Post Your Windows Home Server Specs

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char507

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 1, 2004
Messages
159
Heyhey,

So i've been doing a lot of research around different options for my server and I think i've finally settled on Windows Home Server. However, i'm now torn as to whether I should build my rig from scratch, buy a cheap Dell server with no OS, or buy an HP MediaSmart device. While this system will eventually be headless, it would be kind of nice to have the option of running graphics on it if I chose but that's still up in the air.

Therefore, would you guys mind posting your WHS setups / builds and maybe what you like or don't like about it? Just wanted to get some ideas before I finally settled on something.
 
My setup is in my sig. The hard drives are all in removable drive bays and I also have an external 500GB drive for doing the server backup. The server is headless and I have had very little trouble with it. You can do just about anything through the console so there isn’t really a need for a dedicated monitor. There has been the occasional time when I would have liked to have had a monitor hooked up (BIOS change), but it’s not much trouble to grab a monitor and connect it. I have been quite happy with WHS, especially since PP1.
 
WHS FTW

Setup in Sig also can see whole build here

No need for monitor
Dont need a powerful box...unless you want one(like me)
 
Mine is a
foxconn mobo
amd 3400+ 939
2gig pc3200
500gb hitachi OS
2 400gb hitachi
pci video card, 16megs tnt ;)

headless in the server rack, in a sonata case with 380w earthwatt antec psu.

I have another 400 to add. I backup only one pc, i have backed up 4 others but not on daily. Hosts all my movies and tv shows to my vmc pc. I dont have much installed, need to setup the recorded tv shows to move to the whs someday when i have time.

Farseer, are you recording with your whs also? How so if you are?
 
fireburster said:
Farseer, are you recording with your whs also? How so if you are?
Click to expand...

Yes, I use BeyondTV for live TV and recording. Though I mainly use it to stream TV to my laptop. Right now I have BeyondTV saving directly to a folder in the Video share. If you are worried about the occasional choppyness you can dedicate a HDD, outside of the storage pool, as your recording buffer.
 
char507 said:
Heyhey,

So i've been doing a lot of research around different options for my server and I think i've finally settled on Windows Home Server. However, i'm now torn as to whether I should build my rig from scratch, buy a cheap Dell server with no OS, or buy an HP MediaSmart device. While this system will eventually be headless, it would be kind of nice to have the option of running graphics on it if I chose but that's still up in the air.

Therefore, would you guys mind posting your WHS setups / builds and maybe what you like or don't like about it? Just wanted to get some ideas before I finally settled on something.
Click to expand...

You can run graphics from a mediasmart system, you just need to buy the ribbon cable/header for it... there is some guy online who makes and sells these.

Also, you can install VNC on the box and use VNC or remote desktop.


Personally I'd go for the MediaSmart.




As for your specs request, I'm spinning over 50tb's on home server.
 
E6600
Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R mATX mobo
2gb RAM
Rosewill 850w PSU
DVD drive
Rocketfish Lian-Li knock-off
1x 500gb Maxtor (OS)
2x 1tb WD GP
3x 750gb WD GP
3x 320gb 7200.11
2 SATA port adapter - Promise
4 SATA port adapter - Highpoint

Whenever the economy picks up a bit I plan to stick everything in a Norco 4020 case.
 
* Lian Li PC-75 Full Tower
* Intel Entry Server Motherboard SE7221BK1-E
* Pentium 4 540 3.2GHz
* 2x1GB Kingston DDR2 PC5300 RAM
* Supermicro / AbleCOM SP450-RP 450w Server Power Supply (30A on the 12v)
* Enermax EG285S-VB 270w MATX Power Supply (20A on the 12v)
* Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 8 port SATA Controller
* Promise SATAII150 TX4 4 port SATA Controller
* Adaptec 1210SA 2 port SATA controller
* Five x 80mm fans, one x 120mm fan - All undervolted.
* Nine x Seagate 320GB 7200.10 drives (storage)
* Four x Western Digital 160GB Scorpio drives in a 4-in-1 Hotswap Bay
* Two x 500GB Seagate 7200.9 & .10 drives (storage)
* Single 250GB Seagate 7200.10 drive (storage)
* Single 74GB Raptor 16MB Cache (System)
* ASUS DVD-ROM
 
