Any reason not to use WHS?

B

BurntToast

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Jun 14, 2003
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On paper WHS looks great.

Does it really accomplish what it promises?
Are there ever any concerns with redundancy?

It just seems too consumer-ish.

Is there a formula to calculate the usable space on your WHS? Say I install 8x 1TB drives, will I actually get 8TB of usable space, or will something like 2TB be used for redundancy?

Thanks
 
WHS's duplication feature is essentially a mirror of whatever data you deem to be worth the redundancy; it copies that data to a separate physical hard disk so it protects you from hard disk failure, so in that sense, that's how it achieves "redundancy".

If you wanted 100% duplication, then essentially the usable space is the same as what you would get from RAID 1, or half of the amount of disks you have being usable. Of course, this calculation assumes that you want to have full duplication of 100% of your files.

The great features that I keep hearing about WHS is that it's easily expandable with disks of different sizes, which is something RAID can't do, so it's an ideal operating system for cheap, easy builds with spare parts as well.
 
You get full access to all the space. Folders that you choose to duplicate for redundancy get copied on to a different hard drive. Basically, you can get the benefit of RAID 1 without wasting drive capacity on duplicating files that you don't really care about.

Maybe it is too consumerish; I know I have a couple complaints about logging that stem from it being too shallow. But even if it isn't especially deep, it does just work. It takes all of ten minutes to have the Home Server taking nightly images of a machine and properly sharing folders.
 
I was looking for 100% duplication. Bad news to me I suppose.

So any one drive can fail and your data will still be safe? Plop in a new HDD and away you go?

So you have 8x1TB drives, how many drives can fail for your data to still be intact?

What form of antivirus protection do yuo guys use? I hear WHS does not like to be used as a PC. Does it have it's own forum of virus protection or is it required that the user installs norton, avg, nod32 or some other form of virus protection?

Last question... what are your transfer speeds over gigabit?

Thanks
 
BurntToast said:
I was looking for 100% duplication. Bad news to me I suppose.

So any one drive can fail and your data will still be safe? Plop in a new HDD and away you go?

So you have 8x1TB drives, how many drives can fail for your data to still be intact?

What form of antivirus protection do yuo guys use? I hear WHS does not like to be used as a PC. Does it have it's own forum of virus protection or is it required that the user installs norton, avg, nod32 or some other form of virus protection?

Last question... what are your transfer speeds over gigabit?

Thanks
Click to expand...

If you want 100% duplication, just set every folder to duplication.

As for failures, I believe as long as only one drive fails at a time you are fine. WHS should reduplicate the necessary files after you replace the disk.

Avast makes a AV client that integrates pretty well with the WHS console.

Over gigabit, my transfer rates seem to be disk limited ~60MB/sec.
 
jaegertech said:
If you want 100% duplication, just set every folder to duplication.

As for failures, I believe as long as only one drive fails at a time you are fine. WHS should reduplicate the necessary files after you replace the disk.

Avast makes a AV client that integrates pretty well with the WHS console.

Over gigabit, my transfer rates seem to be disk limited ~60MB/sec.
Click to expand...


Duplication is defualt. So there is really not much you need to do to be protected.


It's not disk limited, gigabit is going to be your primary bottleneck.
 
Some of the cons and nitpicks I've encountered in my brief usage of WHS... I've been using it for a couple weeks now...
1) it duplicates folders/data on 2 hard drives... so if u want to duplicate everything, u need double the amount of drives... 4TB useable out of 8TB... if ur looking to maximize space with some form of hardware protection, RAID5 gives u more disk space to protect against a single drive failure. 7/8TB useable in a single RAID5 array... so its ineffecient by my standard...
2) It ONLY duplicates data on 2 drives... I want the option to duplicate to 3 drives to prevent against a 2 drive failure...I could see where knowing which drive has wut backup might be useful... but thats a future upgrade issue...
3)No Domain/AD support... would be nice for those of us with a medium? sized home network or already have a network in place... IT does offer a number of server 2k3 features which is nice for those familiar to 2k3 server...
4) Its new... so there are not a lot of addins yet... this is a temporary nitpick until WHS establishes a foothold and more companies start producing addins/plugins for WHS. I'd like to see more security addins and more administration addins... a VPN server/client addin, eand network boot restore for clients would be nice...
5) I haven't seen anyway to have multiple WHS's function together... IE, having 2 WHS's backup each other or be able to share data/backups with each other... I would like to be able to backup 2 separate pcs at once and have the 2 WHS servers copy the backups to each other...

