WTF I'm working on a project?

[Brians256]

Holy hand-grenade of Antioch! pH posted! Well, congratulations on the 3rd boy. Sounds like you have you priorities straight. Playing games does seem to be more fun than diddling with cooling (at this point); I agree. All my water-cooling gear is sitting in boxes out in the shop.

Instead, I've been using large and cheap heatsinks to have something that doesn't require as much maintenance. Time is instead spent on playing Supreme Commander with the boys or watching 1080p videos on one of the HTPCs (streaming from my Win2k3 server).

Speaking of disk servers, what is the big deal with WHS? Why is it any better than Windows Server 2K3? What do you guys use that makes WHS so awesome? So far, I'm really happy with Win2k3 with an 8-drive RAID card. I can run my MyMovies SQL database, share files, and backup my PCs. Not sure what else would be nifty. I also have a Thecus N5200pro NAS that has all kinds of plug-ins for media serving, bit-torrenting, and more. I just don't use them. Maybe I'm really missing out?

[HammerSandwich]

Originally Posted by Brians256

Holy hand-grenade of Antioch! pH posted! Well, congratulations on the 3rd boy.

3rd boy? Shouldn't that be 1, 2, 5?

Originally Posted by Brians256

Speaking of disk servers, what is the big deal with WHS? <snip>

Full Windows Server + a good RAID meets all of the same needs, but it's overkill for the typical home user. The OS alone costs as much as a low/mid-range WHS box. WHS remote access is limited but simple to configure. HDs are relatively easy to manage, and replacement after a failure is quicker than rebuilding a RAID. If you appreciate the lower maintenance of aircooling, give the WHS trial a run.

Edit - and client backup to WHS is completely automatic. Just turn it on and go.

[jaydee]

I was a die hard XP user but jumped to Windows Vista. Vista sucked untill SP2. Now it works pretty damn good. Will move to Windows 7 64bit soon when I upgrade my main computer or buy a decent laptop. I am finding a lot of video problems are worked out in 3D games with Vista over XP. However some of the older games I like to dust off now and then won't play in Vista even in compatibility mode.

As for water cooling... People still do that? My main computer is pretty mid level at best yet I can play any new game without issue with the Redeon 4850 which has a big quiet fan on it I can't hear. I have a stock AMD 4pin fan on my CPU which is managed by cool'n'quiet. That works as advertized. Not overclocked running a 2.2gig AMD dual core and really have to find a reason to upgrade. I could use a little more CPU power when I play 2 accounts of EVE and streaming netflix at the sametime. It gets a little choppy at times. Maybe more than 2gigs of ram would help to.

However the things takes what I throw at it and it just works and it is quiet. I am also pondering a server for backup and misc files to keep my main computer uncluttered.

I have more money than I know what to do with but have no time to spend it. I have been working 6 days a week for the last 6 months... Once I get time I will be looking into some computer stuff... Also planning on buying a house this summer.

Anyway, glad to see pH is still around...

Damn, it is almost mid 2010!

[pHaestus]

Just as an update, I bought the Acer WHS in Alberta to dodge provincial sales tax and have it mostly set up now. I still need to get the web-based Bit torrent server running so I can just log in from anywhere and torrent stuff, but so far it seems slick. Gonna feed it some 2TB drives shortly. There's really nothing special about it at all compared to a full Win2k3 server Brian. It's just that I've had years and years to set one up, and never did it. The completely automatic backup and synching of photo albums and running an air video server for all our iphone/ipad/ipod touches to get streamed movies are what most of the rest of the family will use it for. I'll appreciate being able to ftp to/from it when I need and bit torrent directly to it (so my other PCs dont have to be on and eat power) and then being able to automatically dump all the recorded tv to it nightly so I don't need a big loud hdd in my htpc. I'm sure there are other solutions but this one was dead simple and cheaper than a hdd/wfs license/misc parts I needed to set a server up on my own.