Mine is in limbo right now. Migrated all data from my HP Proliant server running Server 2k3 to my WHS.
Right now using an older HP workstation.
P4 2.8ghz
2gb RAM
1 x 80gb Seagate barracuda for OS
1 x 250gb Maxtor Maxline II 250gb outside of storagepool (backups and misc buffering)
1 Highpoint IDE raid card
4 x 250GB Maxtor Maxline II for storage pool

I plan to add another raid card, maybe 2 more. and I have another 10 or so of those 250gb hard drives laying around. Also plan on removing hardware from that case and rackmounting when I move into my new house next month.
It's running headless in a closet right now. I do all my stuff through the console or RDP.
 
I've got it installed on the Dell listed in my sig. I only have it backing up two computers right now so it's not heavily loaded, but it does what it does without problem.
 
Mine's a collection of older parts.
MSI 6150 matx board
AMD 3800x2
2 gig ram
1 500 gig seagate, 1 750 seagate, 1 750 samsung, 1 640 western digital.
 
Just installed WHS the other night. I changed over from W2K Adv. Server. Mine is running on the Opty 148 in my sig with 1GB RAM and about 2TB of storage capacity at the moment(I have room for three more drives). It is rack mounted in a Norco 4u case. I plan to run the MyMovies server on it to feed my Vista HTPC(Opty 165 in sig). I had a few hiccups during installation which caused me to re-install a few times, but all seems to be running fine now.
 
In my sig.

Its a dell inspiron 530s i got for $160 on the outlet.

Intel Pentium Dual Core 2140
2GB DDR2
Radeon x1300
intel PCI GbE card

2 x 750 GB samsungs in the HDD bays, and crammed a 1.5tb Segate into the Optical Drive bay, so no optical but 3TB in a very small footprint.

Hoping to do a custom build soon with a mini-tower or one of those chenbro case's.
 
ABIT NF7-S
AthlonXP 1700+
1 GB RAM
1 Gb/s NIC

This plus 3 drives totaling about 500GB in the storage pool. I use this to serve video (HD), audio, and many software files to 5 other computers in the house, and have had zero issues with the fact that the machine itself is around 6 years old.
 
Alot of the stuff in here is overkill but was what I had on hand from what was my former XP fileserver/2nd PC (I don't sell my old stuff it just gets passed down to next PC).

Antec 900
Antec NEOHE550
MSI K8N NEO4 SLI Platinum
AMD 3800+
2gig ram (4x512mb)
EVGA 7900GT
4 Seagate Barracude 7200.11 1TB Drives (Internal)
2 Barracuda 7200.10 500Gig Drives (Internal in an IcyDock EZ Swap bay)
1 500gig MyBook (external backups)
2 250gig Mybook (external backups)
Plextor DVD/RW drive PATA

Nice thing when switching to WHS, I got to ditch monitor, mouse and keyboard. Yay more desk space!
 
My WHS rig is the last one in my sig. It was built out of old parts.

My dream build for a WHS:

Case: server style with lots of hot swap bays or a tower with 7+ external 5 1/4" drive bays so I can purchase a couple of hot swap cages that fit 5 drives in 3 bays
PSU: Energy efficient, reliable and 500W or less (modular might be nice to avoid clutter since you only need power connectors for the motherboard and drives)
CPU: Intel e2xxx or another energy efficient CPU (the server runs 24/7 so I want it to be an energy miser, I also store it in the closet so the less heat generated the better)
Motherboard: Reliable brand with onboard graphics (less heat and energy), lots of SATA connections and Gb ethernet (also if you want to connect up all of the hot swap drive bays it may be a good time to pick up a PCI card w/ extra SATA headers)
Memory: 2GB from a reliable brand (it's cheap these days)
Main HD: most reliable 250GB HD I can find (doesn't need to be large because it will only hold the OS and new data that has yet to be divided amongst the other drives (this is how WHS works))
Other HD: 3 1.5TB drives (I can add more later) - also a note - I would build it with only the Main HD and one additional drive first and label the logical drive designation (d, e, f, etc) on the front of the corresponding hot swap bay (this way if one of the drives fails I know which one to change) and add the remaining drives one at a time and mark them.
Optical Drive: an inexpensive DVD/RW (adds a way to copy data off the server and install the OS)
 