Just some minor things that will probably get fixed in due time...
I'm still playing with it so we'll see how things go...
 
Bookmage said:
3)No Domain/AD support... would be nice for those of us with a medium? sized home network or already have a network in place... IT does offer a number of server 2k3 features which is nice for those familiar to 2k3 server...
Click to expand...
As much as having it being able to join a domain would be nice, it's never going to happen. They based it off Windows Server 2003 SBS instead of Standard. Windows Server 2003 SBS never allowed for more than one domain controller as it was supposed to perform that role.
Bookmage said:
5) I haven't seen anyway to have multiple WHS's function together... IE, having 2 WHS's backup each other or be able to share data/backups with each other... I would like to be able to backup 2 separate pcs at once and have the 2 WHS servers copy the backups to each other...
Click to expand...
I bought 2 of the HP EX470 servers, so, sometime this month, I'll be able to see if that is possible.
 
I picked up one the HP EX470s and I'm playing with a trial version on a custom box.. I wanna try to test it sometime this month. But I would like to see some addins that make use of it... using multiple boxes to back each other up... or expand things...

I wonder if it can backup pcs running server 2k3 as a workstation....
 
Bookmage said:
5) I haven't seen anyway to have multiple WHS's function together... IE, having 2 WHS's backup each other or be able to share data/backups with each other... I would like to be able to backup 2 separate pcs at once and have the 2 WHS servers copy the backups to each other...
Click to expand...

It's called Windows Home Server for a reason. It's supposed to provide a solution for the home user who wants to centralize/backup their data. If you need 2 servers, then you're not in the targeted userbase of WHS, and you should be using something more substantial. WHS might work with two servers but I have a feeling that that's just not what it was designed for.
 
i use hamachi for vpn server no issues.
also thefe are great plugins over at we got served.
 
I've been running WHS since it was in beta. The ONLY drawback for me is duplication is less efficient than RAID 5. However RAID 5 has it's own issues such as bit rot and you have to use drives that are the same size, which I don't have many of.
WHS makes up for this limitation by keeping all my computers backed and being able to do bare metal restores quickly and easily. And being able to use drives of different sizes means I don't have to buy all new drives and throw perfectly good ones out.
 
Bookmage said:
Some of the cons and nitpicks I've encountered in my brief usage of WHS... I've been using it for a couple weeks now...
1) it duplicates folders/data on 2 hard drives... so if u want to duplicate everything, u need double the amount of drives... 4TB useable out of 8TB... if ur looking to maximize space with some form of hardware protection, RAID5 gives u more disk space to protect against a single drive failure. 7/8TB useable in a single RAID5 array... so its ineffecient by my standard...
2) It ONLY duplicates data on 2 drives... I want the option to duplicate to 3 drives to prevent against a 2 drive failure...I could see where knowing which drive has wut backup might be useful... but thats a future upgrade issue...
3)No Domain/AD support... would be nice for those of us with a medium? sized home network or already have a network in place... IT does offer a number of server 2k3 features which is nice for those familiar to 2k3 server...
4) Its new... so there are not a lot of addins yet... this is a temporary nitpick until WHS establishes a foothold and more companies start producing addins/plugins for WHS. I'd like to see more security addins and more administration addins... a VPN server/client addin, eand network boot restore for clients would be nice...
5) I haven't seen anyway to have multiple WHS's function together... IE, having 2 WHS's backup each other or be able to share data/backups with each other... I would like to be able to backup 2 separate pcs at once and have the 2 WHS servers copy the backups to each other...

