Home Server

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berman002

44 posts

Geek

#793948 5-Apr-2013 16:19

yes Micro server is pretty good, i was initially want to buy one as a home server but i think it's a little over price. so i took one of an old PC from work as my home server, it use a bit more power around 70W. but i think i still save more money then buy an home servers for the next few years lol.

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Gilco2

1556 posts

Uber Geek

#794481 7-Apr-2013 07:54

timbosan: So, there are TWO SEPARATE things here:

I currently run Windows 8 64bit on my laptop (Samsung Series 9) with the connector to my WHS 2011 server, with daily backups. I also have the server backing up to an external 2TB drive.

If you want to get a bit more paranoid about backups, you can buy Cloudberry for WHS, which allows backup of data to Amazon S3. I have this too, but only for really important stuff.

Any more questions just ask and I will see if I can help.

I have received my WHS 2011 software. I see you said you have 2 3TB disks . I have been reading forums and they say WHS 2011 only supports 2TB. Is there a way around that since you have 3TB backing up to a 2TB drive.

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

timbosan

2129 posts

Uber Geek

#794484 7-Apr-2013 08:35

Gilco2:
timbosan: So, there are TWO SEPARATE things here:

I currently run Windows 8 64bit on my laptop (Samsung Series 9) with the connector to my WHS 2011 server, with daily backups. I also have the server backing up to an external 2TB drive.

If you want to get a bit more paranoid about backups, you can buy Cloudberry for WHS, which allows backup of data to Amazon S3. I have this too, but only for really important stuff.

Any more questions just ask and I will see if I can help.
I have received my WHS 2011 software. I see you said you have 2 3TB disks . I have been reading forums and they say WHS 2011 only supports 2TB. Is there a way around that since you have 3TB backing up to a 2TB drive.

As long as your motherboard can support the drive, or you have a controller card for it, Windows will work fine. However the backup in the WHS console only support drives up to 2tb. The way around this is to use the Windows Backup program. I just selected the folders on my 3tb drive I wanted to backup, not the whole drive, and it works fine.

Gilco2

1556 posts

Uber Geek

#794489 7-Apr-2013 08:57

timbosan:
Gilco2:
timbosan: So, there are TWO SEPARATE things here:

I currently run Windows 8 64bit on my laptop (Samsung Series 9) with the connector to my WHS 2011 server, with daily backups. I also have the server backing up to an external 2TB drive.

If you want to get a bit more paranoid about backups, you can buy Cloudberry for WHS, which allows backup of data to Amazon S3. I have this too, but only for really important stuff.

Any more questions just ask and I will see if I can help.
I have received my WHS 2011 software. I see you said you have 2 3TB disks . I have been reading forums and they say WHS 2011 only supports 2TB. Is there a way around that since you have 3TB backing up to a 2TB drive.

As long as your motherboard can support the drive, or you have a controller card for it, Windows will work fine. However the backup in the WHS console only support drives up to 2tb. The way around this is to use the Windows Backup program. I just selected the folders on my 3tb drive I wanted to backup, not the whole drive, and it works fine.

Okay thanks. I thought I would have to stay with 2TB drives and not be able to use 3TB or $TB drives.

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

timbosan

2129 posts

Uber Geek

#794495 7-Apr-2013 09:12

Gilco2:
timbosan:
Gilco2:
timbosan: So, there are TWO SEPARATE things here:

I currently run Windows 8 64bit on my laptop (Samsung Series 9) with the connector to my WHS 2011 server, with daily backups. I also have the server backing up to an external 2TB drive.

If you want to get a bit more paranoid about backups, you can buy Cloudberry for WHS, which allows backup of data to Amazon S3. I have this too, but only for really important stuff.

Any more questions just ask and I will see if I can help.
I have received my WHS 2011 software. I see you said you have 2 3TB disks . I have been reading forums and they say WHS 2011 only supports 2TB. Is there a way around that since you have 3TB backing up to a 2TB drive.

As long as your motherboard can support the drive, or you have a controller card for it, Windows will work fine. However the backup in the WHS console only support drives up to 2tb. The way around this is to use the Windows Backup program. I just selected the folders on my 3tb drive I wanted to backup, not the whole drive, and it works fine.
Okay thanks. I thought I would have to stay with 2TB drives and not be able to use 3TB or $TB drives.

No, its only the Backup inside of the WHS Dashboard that causes issues. As long as Windows can see the drives, you will be fine. I had my 2 3TB drives in a software RAID1 with zero issues.

timbosan

2129 posts

Uber Geek

#794498 7-Apr-2013 09:19

berman002: Here is my Home server setup,
Just an old HP workstation in SSF format Core2 due 6300, 4G of Ram with add-in 6570 Card.
Storage: 1TB, 3TB, 500G and 4TB.
TV Tuner Card.
Window 8 ent with Media Center.
no Raid, i want my HD to work in any system (i do not understand why we need a Raid setup for share server other then RAID1 for less then 10 users)
RAID 1 just a mirror disk(s)
i have second copy of files i need backup. which only 30% of my data, so save me 70% of space for RAID1.

This server is an access point for all files and data.
it also a Media Center for my home use.
which work really well

So if you give up Raid setup, it will be much easier, and software RAID is not that fast, if you need speed.
if you need redundancy, any backup solution will do for you.

put this in mind too, in RAID 1 setup, if one hard disk has corrupted data, it will mirror to the second disk as well.

