Thinking of building a WHS

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ZALMAN

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#76381 1-Feb-2011 21:15

Hi there im thinking of building a cheap WHS
Completly new to the server thing and have never had anything to do with one, I was originally thinking of a NAS, but the more I look into it thinking WHS seems to be the way to go

I have a w7mc in the lounge, two laptops in the house a PS3 and a xbox 360

Is this something I can do quite cheaply?

any recomendations of MBs and CPU ram hdd that I can use? will any old thing work that has the requirements or do these parts need to be server specific?

and any other advice would be great

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#434487 2-Feb-2011 20:54

Cheap is relative, what's your budget and how much storage are you aiming for?

You can get away with low power atom based systems if it's only really doing file sharing/network storage but if you want it to start doing streaming, transcoding etc you may need more grunt.

ZALMAN

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#434490 2-Feb-2011 20:58

Didnt really want to spend more than $500 on hardware I do already have a spare case DVD drive psu lying around so would need mb processor hdds etc

I guess 2tb would be enough to start with but may want to ge up to 4tb

Thanks for reply

SepticSceptic

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#434722 3-Feb-2011 11:13

Go for it !! :-)

Like you, I checked out various NAS offerings. Cheap ones were, well, cheap - slow transfer,, etc. The good NAS offerings were quite expensive - this was 2-odd years ago though. The current NAS products are well priced and up there performance wise.

I have an old P4 1.8, w 2g RAM repurposed as a WHS. Added in a 1gig NIC, and a 4-port SATA card. It's a bit slow serving 2 video streams, a bit of stuttering, - the old PCI bus bottlenecks me thinks ... aged hardware ...

It really is a good product from MS - pity they have mangled the next iteration :-(

Do get a couple of HDD's in the WHS, then you can use folder duplication where certain folders can be copied across multiple HDD's for some semblance of redundancy. I have 4 HDD's - a trio of 500GB, and a new 1.5 TB ( damn cheap - $125 !! ) - just keep adding them into the storage pool. All the duplication etc is handled in the background.

However, do remember to off-site backup you most important stuff, particularly home photos and vids.

Ragnor

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#434778 3-Feb-2011 12:44

Windows Home Server OEM is $180ish by itself, for a less than $500 build you probably want to look at linux or bsd based free stuff like: FreeNas, OpenFiler etc.

gehenna

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#434782 3-Feb-2011 12:52

I priced this up the other day. Hardware (cheap MOBO with a few SATA + USB slots, cheap CPU and RAM, and a case with enough drive bays + PSU came to $400. That wasn't including the OS.

Granted I went for a nice looking case but the rest of the stuff was pretty low-end, and also didn't price a hard drive as I already have a few.

I'm going to get a HP WHS as soon as I can afford to spend the cash. Had my own WHS which I sold in Australia and can't be bothered building another one....the HP line is very aesthetically pleasing, low power, and has good proprietary features for Mac integration so I'm happy to spend the $750 on it.

Ragnor

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#434825 3-Feb-2011 14:05

The next version of WHS, codename Vail is due this year.. pretty soon by all accounts (they are preparing for RC release now apparently).

However they have removed the drive extender system which allowed ad hoc adding of drives.

So there is an unenviable choice of buying a superseded version or buy the new version (soon) that doesn't have one of the core features that drove adoption anymore.

Meanwhile, the FOSS options are getting pretty mature and easy to use now.

CYaBro

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#434833 3-Feb-2011 14:12

I won't be changing to the new WHS Vail edition since they removed the drive extender tech.

What I have also done is put 2 DVB-S tuner cards in the WHS box and installed the TV Server part of MediaPortal.
This way I can watch live TV or recorded TV from any PC in the house.
Thinking about changing over to DVBLink TVsource though so that I can use Windows Media Centre instead.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

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xcubed

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#434834 3-Feb-2011 14:15

I've been running WHS Vail Beta on a machine at home over the last few months, but I'm glad to be rid of it now that the beta has expired. The drive extender technology is a nice idea, but a poor implementation. Because it does all of its work in software, the I/O performance is really bad. We were having regular picture and sound drop-out issues when streaming SD video from a MediaPortal Server on Vail to other machines in the house. Having replaced it with a standard Windows install, the performance is back to normal again.