Just some minor things that will probably get fixed in due time...
I'm still playing with it so we'll see how things go...
Click to expand...

FreeNAS has the ability to solve a lot of those problems. You can use one of your older boards lying around and get a hardware RAID5 card for it (check the FreeNAS compatibility list for which ones work). It supports joining an Active Directory domain as well, and has a robust feature set and a slick administration page.

http://www.freenas.org

freenas.org said:
FreeNAS is a free NAS (Network-Attached Storage) server, supporting: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, AFP, RSYNC, iSCSI protocols, S.M.A.R.T., local user authentication, Software RAID (0,1,5) with a Full WEB configuration interface. FreeNAS takes less than 32MB once installed on Compact Flash, hard drive or USB key.
The minimal FreeBSD distribution, Web interface, PHP scripts and documentation are based on M0n0wall.
Click to expand...
 
Yamaki said:
It's called Windows Home Server for a reason. It's supposed to provide a solution for the home user who wants to centralize/backup their data. If you need 2 servers, then you're not in the targeted userbase of WHS, and you should be using something more substantial. WHS might work with two servers but I have a feeling that that's just not what it was designed for.
Click to expand...

It shouldn't matter what type of targeted userbase I am. If it's supposed to be the server for my home, why should I be limited to having one server. How does wanting to backup my Important data to another server disqualify me as a "targeted userbase"? Are the "targeted users" supposed to only have One place of backup and never buy another WHS server? If backups and duplication are supposed to be important, then I should be able to backup to another WHS server. Most consumer home NAS boxes offer a basic way to duplicate data to other NAS boxes. And I could always pick up one of those and autobackup a windows share.
With prices dropping and my data being very important to me, maybe I want a second server upstairs or downstairs or at a different location. Maybe I take so many pictures or record so many tv shows, I need more space. I just thought it would be nice to have multiple WHS's function together and possibly share user account data, or at least a way to share folders..

It isnt a big deal at the moment, its just a nitpick until I start pickin up multiple WHS servers. It would be a nice selling feature... and might be a feature in the future as WHS gets more popular and more households start having them. For now, I just use synctoy to backup two folders.
 
brons2 said:
FreeNAS has the ability to solve a lot of those problems. You can use one of your older boards lying around and get a hardware RAID5 card for it (check the FreeNAS compatibility list for which ones work). It supports joining an Active Directory domain as well, and has a robust feature set and a slick administration page.

http://www.freenas.org
Click to expand...

Yeah, I 'm aware of most of the other solutions. I run multiple linux servers and use SRAID5 for my main storage. I also use a couple consumer NAS boxes to backup those boxes and provide media streaming.
I've been playin with WHS to see where it fits and how I can recommend it for friends and family. I can also see aspects of it being very useful at work in a windows environment... The backup/restore option would be a good alternative to Ghost or Tru Image.
Right now I can recommend the HP WHS boxes for friends that have a handful of pcs runnin windows. But I can see the day when they max out their storage or need another box down the line.
Im waiting for FreeNAS to exit RC before testin it on another box. I would like to see some Linux distro integrate Unattend and offer a simpler backup/restore process for windows pc's.
 
If it's supposed to be the server for my home, why should I be limited to having one server.
Click to expand...

Surely you jest. How many people have a home server, much less need two?

Your expectations and needs are not in line with a normal home situation.
 
Bookmage said:
It shouldn't matter what type of targeted userbase I am. If it's supposed to be the server for my home, why should I be limited to having one server. How does wanting to backup my Important data to another server disqualify me as a "targeted userbase"? Are the "targeted users" supposed to only have One place of backup and never buy another WHS server? If backups and duplication are supposed to be important, then I should be able to backup to another WHS server. Most consumer home NAS boxes offer a basic way to duplicate data to other NAS boxes. And I could always pick up one of those and autobackup a windows share.
With prices dropping and my data being very important to me, maybe I want a second server upstairs or downstairs or at a different location. Maybe I take so many pictures or record so many tv shows, I need more space. I just thought it would be nice to have multiple WHS's function together and possibly share user account data, or at least a way to share folders..