These are the parts I have set aside, I just have to assemble them. I'm still missing the 1TB hard drives (waiting for Black Friday deals), memory, NIC (onboard is only Fast) and WHS itself.

Case + PSU: Antec NSK4480B w/ Earthwatts 380W
Motherboard: ASUS A8V-X
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 4000+
GPU: GeForce FX5200 (forgot what brand it is)
Memory: CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB (2 x 512MB)
NIC: Intel PCI-E Gigabit
HDD: 2 x Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB + 2 x Western Digital Caviar Blue 640GB
Optical: IDE DVD-ROM
 
Case: Antec P180
PSU: Corsair HX620
Mobo: GA-P35-DS3R
CPU: Intel e4300
RAM: 2GB G.Skill DDR2 800
GPU: eVGA 8600gt
HDs: 200gb, 500gb, 750gb

Its a little overkill but right now I'm testing it out. I don't have a place for my desktop while I'm staying with my brother so its going to sit in my closet where the modem and router go so I can play with WHS and see if I should make a build for it. If I do decide to build one it is probably going to be a AMD machine with a Sempron CPU. I've priced out a build for about $300 w/o extra storage and w/ WHS. I was also thinking about an Intel Atom based server but only one PCI slot limits it too much for me.
 
Intel Atom Dual Core 1.6
2gigs DDR2
1 320gig boot drive
4 1tb seagate drives
2 1.5tb drives
Antec 280w powersupply in a custom case.
 
Shuttle SG31G2
C2D e8500
2gb Crucial Ballistix DD2 800
1tb WD GP
1tb Seagate 7200.11
and a LG GGC-H20L

I also use it for all my dvd/blu ray encoding aswell, works fantastic. :D

I love WHS.
 
CoolerMaster CM Stacker (the first one they ever made)
Gigabyte GA-EP35C-DS3R
Intel Q6600
G.Skill 4gb 800mhz DDR2
MSI GeForce 8400GS
Intel PCI-E 1x Gigabit NIC
1x Western Digital 640gb drive
4x Western Digital GP 1tb drives

I originally built this thing has a MythTV backend, and it used to have all my TV tuners. My original goal was to encode everything I recorded to commercial free x264 mkv files, which is why it's got such high specs for a file server. When I decided to convert from a MythTV backend server and frontend HTPC to WHS and Vista Media Center, this thing's extra power has gone largely to waste. Unfortunately, it's just too much of a pain to reencode VMC recorded TV shows to different formats so I just stick to skipping commercials manually and storing the full sizes.

I just recently ordered two more WD GP 1tb drives that should get here Monday. Once they do, I'll be able to turn duplication on for all of my shares.

I found that the onboard gigabit NIC was crap so I bought the Intel one. That combined with jumbo frames on my D-Link gigabit switch and the Intel LAN chip in my laptop has resulted in about 60-75mbyte/sec transfer speeds, which is a HUGE improvement over the 20mbyte/sec before with the onboard nic and an old Dell Powerconnect gigabit switch.

I really wish WHS integrated better with VMC. I would have kept the TV tuners in the server if there was a way to record in WHS and stream to VMC- like my MythTV setup did. But I can live with this as is. WHS is really, really excellent software. I've already had to do a couple restores from backup so far and it has worked wonders. It's so easy to manage, MUCH better than my old Gentoo setup.
 