I suspect this is largely the reason why drive extender won't be included in the Vail release. It would really be better done using a hardware RAID or JBOD controller.

AndrewTD

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#434843 3-Feb-2011 14:24

Ragnor: ...

Meanwhile, the FOSS options are getting pretty mature and easy to use now.

I'm thinking of building a home server too, and need to be able to backup mac clients as well as PCs.

Given the general displeasure at the loss of drive extending features in the new WHS, I'm particularly interested in FOSS (Linux) options - can anyone recommend any to me that they have used and like?
(Mind you - from what I've read so far, I haven't seen any easy-to-use drive extending feature in linux versions.)

kind regards Andrew TD

Ragnor

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#434862 3-Feb-2011 14:46

Drive Extender type system in Linux:
http://code.google.com/p/greyhole/
http://code.google.com/p/greyhole/wiki/MigrateFromWHS

Linux Home Server using Greyhole (Amahi):
http://www.amahi.org/features/gallery

AndrewTD

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#434863 3-Feb-2011 14:48

Thanks for that Ragnor. I had just finished reading up on Amahi & greyhole.
Question is - do you (or anyone else) use them and like them?

kind regards Andrew TD

allan

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#434871 3-Feb-2011 14:59

gehenna: I'm going to get a HP WHS as soon as I can afford to spend the cash. Had my own WHS which I sold in Australia and can't be bothered building another one....the HP line is very aesthetically pleasing, low power, and has good proprietary features for Mac integration so I'm happy to spend the $750 on it.

Do you realise HP have withdrawn from the WHS market now?
http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/12/01/hp-pulls-windows-home-server-market-leaves-vail-cold/

SepticSceptic

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#435309 4-Feb-2011 13:29

xcubed: I've been running WHS Vail Beta on a machine at home over the last few months, but I'm glad to be rid of it now that the beta has expired. The drive extender technology is a nice idea, but a poor implementation. Because it does all of its work in software, the I/O performance is really bad. We were having regular picture and sound drop-out issues when streaming SD video from a MediaPortal Server on Vail to other machines in the house. Having replaced it with a standard Windows install, the performance is back to normal again.

I suspect this is largely the reason why drive extender won't be included in the Vail release. It would really be better done using a hardware RAID or JBOD controller.

I might be misreading something here - you mentioned that you were running Vail - the next iteration of WHS, (sans Disk Extender tech), you were getting sound and video dropouts from content served from Vail ? Or did you mean WHS v1 ?

I haven't noticed any stuttering on a single stream from content served from WHS v1, even on an old P4 1.8. Two streams, then yes, a bit of stuttering. PC to WHS file transfers peak at 200Mb/s (according to the task manager - 20% of a 1Gb NIC - one transfer window open. Multiple copy streams, then yeah, she gets slow ...)

Have had a look at the linux/Greyhole ( sheesh - they really need a better name ,.. ) option when I heard that the Drive ext tech was being dropped from the next iteration, but doesn't appear to be that user friendly. Needs a bit of work. perhaps one day there will be a turn-key WHS clone - I'd pay $$ for that, provided there is a similar support level for tuner cards, add-ons, etc.

Another nice (?) thing about WHS - if your WHS system gets totally hosed, you can plug the HDD's into a Windows system, and recover HDD data whilst you are restoring / fixing the original WHS hardware.

Ragnor

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#435310 4-Feb-2011 13:30

AndrewTD: Thanks for that Ragnor. I had just finished reading up on Amahi & greyhole.
Question is - do you (or anyone else) use them and like them?

Planning to use it on my upcoming NAS build, will post back how it goes.

gehenna

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#435311 4-Feb-2011 13:32

allan:
gehenna: I'm going to get a HP WHS as soon as I can afford to spend the cash. Had my own WHS which I sold in Australia and can't be bothered building another one....the HP line is very aesthetically pleasing, low power, and has good proprietary features for Mac integration so I'm happy to spend the $750 on it.

Do you realise HP have withdrawn from the WHS market now?
http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/12/01/hp-pulls-windows-home-server-market-leaves-vail-cold/

Yup, doesn't mean anything for my use of the device though.

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