It isnt a big deal at the moment, its just a nitpick until I start pickin up multiple WHS servers. It would be a nice selling feature... and might be a feature in the future as WHS gets more popular and more households start having them. For now, I just use synctoy to backup two folders.
Click to expand...

WHS can be backed up to internal drives that are not part of the storage pool or to external drives. That's what I do. You connect a drive and select to use it as a server backup. Then you select the server in the computers and backup list and start the backup. Select the shares you want backed up and away it goes. It will also do incremental back ups.
You can also use an offsite backup solution. There are several that will integrate directly into the WHS console.
I'm sure there is probably an add on that will enable server backups via the network.

If you need more space, add more hard drives. Build a server that will allow for that. Mine can take a dozen hard drives.

You can use as many servers as you like. Data can be stored on whichever one you wish. Doesn't matter. They won't work together. But you can still put video on one, pictures on another. Whatever.

Things will work more seamlessly with libraries in Windows 7 though. It will bring data from whatever source and display it in one folder.
 
Bookmage said:
Some of the cons and nitpicks I've encountered in my brief usage of WHS... I've been using it for a couple weeks now...
2) It ONLY duplicates data on 2 drives... I want the option to duplicate to 3 drives to prevent against a 2 drive failure...I could see where knowing which drive has wut backup might be useful... but thats a future upgrade issue...
3)No Domain/AD support... would be nice for those of us with a medium? sized home network or already have a network in place... IT does offer a number of server 2k3 features which is nice for those familiar to 2k3 server...
4) Its new... so there are not a lot of addins yet... this is a temporary nitpick until WHS establishes a foothold and more companies start producing addins/plugins for WHS. I'd like to see more security addins and more administration addins... a VPN server/client addin, eand network boot restore for clients would be nice...
5) I haven't seen anyway to have multiple WHS's function together... IE, having 2 WHS's backup each other or be able to share data/backups with each other... I would like to be able to backup 2 separate pcs at once and have the 2 WHS servers copy the backups to each other...

Just some minor things that will probably get fixed in due time...
I'm still playing with it so we'll see how things go...
Click to expand...

2) That would be a nice feature to have IMO
3) you can add it to a domain
4) There are a lot of addins...
www.wegotserved.co.uk
You can also install software on it just like you would with 2K3
5)You could write a script that would copy backups from one WHS to another one.

Bookmage said:
I picked up one the HP EX470s and I'm playing with a trial version on a custom box.. I wanna try to test it sometime this month. But I would like to see some addins that make use of it... using multiple boxes to back each other up... or expand things...

I wonder if it can backup pcs running server 2k3 as a workstation....
Click to expand...

It can backup Server2K8 so I would imagine the connector software would work just as well with 2k3

brons2 said:
FreeNAS has the ability to solve a lot of those problems. You can use one of your older boards lying around and get a hardware RAID5 card for it (check the FreeNAS compatibility list for which ones work). It supports joining an Active Directory domain as well, and has a robust feature set and a slick administration page.

http://www.freenas.org
Click to expand...

FreeNAS is Slow due to Samba

Archer75 said:
Things will work more seamlessly with libraries in Windows 7 though. It will bring data from whatever source and display it in one folder.
Click to expand...

Libraries are going to be nice
 
I don't see any reason to add it to a domain unless you have a lot of users. By that I mean, so many users that you don't want to make the accounts. All you need to do is make the accounts and have the passwords be the same initially. The shares map fine in login scripts. The only thing that's annoying at all is setting a few group policy settings manually on the WHS.

Also, I can confirm it successfully backs up Windows Server 2003 R2 x86/x64 and Server 2008 x64. I did a test restore and it worked great. It even appears to be Exchange/SQL aware. It's as good as Acronis Enterprise Server without Universal Restore.
 
Wow, the price dropped $50 on this in the last couple weeks!! I wanted this pretty bad but didn't want to spend $150. For $99 I think I'm gonna pull the trigger.
 
