Windows Home Server Hardware Upgrade

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SepticSceptic

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#107672 16-Aug-2012 13:57

Time to upgrade the hardware in my WHS Ver1

Currently running P4, 1.8GHz, 1gig RAM

1x System HDD - PATA

3x SATA HDD's for storage pool - 500G, 1T, and 2T

All 3 SATA drives connected to 1 PCI 4x SATA adapter card. As you can imagine, that poor PCI bus is getting hammered with data balancing, and is a tad sluggish retrieving data at times - especially with more than 1 client connection.

So new mobo- AMD Athlon Dual 3.2G + 2GB RAM.

For the System drive - would it be worthwhile to install a SSD ?

Looking at an OCZ Agility 2 120GB SSD - reasonbly priced (to me) at around $150.

Other than shorter boot times, and other advantages - faster content delivery ?

Or would I be better off investing that $150 on an additional drive for the storage pool ?

browned

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#673339 16-Aug-2012 15:14

I would rather go for a new motherboard/ram/cpu combo. Reason being that 6 or more onboard SATA ports will be a lot faster than a PATA and PCI SATA card. The more ram the better (4GB). Dual core CPU 2+ Ghz will help as well.

SSD would be a huge upgrade for the system drive but seeing as it is WHS 1 native trim support will be missing so a seperate application will be required. Also doesn't the WHS 1 setup partition the System drive 20GB, wouldn't it be a better idea to get a large SATA system drive?

cheers
db

Home Server: AMD Threadripper 1950X, 64GB, 56TB HDD, Define R6 Case, 10GbE, ESXi 6.7, UNRAID, NextPVR, Emby Server, Plex Server.
Lounge Media Center: NVIDIA Shield TV 16GB: Kodi18 with Titan MOD, Emby.
Kids Media Center: NVIDIA Shield TV 16GB: Kodi18 with Titan MOD, Emby.
Main PC: Ryzen 7 2700, 16GB RAM, RX 570, 2 x 24"

allan

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#673380 16-Aug-2012 16:34

I replaced my home built with an HP Proliant N40L, which is a nice quiet low power consumption machine. May not be grunty enough for what you are looking for though. Recent review on www.wegotserved.com.

SepticSceptic

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#673449 16-Aug-2012 19:16

browned: I would rather go for a new motherboard/ram/cpu combo. Reason being that 6 or more onboard SATA ports will be a lot faster than a PATA and PCI SATA card. The more ram the better (4GB). Dual core CPU 2+ Ghz will help as well.

SSD would be a huge upgrade for the system drive but seeing as it is WHS 1 native trim support will be missing so a seperate application will be required. Also doesn't the WHS 1 setup partition the System drive 20GB, wouldn't it be a better idea to get a large SATA system drive?

cheers
db

I was planning on the new mobo - guess I wasn't succinct :-). I was more questioning the use of the SSD for the system drive, and whether it would be worthwhile ...

Ahh, forgot about the native trim function, though I was under the impression that recent BIOS chips incorporate this ? Hmm, more digging .. ditto for the 20GB system partition ..

Knew it was a good idea to throw it into the forum to get another view :-)

thx

browned

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#673574 17-Aug-2012 09:02

I would guess that an SSD system drive for WHSv1 would be awesome, but you will need to get around the trim issues and the thoughts that WHSv1 system drive should be created on the largest of your drives as this is the initial landing area for all files copied to the system I believe. A small landing area can cause issues with backups and file balancing, but being a fast drive the balancing may not be an issue.

Here is my setup and it works flawlessly for 1080P streaming to Media Center, research is the key to any good system.

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 (full ESXi 5 support for NIC and 6 SATA ports)
CPU: AMD FX-6100 (6 core)
RAM GSkill 2 x 8GB RAM
SATA/SAS Cards: 2 x LSI1082E (Actually IBM BR10i) 2 x SAS SFF8087 Ports breaking out to 8 x SATA Ports
Hot Swap Bays: 3 x Norco SS-500, 15 x 3.5" drives in 9 x 5.25" slots.
Case: Coolmaster Centurion 590
HDD's: 2 x 1.5TB, 7 x 1TB, 2 x 750GB, 1 x 500, 1 x 250GB
HOST OS: ESXi 5u1 (free)
Guest OS: WHS 2011 with Stablebit drive extender, W2K8 R2 (testing), WinXP Philips Streamium device, Win8 (testing uuurgh), and tonight Win2012 server (testing)

xpd

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#673580 17-Aug-2012 09:12

If the OP isnt going virtual as you are, then your specs are overkill (IMHO anyway) for what he wants.

Think it mainly comes down to this : What are you wanting from the server ? If just file sharing/backups, then dual AMD is fine.

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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SepticSceptic

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#674487 20-Aug-2012 11:59

browned: I would guess that an SSD system drive for WHSv1 would be awesome, but you will need to get around the trim issues and the thoughts that WHSv1 system drive should be created on the largest of your drives as this is the initial landing area for all files copied to the system I believe. A small landing area can cause issues with backups and file balancing, but being a fast drive the balancing may not be an issue.

Wasn't the landing area removed when PP3 came out ?

xpd : Think it mainly comes down to this : What are you wanting from the server ? If just file sharing/backups, then dual AMD is fine.

File sharing and Backups - I haven't really streched WHS's capabilities by any stretch of the imagination ... though using MyMovies on WHS thru to the W7 Media Centre Client takes a heck of a long time for the tiles to load up and display. Admittedly, the W7 PC is a bit dated - AMD 3200 + 3G RAM, but still doesn't seem to be any quicker on a more recent W7 dualcore laptop.

I have searched around in a few forums, and it looks like not too many implementations of SSD in WHS V1, but that could be more to do with the high price of SSD when WHS V1 was released. Certainly more references for SSD and Vail, perhaps to with the better handling of SSD (Trim), and a lower price point.

So the plan of attack is upgrade the mobo + CPU as per original post, and if MyMovies is still slow as molasses, rebuild again with SSD as primary drive.

If no decent improvement after using SSD, rebuild again sans SSD - that way I'll have a SSD that can be pressed into service elsewhere.

Thanks for the suggestions