I think this thread has been beaten to death but I'll throw in my hat because I'm such a big fan of WHS

Currently running on a franken machine, a gigabyte board with 8 SATA ports. 1 x 750 WD, 1 x 320WD, 1 x 300 Seagate. 1.2TB total storage. I have another 1 x 1TB WD GP drive on the way.
Pentium 4 2.8 underclocked to 1.8
2 x 512mb kingston memory
headless, no video card.
430w 80+ Antec psu.

backing up my desktop, my laptop, wife's laptop and roomate's desktop.

Using Live Mesh to sync pictures and music with my brother's WHS in Seattle. I also sync my photos off island, with him.
 
EnderW said:
motherboard?
Click to expand...

Since the Atom 330 is fused with the motherboard and that there are only two retail Atom 330 motherboard/CPUs combo, I'm fairly certain it's one of these:

Intel BOXD945GCLF2 Atom 330 Intel 945GC Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo
ECS 945GCT-D Intel Atom Intel 945GC Mini-DTX Motherboard/CPU Combo

brownkc said:
My dream build for a WHS:

Case: server style with lots of hot swap bays or a tower with 7+ external 5 1/4" drive bays so I can purchase a couple of hot swap cages that fit 5 drives in 3 bays
PSU: Energy efficient, reliable and 500W or less (modular might be nice to avoid clutter since you only need power connectors for the motherboard and drives)
Click to expand...
Actually there is a server case that's perfect for your "dream" build:
NORCO RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Server Case - $290

It has 20 hot-swap bays in addition to one HDD bay for the OS. Considering that a single 5in3 hotswap bay costs $100, the Norco with 20 hotswap bays, a case, and room for a OS drive and a slim DVD drive for $300 is an awesome deal. Though with 21 drives, I'd recommend getting at least a quality 750W PSU like the Corsair 750TX and PC P&C Silencer 750
 
Antec 300
Antec earthwatts EA500 500W
GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2
AMD Athlon 64 LE-1600 2.2GHz Socket AM2 45W
Kingston 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)
6 x Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB
 
I just installed mine on a Dell 600sc I got for free

2.4 ghz p4 with 1 gig of ram
currently only got one 500gb sata drive hooked the 3ware 9500s-12 card I had laying around... I plan on adding some 1 tb drives to it in the near future
 
 
Small update, got a new power supply and reconfigured my drives a little bit, put the four slow laptop drives in a RAID10 array, lost 320GB from the overall storage pool but gave me more speed. I also removed the 74GB Raptor (put a 320GB Seagate in its place) and added two more 500GB drives.

* Intel Entry Server Motherboard SE7221BK1-E w/ Dual Intel Pro/1000 MT Adapters
* Pentium 4 540 3.2GHz
* 2GB (2x1GB) Kingston DDR2 PC5300 RAM
* Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 8 port SATA Controller
* Promise SATAII150 TX4 4 port SATA Controller
* Adaptec 1210SA 2 port SATA controller
* Nine x Seagate 320GB 7200.10 drives (system) & (storage)
* Four x Western Digital 160GB Scorpio drives in a 4-in-1 Hotswap Bay running RAID10 (320GB usable) (storage)
* Two x 500 GB Samsung Spinpoint F1 HD502lJ drive (storage)
* Two x 500GB Seagate 7200.9 & .10 drives (storage)
* ASUS DVD-ROM
* Lian Li PC-75 Full Tower
* PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750w CF Edition
* One x 120mm fan, six x 80mm fans, one x 70mm fan - All undervolted.

^ Total drives: 5200GB on paper, 4843GB after formatting.

I need to upgrade the CPU, it hits 75-100% way too often with this many drives.
 
char507 said:
Heyhey,

So i've been doing a lot of research around different options for my server and I think i've finally settled on Windows Home Server. However, i'm now torn as to whether I should build my rig from scratch, buy a cheap Dell server with no OS, or buy an HP MediaSmart device. While this system will eventually be headless, it would be kind of nice to have the option of running graphics on it if I chose but that's still up in the air.

Therefore, would you guys mind posting your WHS setups / builds and maybe what you like or don't like about it? Just wanted to get some ideas before I finally settled on something.
Click to expand...