[ben333]

WHS does indeed seem nice. Correct me if I'm wrong, but out of the box doesn't it have a lot more features appealing to the home user at a heck of a lot lower price than 2k3 or 2k8? I actually just stuck XP Pro on my file server because all it is is a single giant windows share. If I remember right, someone I know uses WHS to back up all his PCs and then can restore them with a boot over PXE served by the WHS box. Not sure if he was using any additional software, but that's wicked cool.

I've also been told WHS is not for raid, can anyone clear that up? Is it because that with hardware RAID the OS can't see the drives as individual drives? Or that it just doesn't offer software RAID like Windows Server 03 / 08 does?

[pHaestus]

It's true that WHS doesn't technically do raid, but when you add a disk you can tell it to either use it to duplicate the existing storage or else add it to the storage capacity. If you choose to duplicate, it keeps a second copy of everything in the shared folders on the new drive, so in that sense DATA redundancy is there for your files but not the server itself. Both copies on the server stay synced at all times. The other thing that the WHS I have does is that it has a usb port on the front and 1 button backs up data from server to an external hdd.

MS's stance is that RAID as your backup plan is unnecessarily clunky and complicated for the average home user, and the only real backup that is bulletproof is backing up externally and keeping it offsite. You could argue pros and cons of that of course, but I see where they're coming from.

The nice thing about WHS is when you add a client with their connector software then from that moment on it makes a complete backup image of that client every day (a la ghost) without any real user intervention. There's a cd that you can insert in the client in case of hdd crash or virus or whatever and it'll restore from the image with minimum of fuss.

So far I like it quite a bit though.

[HammerSandwich]

Originally Posted by pHaestus

It's true that WHS doesn't technically do raid, but when you add a disk you can tell it to either use it to duplicate the existing storage or else add it to the storage capacity. If you choose to duplicate, it keeps a second copy of everything in the shared folders on the new drive, so in that sense DATA redundancy is there for your files but not the server itself.

Actually, duplication is controlled on the share level, and all data is spread across the entire storage pool. IOW, you never specify that a particular HD is used for duplication, you just add it to the pool. Tell WHS you want to duplicate, e.g., Music, and the server will determine where to put everything.

This has a big advantage versus RAID (beyond management). You can throw any assortment of drives into a WHS, and it will manage the space automatically. An "old" 500GB drive remains useful along with your new 2TB drives. Everything works more like a Drobo than a RAID.

You can run RAID on a WHS, and people with BIG storage needs do. But there's little point until you need a couple RAID6 arrays.

[ben333]

Alright, so kind of like UnRAID? That's a linux NAS OS (and not free beyond use on 3 drives) that you can pop in a bunch of drives, any size, any interface. Only rule is that one drive used as a parity drive has to be the same size or larger than all of your other drives.

I might have to give Home Server a try though. That would also make my server easier to sell off on craigslist when I decide to rebuild I'm guessing. I assume the backup features only check the clients for changes? So it's daily, but pretty quick?

EDIT: Hammer, I'd actually probably stick to hardware RAID on my main file server, since I have 5 identical drives on a 5 port card and only 4 SATA ports on my motherboard. Plus, if that machine fails I can move the drives and that card into another PC and get my data. I'm interested in the WHS OS though, and maybe filling a box with a collection of 80 GB IDE drives.

[pHaestus]

TBH I find screwing around with Win2k3 server stuff and running apps as services kinda fun. It has been a pleasant weekend of getting everything set up "just so" and then I did some rewiring of light fixtures and such around the house too.

[ben333]

I think the reason I kept XP pro on the file server is because I ONLY use the box for a windows share... WHS seems like it has some useful features, and "easy" for the home user sounds really nice too...

Server's still going strong, but since I don't run it 24/7, a RAID rebuild may go into a 3rd night... (I think one of my drives is frigged up, because this is the second time I've had to let one resysc).

[pHaestus]

yea I threw an old 500gb sata drive in it last night, and before I added it to the storage pool I could see it via remote desktop and transfer data from it. Then I added it to the pool, said "duplicate" and 2minutes later it was formatted and everything was running according to plan. The whole system is quite slick and I remain happy with it even a week later.