I haven't seen anyone say it yet and it gets said a lot on these boards. RAID is not a backup solution. There is some good articles here about that... http://www.fearthecowboy.com/default.htm

Concerning that it only duplicates on 2 drives... If you have three disks in your system... You have duplication enabled for a folder and it has the stuff stored on drive 1 & 2. Then drive 2 fails. Drive extender will then start duplicating the files to disk 3.

Bookmage said:
Some of the cons and nitpicks I've encountered in my brief usage of WHS... I've been using it for a couple weeks now...

2) It ONLY duplicates data on 2 drives... I want the option to duplicate to 3 drives to prevent against a 2 drive failure...I could see where knowing which drive has wut backup might be useful... but thats a future upgrade issue...
Click to expand...
 
Quick question about WHS, can you have two WHS running on a network, thinking just a basic home network? Will this cause problems? Want to create two media storage units and WHS is what I will be using, and am hoping not to have any problems with having two WHS on the same network.
 
theDreamer said:
Quick question about WHS, can you have two WHS running on a network, thinking just a basic home network? Will this cause problems? Want to create two media storage units and WHS is what I will be using, and am hoping not to have any problems with having two WHS on the same network.
Click to expand...

It will work fine. Just have one of them set to do the backups and the other one disabled for that. You'll probably only install the connector software for one WHS box on your desktop, not both.
But you can still access the data fine without. And you can still remote login.
 
Archer75 said:
It will work fine. Just have one of them set to do the backups and the other one disabled for that. You'll probably only install the connector software for one WHS box on your desktop, not both.
But you can still access the data fine without. And you can still remote login.
Click to expand...

Well, the thing is, I do not care to do any back-up. All my data I own and I am just putting it on hard drives so I can stream it around the house easier. I have calculated I will need a good amount of space, plus the room for expansion. ;) Though the second system may not be built for another six to twelve months, I just wanted to get ahead of myself. Though if hard drive sizes increase as they are, I might not need to build the second system (or if I do it will become a back up system).
 
theDreamer said:
Well, the thing is, I do not care to do any back-up. All my data I own and I am just putting it on hard drives so I can stream it around the house easier. I have calculated I will need a good amount of space, plus the room for expansion. ;) Though the second system may not be built for another six to twelve months, I just wanted to get ahead of myself. Though if hard drive sizes increase as they are, I might not need to build the second system (or if I do it will become a back up system).
Click to expand...

By backups I didn't mean of the servers but rather of your desktops. WHS will keep regularly backups of your desktops and should a problem arise you can boot your desktop from the WHS restore disk and put it back to the exact state at the time of the last backup.
 
eagleknight said:
Concerning that it only duplicates on 2 drives... If you have three disks in your system... You have duplication enabled for a folder and it has the stuff stored on drive 1 & 2. Then drive 2 fails. Drive extender will then start duplicating the files to disk 3.
Click to expand...

Sigh....

It does not automatically start reduplicating data when a drive goes poof. I have no idea who started this, but it isn't true. When a drive fails, WHS does nothing other than alert the connected machines that a drive is bad. You have choice at that point:

1) Replace the drive and have WHS rebuild it (assuming all data was duplicated)

2) Remove the drive and have WHS create the duplicates (assuming all data was duplicated) on another drive "IF" space is available.

WHS runs of the logic that a loss of a drive is temporary and not permanent. If you wish to challenge me on this, please go read the WHS white paper list the exact page. I will be glad to say I am wrong if I am wrong. But what would I know...the very first thing I did when I build my server was to fail a drive. ;)
 
nitrobass24 said:
FreeNAS is Slow due to Samba
Click to expand...

Nonsense. I can completely saturate a 100Mbit network connection transferring files from my FreeNAS to a Windows box or a Linux box. And my FreeNAS box is a low power mini-ITX board with a 1200Mhz embedded Celeron. It only uses 30% CPU doing it, too. If you had a fast proc like a C2D it would probably use less than 10%.

