router and shut off wireless other than the server and my local client.
2. Write a file of ~500 MByte to the server w/ and w/o duplication on a share
3. Read a single file w/ and w/o duplication on a share.
4. Then add in the other items on the network and repeat steps 2 & 3.

I should have more info after that test. I really am hoping it is a combo of duplication + LAN and thus with Gigabit + Reads = decent speeds. If not...server 2008

BTW, the backups are much better than when I was in beta. It is quite easy to open up a specific backup and yank specific files if you want.
 
swatbat said:
Thats a shit load of shokushu goukan action(tentacle rape). I mean 100 gigs of Hentai? Thats nuts.
Click to expand...

That's penuts :D

Trepidati0n said:
Ouch....

Well, I started actually moving large groups of data last night, and to say...right now, I am a bit disappointed. However, I don't know what the true root cause is yet. When you are moving 100 GB of Hentai and 500GB of Anime...well...speed is nice :)

1. I only have 100 MBit LAN right now (theoretical max of 12.5 MByte/second...probably more like 10-11 with overhead)
2. I have folder duplication turned on.

When I copied a large quantity of data from a local machine to the server, I was getting maybe 4-5 MBytes per second. :( It wasn't this bad in beta (but I was running single drive) Even when I was copying from share to share I was maybe hitting 7 MByte per second. That 100GB copy took 4.5 hours @ 6 MByte/second :eek:

I need to do some investigating to see if it my network (I do have SageTV and a couple of extenders running), folder duplication, or the server hardware is just somewhat ugh. Some things I do know.

1. Duplication happens almost immediately and thus will eat up system capability
2. Balancing happens all the time (i.e. it is moving data to another drive after it hits the landing pad almost right away).
3. I am not actively monitoring the system from the host (i.e. logged directly in).
4. All drivers are installed and "believed" to be correct.

I will try some things tonight.

1. Disconnect all other items from the router and shut off wireless other than the server and my local client.
2. Write a file of ~500 MByte to the server w/ and w/o duplication on a share
3. Read a single file w/ and w/o duplication on a share.
4. Then add in the other items on the network and repeat steps 2 & 3.

I should have more info after that test. I really am hoping it is a combo of duplication + LAN and thus with Gigabit + Reads = decent speeds. If not...server 2008

BTW, the backups are much better than when I was in beta. It is quite easy to open up a specific backup and yank specific files if you want.
Click to expand...


Disable AV
Disable FW's
How many transfer instance are you running?
Are your files large or ton of small files?
What switch do you have running?
Wha end point nic do you have running on the other machine?
Turn off duplication and see if you get any improvements
Does both machines have the latest patches?


huskerpat said:
On my 100 mb connection I get 11 mb/s transfers. Try installing a utility called teracopy (it's free) http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php. It really helps speed up transfers. it replaces the windows copy function.
Click to expand...

The utility doesn't "speed" up your connection, it simply organizes the files for single instance transfers which in the end increases your rate. It's a good program to use but you can still flat out a 100mbit line even with windows based transfers without the program provided you have good equipment at the endpoints.
 
Did some further research via some heavy handed Googling and come to find out that both duplication and balancing are significant performance hitters on write transfers. It appears my numbers for writes aren't to far off. I guess I had such a good experience with WHS and didn't worry much beyond once they fixed the corruption bug. My error.

An article I found said that he just went back to a hardware based RAID5 controller and pretty much got a nice read/write of 50 Mbyte/sec (same as server 2003 would normally give him with a share).

In short, it appears that folder duplication (a feature you set) and balancing (a feature you have no control of once you have more than one drive; its automagic) for writes is just not well optimized yet. Wonder if they would ever put in an option to "schedule" balancing and "duplication" or at least limit when they occur in order to maximize throughput.

I really do like WHS. Management is brainless. And for the $ and simplicity, it is a better deal than Server 2003/2008. If i really want duplication, performance, but not the penalty balancing:
  • Get a nice Areca card and the main drives in RAID 5 (uptime and removes data balancing)
  • Add a 1TB drive as a local backup only (new feature with the powerpack and thus count as my duplication)
  • Upload level 4 & 5 data to my webserver


Disable AV
Disable FW's
How many transfer instance are you running?
Are your files large or ton of small files?
What switch do you have running?
Wha end point nic do you have running on the other machine?
Turn off duplication and see if you get any improvements
Does both machines have the latest patches?
Click to expand...

Already done
Already done
One
Large files (200MB to 8GB)
No switch (part of tonights testing)
Onboard NIC (Realtek)
On the list of tests tonight
Yes
 
Just got home. I don't know what to make of this.

Only Server + Local Machine on Network @ 100 Mbit = 12 MByte/sec Write/Read (i.e. pretty much peak transfer)
Server, Local Machine, + Laptop streaming + 2 Sage clients on Network @ 100 Mbit = 12 MByte/sec Write/Read (i.e. pretty much peak transfer)

Therefore, I have no clue what was going on last night. However, the good news is I need my Gigabit hub/switch to take full advantage of my server.