This is [H] son! We don't buy preconfigs.. we BUILD! ;)
 
Antec 300 case
Antec 380 Earthwatts psu
Asus a8n-e motherboard
AMD Athlon64 3000+
1gb ddr
8400gs silent video card
4x Seagate 500gb 32mb cache sata2 hard drives
sony dvd burner

im looking at upgrading it a bit to save power and give me a bit more room for it to work. it uses about 80watts right now acording to my killowatt tool.

im thinking asus or gigabyte 780g motherboard, amd 4850e cpu, 2 gb ddr2, and when tb drives come down ill switch them for the 500s and add at least 2 more. that should hold me for a while.
 
I've just got mine online and here are the specs..

Intel P4 3.2 ghz proc in a Supermicro PDSME server motherboard
2 gb DDR2 800 ram
4 Seagate 1TB drives
1 500 gig WD ide drive
CoolerMaster Centurion 5 case

So far its working great (knock on wood).. I'm copying everything over as we speak from my old raid5 on a win2k8 system.

Zack

PS What's the best addin's to get?
 
Virtual WHS machine running on VMWare ESXi 3.5

one virtual CPU (Xeon 1.86)
one virtual HDD....800gb total
1gb memory allocated
 
Call me crazy, but I just picked up the HP Media smart 475 running WHS, today. I know I could have done it cheaper, but I really like the size and look of this case (It's only 9 inchs tall) and I like the expandable hot swap bays in the front of the case.

Specs:
2 500 gig hd's
AMD Sempron 1800 (64 bit)
512 megs ram

In the future, I may put a 2 gig stick of ram in it, but so far so good with a 512 mb stick. It's good to see that this OS was designed to run well on lower end hardware.

Backing up 2 desktop pc's and hosting a photo album for the family to see that lives back home.


I still have a much more powerful server running WIN2k3 small business to handle exchange server and all the other goodies. :)
 
itguru said:
I still have a much more powerful server running WIN2k3 small business to handle exchange server and all the other goodies. :)
Click to expand...

See , Now i like that. you are running a beefy system there. You get the pass..:cool:
 
Eh mine is pretty basic, just found the cheapest Intel motherboard/proc/ram I could find ~$60, $48 for the Rocketfish Case... PSU was free from a friend, and HDD's were mostly purchased used... ~$90 per drive... grabbed a Supermicro MV8, and an Intel Desktop Gigabit Adapter... $65 for the MV8, $40 for the adapter... + $22 for a Coolermaster 4 in 3 adapter...

So now I'm at $48 + $60 + $900 + $65 + $40 + $22 roughly... so $1135 ... $900 being 10 x 1TB drives... heh...

Sig isn't quite accurate cause I haven't gotten the MV8 yet or the Coolermaster, so I gotta wait till monday to add 6 more drives...
 
I have a HP 6430f with 4 Gb of RAM running 2k8 standard with hyper-v that hosts my WHS, 2008 x64 DC, and a w2k3 Exchange 2003 box.

For WHS,
Access to 2 processor cores, 512 MB of RAM, and exclusive use of 3 1 TB drives in a TR4M-B external drive enclosure.

Before adding the external enclosure I was using 1 20 GB VHD for the OS, and 2 300 GB VHDs, one on each of the internal drives (a 640 GB and a 500 GB) in the hosting server.
 
my WHS
Case:Antec Mini P190
Motherboard: Foxconn MATX 780g
CPU: Phenom 9600BE with CnQ enabled
RAM: 3GB DDR800 Gskill
PSU: Zalman 500w Heatpipe

Drives: 4x750gb WD GP
1x250gb WD Cavier with OS (will proably change this out with a 1tb soon)



some might ask why went with a phenom; i use webguide to watch movies and recorded TV from work, and it uses the CPU to transcode everything into WMV format.

so i wanted to be able to watch a movie at home, backup a pc and watch content via webguide w/o stuttering....

although i probably will not be watching a movie at 1am while my server is backup up a pc but hey i wanted to overhead.
 
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