When I finish fiddling with things like making it run a website that automatically generates photo galleries, setting up an ftp for the occasional big file transfer , running quite a few apps as services, and generally tweaking the crap out of it, I probably would've been better off just building a full Win2003 server box. But that setup would be a lot louder, would have cost a good bit more, would've taken up more space, would've used more power, and most importantly I probably wouldn't have ever gotten around to doing it.

[ben333]

You don't think that lil box could run 2003? I bet it could just fine, only problem would be you would need to run a software RAID. IMO, for the things you do on a home server, WHS seems more useful, easier and just better. From what I'm hearing anyway. Correct me if wrong, but isn't 2003 really just XP plus a full version of IIS, terminal services, and a bunch of other MS server apps? WHS seems more innovative. I don't think 2003 would be more friendly at all for setting up php photo galleries and the such, any windows OS running apache seems equally capable, and if you do need to run a MS web server, then whatever WHS uses I'd think is just as useful and probably easier to set up that IIS.

[pHaestus]

Picked up an ipad friday in support of my paperless office. Such a slick device, but the apps are a bit meh compared to phone.

[HammerSandwich]

Was out of town for a while...

Originally Posted by ben333

Alright, so kind of like UnRAID? That's a linux NAS OS (and not free beyond use on 3 drives) that you can pop in a bunch of drives, any size, any interface. Only rule is that one drive used as a parity drive has to be the same size or larger than all of your other drives.

Similar, but WHS doesn't do parity. It truly duplicates the folders you mark, so you have 2 full copies. Lose 2 HDs simultaneously, and you lose just their files that aren't duplicated elsewhere. It's a little different, to be sure, and has a different disk cost than parity. Duplicate just a few GB of important docs, and duplication leaves more disk space for expendable files.

Originally Posted by ben333

I assume the backup features only check the clients for changes? So it's daily, but pretty quick?

Yep. Nightly backups usually complete in a few minutes. One other neat thing here (I think it applies to all WHS storage, actually, but backups should benefit most.) is single-instance storage. Before WHS writes a block, it hashes it & checks if that block already exists in the storage pool. If so, it just links to it, rather than writing it again. Backups can take a lot less space, especially if each PC has the same versions of Windows & programs.

Originally Posted by ben333

EDIT: Hammer, I'd actually probably stick to hardware RAID on my main file server, since I have 5 identical drives on a 5 port card and only 4 SATA ports on my motherboard. Plus, if that machine fails I can move the drives and that card into another PC and get my data. I'm interested in the WHS OS though, and maybe filling a box with a collection of 80 GB IDE drives.

You understand the compromises as well as I do.

Anyhow, WHS is a nifty system that meets a number of needs with minimal admin. It's definitely not the final word in capabilities. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

[pHaestus]

So far it's pretty anticlimactic for me; everything seems to just work. The web ui for utorrent is a really nice feature if you put it accessible to the web. Get an update from some rss feed that a new movie is out on phone and just copy/paste it into webui and you're watching it when you get home.

[ben333]

^ That does sound pretty handy, even on my crappy phone. I think I'll give it a shot, just need to be a little less lazy. My server still needs to have it's lid kept off or it gets wicked hot inside. Need to add a couple 120MM fans to the cheapo rackmount case.

[pHaestus]

As a person who spends a lot of time either reading pdf (journal articles), performing light editing on word docs, checking e-mail, and going to meetings, I find that an ipad with pages, papers, dropbox, and simplenote is really super slick and sleek and handy. The Ipad isn't ALL it's sold as (the reflective screen sometimes is distracting if you're watching movies on planes and you have to tune out your reflection because the fat chick in the next seat wont shut off her light THAT BITCH THE NERVE), and the apps I fear are going to really lag behind the iphone in development. But at the end of the day it's a very slick and solid device for professors at least.

[zoson]

Back on topic.
Watercool your box.
i've already been through 2 systems, and this motherboard is dying.

thinking on upping to a r3e or ud7 with an i7 930.

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