However, I did two share transfers

Share --> Duplication Share = 9 MByte/sec
Share --> Non Dupe Share = 9 MByte/sec

Considering this is local...it does bother me somewhat that share to share transfer are that low. I was hoping for something in the area of 20-25 MByte/sec
 
Finally pulled my external hitachi drive out of its case and put it in the server. Now all 5 bays are filled. There is an add-in called disk manager (in beta for powerpack) that gives much more detail that WHS normally gives. Even allows you to draw wireframes of your drive setup so you can easily see which drive in your system is physically where and what data it has on it.

There are a ton more addins...hopefully I find some more good ones. This on, rocks the casba.


whs_dm_addin.jpg
 
I really like auto exit: http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?autocom=downloads&showfile=6
When logged in remotely, it lets me RDP to all my machines, including the server. Also lets me into my Vista Home Premium machine, which you normally can't RDP into. Also lets you do WOL and shutdown/restart machines remotely.

I also like web guide: http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?autocom=downloads&showfile=61
it lets you set up photo galleries and websites pretty easily. You can also set up your media library for remote access. It'll stream music online from your server.
 
Great news. Evidently all the issues I had...well, were not issues.

Installed the Gigabit Switch (8 port recommended in the networking formum).

large_copy_to_WHS_duplicated.jpg


On reads I'm seeing 90 MByte/second for small files and about 70 MByte/sec sustained. That roxor :)

The same goes for a share to share...it is about 50-60 MByte/second. Unfortunately it appears that when you do a share to share copy it is routed via the network. Don't ask me why...but it is. I would think a share to share copy on the same server, the server would just do a local copy...guess I was wrong.

I love it when a $50 switch effectively makes all my worries moot.
 
Finally got some pics...nothing special. Maybe some day if i'm bored I'll add extra fans and clean up the wiring, but right now...it works.

whs_server_front.JPG


whs_server_top.JPG
 
That's interesting. I've really got to get off my butt and upgrade my network to 1000Mbit stuff.
 
Thats really good for such a board.
 
Ockie said:
Thats really good for such a board.
Click to expand...

Aye, but my PC is the main PC moving data back and forth. Everything else is pretty much noise. I haven't tried yet moving multiple large files to and from the server on different machines at the same. My guess is if I did that, it would choke it. However, I am not at that point yet. Almost all the real serving comes from the Sage machine, but those are small 2-3 MBit/s streams.

I'll have to monitor the network traffic. My guess is someday I'll be able to rationalize a RAID card, but right now the performance I am getting is not making that a cost wise reality. I still have one more SATA port on that board. Another 1TB would bring my effective pool to 4.67TiB formatted. I'm okay with that.

Another nice feature of WHS is if you turn on media sharing, all machines connected to the server can effectively see everyone else's music/photo/video directories on those local machines and stream from them.
 
Figure out some more things on data balancing. It appears the algorithm for where to put the data is (Since the new power pack with the corruption bug fixed):

i.Use the volume with the least amount of free space but greater than 10GB

ii.Use the volume with the most amount of free space so long as it has more space than the Primary Volume (D volume)

iii.Use the Primary Volume (D volume)
Click to expand...

This is why the one 750GB above is so full. If you have two drives or smaller drives, this is okay. However, if you have VERY large drives (like 500GB) with no file being larger than 10GB, the balancing system may not "balance" to well. There are two keys you can set:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DriveExtender (both are DWORDS)

"SecondaryFreeSpaceDangerLevel" (defaults to 10)

"SecondaryFreeSpaceWarningLevel" (defaults to 20)

both values are measured in GB
Click to expand...

This will set the data balancing in a better way. You could even set this temporarily if you wanted all the data to be split up evenly (set them VERY large).

For duplication it is:

i.Most empty non-primary volume

ii.Primary volume
Click to expand...

This blog, really explains the system WHS uses VERY clearly.

This is why the two adjacent 750's (this was before I added the 1TB drive) are both the same amount full (I have significant folder duplication) and the main system drive is still nearly empty

http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisgray/arc...ms-used-in-power-pack-1-s-drive-extender.aspx
 
So many threads of people with WHS builds... I'm still flip-flopping turning an unloved Opteron 'puter into a WHS box but I know I'd see much higher throughput than going to my ReadyNAS NV. I keep hoping the ReadyNAS Pro would come out which would help with the throughput and still be stand-alone. But seeing all these threads and builds and how easy it is to manage and messages I've seen of painless backups. Makes it hard NOT to pull the trigger. :)

Thanks for the info and glad you got all the throughput issues worked out. And thanks for the head's up on plug-ins!
 
Oh boy...now I am 110% sold. I finally got my xxxxx.homeserver.com up and running. I can take full RDP control of any machine on the network as well as full file access to the server via secure socket (https) any where in the world. This includes drag and drop for uploading. How much time did it take me to set this feature up...15 minutes (10 of it was hacking vista home premium to support RDP).

Also...got the files needed for getting utorrent up and running as well.