When you say "put this in mind too, in RAID 1 setup, if one hard disk has corrupted data, it will mirror to the second disk as well." this will only occur if the FILES are corrupted, such as closing applications without saving data. The DISK is not corrupted in this case. As soon as the controller (Windows Server in my case) detects a DISK failure, it will mark the disk as bad but the array is still usable, and the other disk(s) are still 100% usable.

And software RAID1 is no different than no RAID for reading, and 99% as fast for writing. If you do RAID5 in software it will be very very slow. If you need speed then use SSD's or something similar.

I agree with your approach for copying data instead of a RAID1, however that is dependant on human intervention, if you forgot for a week, your copy if 1 week old. RAID1 is a 100% copy 100% of the time.

TwoSeven

1589 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#794507 7-Apr-2013 09:31

berman002:
TwoSeven: I'm also looking into building a new home server. After using WHS, am leaning towards the Windows Server Essentials route (hopefully). The main reasons are that I want to use some of the server technologies such as Active Directory and Group Policy.

Am looking at using Gigabyte Mini-Itx board (for wifi and dual onboard ethernet). Will likely put the OS on an SDD and mirror a couple of SATA drives for a working directory.

I like the idea of using iSCSI and a NAS as well, and am still on the conceptualisation on how I might make use of it If I were to build such a unit.

lol we got two old netapp 3040 in the office here, may be you can take home and use it as your NAS hahahaha
just joking. your power bill will be up to roof.

so how many users there will be? use AD and GPO at home is a nice idea but it will be unnecessarily complicate your setup.
you can give it a try and have some fun for it. but you will give up in time.
if you want to use iSCS Mini-ITX broad is out of the equation, unless you want to have a separate NAS box most M-ITX broad only come with 4 SATA port. i was looking for one in the past for over 6 ports, but no luck.
by the way most NAS is slower then your actual computer. your ITX mini pc with i3 CPU transfer speed will be much faster then most NAS. they use special OS to run, mostly linux base. but still not as fast as your low end pc.

I have been working with LDAP and A/D for quite a few decades, I am sure I know what I am doing with it - LOL :)

Question, why would you want to use iSCSI for disks installed in the actual server?

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berman002

44 posts

Geek

#795979 10-Apr-2013 09:00

TwoSeven:
berman002:
TwoSeven: I'm also looking into building a new home server. After using WHS, am leaning towards the Windows Server Essentials route (hopefully). The main reasons are that I want to use some of the server technologies such as Active Directory and Group Policy.

Am looking at using Gigabyte Mini-Itx board (for wifi and dual onboard ethernet). Will likely put the OS on an SDD and mirror a couple of SATA drives for a working directory.

I like the idea of using iSCSI and a NAS as well, and am still on the conceptualisation on how I might make use of it If I were to build such a unit.

lol we got two old netapp 3040 in the office here, may be you can take home and use it as your NAS hahahaha
just joking. your power bill will be up to roof.

so how many users there will be? use AD and GPO at home is a nice idea but it will be unnecessarily complicate your setup.
you can give it a try and have some fun for it. but you will give up in time.
if you want to use iSCS Mini-ITX broad is out of the equation, unless you want to have a separate NAS box most M-ITX broad only come with 4 SATA port. i was looking for one in the past for over 6 ports, but no luck.
by the way most NAS is slower then your actual computer. your ITX mini pc with i3 CPU transfer speed will be much faster then most NAS. they use special OS to run, mostly linux base. but still not as fast as your low end pc.

I have been working with LDAP and A/D for quite a few decades, I am sure I know what I am doing with it - LOL :)

Question, why would you want to use iSCSI for disks installed in the actual server?

lol.... you are right what i am talking about? hahahahah iSCSI for disks installed in server?? hahahahha

Gilco2

1556 posts

Uber Geek

#799773 15-Apr-2013 18:11

Just an update. Got the rest of parts together and assembled it all. Never put a server together before but have put heaps of desktops. Went with Windows Home Server 2011 and was very surprised how easy and straight forward it was. The hardest part was the network drivers as it wouldnt find the network driver in the network folder on the driver disk. I had to manually navigate to the folder and to the Windows 7 folder and then the 64bit folder before it would find it. Very happy with it. Wish I had done it ages ago. Pity it wasnt advertised more.
So would recommend it for any noob to servers.

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

Gilco2

1556 posts

Uber Geek

#800931 17-Apr-2013 13:09

Well so far like whs 2011. BUT it is taking ages transferring files over to it. Taken 2 days and nights so far and will take another couple of days. The computer and server are connected to the Vodafone Broadband complete modem by ethernet cable and both have up to date drivers for the built in lan. Both are realtek RTL8111F chip. Transfer speed is 3.6MB/s The computer running Windows 7 Home Premium 64Bit all updates and the server WHS 2011 fresh install and updates which shown now but sure there must be more yet to show up. Both have new lan cables

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

Gilco2

1556 posts

Uber Geek

#810139 2-May-2013 13:53

just an update. It took almost 90 hours transferring 2TB over the Lan. However it streams media beautifully and very quick access over wifi to my main laptop for everyday files etc.
Very pleased with it and wish I had done it a while ago. There is still a lot for me to learn but the basics were very easy setup and connecting to laptops. I havent looked back.

HTPC Intel Pentium G3258 cpu, Gigabyte H97n-wifi motherboard, , 8GB DDR3 ram, onboard graphics. Hauppuage HVR 5500 tuner, Silverstone LC16M case, Windows 10 pro 64 bit using Nextpvr and Kodi

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