Haven't tried gigabit, but I could easily do so at work on a test box.
 
I thought the issue with FreeNAS wasn't SMB period, but the implementation of SMB on BSD. Custom Linux NAS devices like some of the original ReadyNAS and Openfiler saturate gigabit and then some easily.

Gigabit results would be interesting, simply because I'm surprised anyone even using one of these systems has a 100Mbit network. Six+ year old single IDE drives saturate 100Mbit easily.
 
Lets say for whatever reason your WHS install or disk dies on you. Can you then transport your data to another WHS box?

Also, I assume that the drive is formatted in NTFS. What would happen if you took one of the eight drives from your WHS and threw it into a Windows XP or Vista box. Would the OS recognize the drive and would you be able to pull anything from it? Or would you just see several large compressed data volumes? I would assume that you couldn't pull any data off from it, but it doesn't hurt to ask :p
 
BurntToast said:
Lets say for whatever reason your WHS install or disk dies on you. Can you then transport your data to another WHS box?

Also, I assume that the drive is formatted in NTFS. What would happen if you took one of the eight drives from your WHS and threw it into a Windows XP or Vista box. Would the OS recognize the drive and would you be able to pull anything from it? Or would you just see several large compressed data volumes? I would assume that you couldn't pull any data off from it, but it doesn't hurt to ask :p
Click to expand...

Yes and Yes.

This is the beauty IMO of WHS, I pull live disks from WHS and transfer them physically to another system, I can access the drives and files and add to it.
 
Ockie said:
Yes and Yes.

This is the beauty IMO of WHS, I pull live disks from WHS and transfer them physically to another system, I can access the drives and files and add to it.
Click to expand...

Can you pull a disk, put it into another WHS box, and incorporate it into the pool while keeping the data in-tact (no formatting)?
 
has anyone used WHS with utorrent to do RSS downloads?

I want to do the standard RSS download TV shows into specific directories. I do not think the utorrent plugin for WHS console does this, but i have heard that minimizing the gui to get at 2k3 underneath may let me do it?

I have heard mixed reviews about if this is possible...

anyone tried this?

edit: Have no installed WHS yet, dont want to transfer my box to it until I research what I want to do :p
 
ghostee said:
Can you pull a disk, put it into another WHS box, and incorporate it into the pool while keeping the data in-tact (no formatting)?
Click to expand...

No. If you add a disk to the pull the data on it will be formatted. You can install it into the sever and transfer data over to the pool and then incorporate the drive into the pool.
 
krelkor said:
has anyone used WHS with utorrent to do RSS downloads?

I want to do the standard RSS download TV shows into specific directories. I do not think the utorrent plugin for WHS console does this, but i have heard that minimizing the gui to get at 2k3 underneath may let me do it?

I have heard mixed reviews about if this is possible...

anyone tried this?

edit: Have no installed WHS yet, dont want to transfer my box to it until I research what I want to do :p
Click to expand...

If you can do it on regular Windows, you can do it on WHS by plugging a monitor, mouse, and keyboard in or doing it via full RDP.
 
krelkor said:
has anyone used WHS with utorrent to do RSS downloads?

I want to do the standard RSS download TV shows into specific directories. I do not think the utorrent plugin for WHS console does this, but i have heard that minimizing the gui to get at 2k3 underneath may let me do it?

I have heard mixed reviews about if this is possible...

anyone tried this?

edit: Have no installed WHS yet, dont want to transfer my box to it until I research what I want to do :p
Click to expand...

Yes it works. You can use the utorrent plug in as well so you can administer it via the console. But usually I just do the downloads on my desktop and transfer them over.
 
fantastic, thats what I wanted to hear :)

so utorrent running as a service in 2k3(that i manage via rdp) can run in the background while WHS console is up?
 
krelkor said:
fantastic, thats what I wanted to hear :)

so utorrent running as a service in 2k3(that i manage via rdp) can run in the background while WHS console is up?
Click to expand...

As a service you don't even have to be logged in for it run.
 
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