NOTE: a few people have gotten full IIS up and running as well as PHP and all the supporting DB types. The power of WHS keeps growing. I'll be first in line for WHS2 (based upon server 2008) which is supposed to be 64 bit.
 
I don't see why some people don't install server 200x and get a static ip. Then they would have ad, iis, smtp, pop3, asp, ftp, terminal services, dns, printer servers, ntbackup, volume shadow copy, group policy, dhcp, ...

I can see the whs crowd saying to themselves 'Wouldn't it be nice to have ___' and a IT pro saying 'get a static IP and install server 200x.'

Most of the features of whs it seems someone can run off of xp with a few add-ons.
 
piako said:
I don't see why some people don't install server 200x and get a static ip. Then they would have ad, iis, smtp, pop3, asp, ftp, terminal services, dns, printer servers, ntbackup, volume shadow copy, group policy, dhcp, ...

I can see the whs crowd saying to themselves 'Wouldn't it be nice to have ___' and a IT pro saying 'get a static IP and install server 200x.'

Most of the features of whs it seems someone can run off of xp with a few add-ons.
Click to expand...

It would be nice if all of us had static ip addresses.

Also, it's worth noting that WHS is a Server 2003 operating system with WHS features. You can use it as a 2003 operating system and not even bother to use the WHS features. You can forgo the storage pools and setup alternative arrays and everything.


Realistically, this is Windows Server 2003 with added functionality for 139 bucks.... can't beat that.
 
piako said:
I don't see why some people don't install server 200x and get a static ip. Then they would have ad, iis, smtp, pop3, asp, ftp, terminal services, dns, printer servers, ntbackup, volume shadow copy, group policy, dhcp, ...

I can see the whs crowd saying to themselves 'Wouldn't it be nice to have ___' and a IT pro saying 'get a static IP and install server 200x.'

Most of the features of whs it seems someone can run off of xp with a few add-ons.
Click to expand...

Price comes to mind(this is comming from someone with a legit copy of server 08 std for home to replace my legit server 03 install). This is on top of the fact that whs works with vista home installs where the domain features require business or ultimate. A lot of people run vista home so this adds more expense to them. Also worth noting terminal services requires its own licensing unless you run it in admin mode.

SBS can be a good choice for power home users but even it takes some work to setup right. For those not interested in running exchange whs is an interesting option. Gives you a lot of features for just a little more then what a copy of vista/xp home would run.

I haven't really screwed with whs yet as I was kinda hoping MS would send me a free copy but they decided so far to not give it out to people in some of the partner programs I'm in. Ordered a trial copy to screw around with. Prob will end up buying a full copy at some point to play around with for some of my clients who might be a canidate for this at home.
 
piako said:
I don't see why some people don't install server 200x and get a static ip. Then they would have ad, iis, smtp, pop3, asp, ftp, terminal services, dns, printer servers, ntbackup, volume shadow copy, group policy, dhcp, ...

I can see the whs crowd saying to themselves 'Wouldn't it be nice to have ___' and a IT pro saying 'get a static IP and install server 200x.'

Most of the features of whs it seems someone can run off of xp with a few add-ons.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry to say, but you are wrong about the "wouldn't it be nice" for WHS people. Can you please show me links to sites of people who actually use WHS (not a passing install) that have complaints? Have you used WHS beyond a passing install?

I think you are trying to do something which is greatly damaging to the industry by saying "if you don't buy x, you are wrong". The fact is...for full 2003/2008 would require a great set of effort beyond what the normal person needs. This is the same mantra as linux people saying why people for it when it can be free.

The fact is that WHS for a low insertion cost provides 99% of what the normal person wants (file serving, backups, and remote to files) w/ little to no effort to get it to work. My biggest effort so far was being able to RDP into a home premium box (which home prem doesn't natively support). RDP worked instantly on my XP Pro SageTV server. Everything I have done so far has been dead simple. Anything beyond the basics has a great deal of community support as is still simple.

Put it this way....my wife does most of the admin stuff on the WHS server because she actually finds it intuitive and easy. Could you say that about 2003/2008 or any linux platform?
 
Trepidati0n said:
Put it this way....my wife does most of the admin stuff on the WHS server because she actually finds it intuitive and easy. Could you say that about 2003/2008 or any linux platform?
Click to expand...

Small Business 08 has a very nice console for people who don't really know what they are doing but it isn't out yet and it is a lot more expensive.


Only issues I know was the system screwing up files but I was under the impression that MS fixed that bug in whs a while ago(had a friend have this issue pop up).

To me it seems like a great product on paper for a home with multiple computers. People with 3 or 4 laptops/desktops(people with kids) seems to be a great place to throw this in.
 
swatbat said:
Small Business 08 has a very nice console for people who don't really know what they are doing but it isn't out yet and it is a lot more expensive.


Only issues I know was the system screwing up files but I was under the impression that MS fixed that bug in whs a while ago(had a friend have this issue pop up).

To me it seems like a great product on paper for a home with multiple computers. People with 3 or 4 laptops/desktops(people with kids) seems to be a great place to throw this in.
Click to expand...

Paper and Practice.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top