Best Windows OS for Home Server::Not WHS

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greengolftee87

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 15, 2008
Messages
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I figured this was the most appropriate forum because this is regarding a file server.

My current file server is and has been serving me well for some time but as I've been reading more on this forum Ive come to the conclusion that even though it works perfectly I'm doing it wrong. I was hoping you guys could give some suggestions on the "right way" or a better way for me to do things.

My current setup
P4 2.8 Ghz + 1GB RAM
Win 7 Professional 32 Bit ( Windows rating of 1.0 hahaha)
intel pro 1000 mt NIC
4x sata drives for storage
1x 250GB IDE drive as a torrent landing zone
1x 250GB IDE as system drive
Administrator always logged in running:
filezilla ftp server
utorrnet
apache
UPS controls
VNC (for administration) system is headless
2nd Non-Administrator account for separating SMB privileges (never logged in)


Now I've read that keeping the admin logged in all the time is a bad idea. But how else do I make changes and deal with the apps that are installed on a per-user basis like utorrent and filezilla. Additionally will I get better performance from a server OS vs a Desktop OS. I have access to Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Standard. Also to the Server 2003's, Vista, and XP. Also, with every OS this thing has ever seen (Ubuntu, Win 7, Vista, and XP) hot swapping a sata drive has frozen the OS to the point of no recovery. On Ubunto it worked sometimes but it was still plagued by the eventual crash and holding of the power button to kill it.
 
actual server os are supposed to handle traffic better then a standard os.

as far as the hdd swap goes. do u have AHCI enabled in the bios?


and lastly.... whats wrong with WHS? just curios on ur opinion of it.
Posted via [H] Mobile Device
 
Yes I was also curious as he is opposed to WHS. It is a great home server OS. Been running it almost 2 years now.
 
Since he already has access to other options, although more complex or not intended for server use, it would be something else to pay for.
 
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Daishiknyte said:
Since he already has access to other options, although more complex or not intended for server use, it would be something else to pay for.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, no, I think there's another reason. It really sounds to me like this is someone with technet access, or very wealthy so the $100 for WHS can't be the problem.

On that hardware, server 2008 will choke to death, 2003 would work but it's such a hassle anymore.

What's the hotswapping all about?

Typically with a server, you rarely log into it to do anything. Users connection through clients do things.
 
Yes the reason I want to stay away from WHS is that I have access to all the others through MSDN Academic Alliance, which has a ton of software but excludes WHS and im not really in a situation to spend that much on an OS when I have access to the others. Otherwise based on what I've heard here I'd be all over it.

I want hot-swapping to work since i rotate a few drives offsite and hot-plugging them in kills the entire system. I do not have AHCI enabled in the BIOS since this motherboard has no native sata ports. They all are on a PCI sata controller which claims to have the ability. Unless maybe someone knows of a certain way those have to be set up to work with it?

The reason I keep the admin logged in is because the admin is running all the programs that dont start until a user is logged in. I believe if i log the admin out I would lose my VNC access which would be bad because there is currently no monitor.

So you guys think it would be best to leave it as is since 2008 would bring it to its knees and 2003 isnt worth the work??
 
SVR2008 will run sweet, providing you dont add roles other than filesharing.

I'm going to upgrade my svr08 to R2 today as i'm swapping the OS disk from a standard sata to ssd.

For the time i've had svr08 on; its been the best svr experience i've had. It just works, very light with the standard roles. I keep my admin account logged on all the time, but locks the session after xx minutes.
 
On that old hardware, your best bet would be Win 2000 Server at best. Even 2003/2008 would choke to death
 
Your only using this for a file server/FTP server? Why not just use OpenFiler or FreeNAS? Much less complicated, and it accomplishes your goals.
 
Wodz said:
On that old hardware, your best bet would be Win 2000 Server at best. Even 2003/2008 would choke to death
Click to expand...

That is pretty bad advice.

Server 2003 would run just fine on that hardware.
srsly WTF kind of hardware do you think was on the market when 2003 was released?

I ran WHS(which is a 2003 product) on a P3 733mhz and it works just fine as a home server.
Serving files takes little to no CPU power.

Get a good nic and good HDDs and you will be fine.

EDIT:
Thought about buying more RAM?
If you added some more 2008 would run better than win7 as long as you didnt add a bunch of roles and used it for filesharing only.
 
egraphix said:
SVR2008 will run sweet, providing you dont add roles other than filesharing.

I'm going to upgrade my svr08 to R2 today as i'm swapping the OS disk from a standard sata to ssd.

For the time i've had svr08 on; its been the best svr experience i've had. It just works, very light with the standard roles. I keep my admin account logged on all the time, but locks the session after xx minutes.
Click to expand...

jrdonnaruma said:
Your only using this for a file server/FTP server? Why not just use OpenFiler or FreeNAS? Much less complicated, and it accomplishes your goals.
Click to expand...

This is another reason I was wanting to maybe switch. Id like to learn the server OS. For example, I have no idea what a role is. I'm assuming its basically a function that you can turn on and off. Im assuming OpenFiler and FreeNAS are slimmed down linux distros. Im no stranger to linux in any way but for the life of me I could not get different permissions per user working on Ubuntu.

Does server 08 have a built in role for FTP or http?


nitrobass24 said:
That is pretty bad advice.

Server 2003 would run just fine on that hardware.
srsly WTF kind of hardware do you think was on the market when 2003 was released?

I ran WHS(which is a 2003 product) on a P3 733mhz and it works just fine as a home server.
Serving files takes little to no CPU power.

Get a good nic and good HDDs and you will be fine.

EDIT:
Thought about buying more RAM?
If you added some more 2008 would run better than win7 as long as you didnt add a bunch of roles and used it for filesharing only.
Click to expand...

Yes switching to the Intel Pro NIC made an enormus difference and the HDDs are good. adding 1 more gig of ram is prob a good idea though. Cant be that expensive anymore.

Anyone have any hot-swapping experiences with server 08. This is the single most annoying thing on this server that I have not been able to resolve.
 
greengolftee87 said:
The reason I keep the admin logged in is because the admin is running all the programs that dont start until a user is logged in. I believe if i log the admin out I would lose my VNC access which would be bad because there is currently no monitor.
Click to expand...

I don't know about the other programs, but you can run utorrent as a service as a particular user and no user has to actually be logged in. That's how I have it set up on my WHS so that I can use the WebGUI.
 
VNC generally runs as a service by default, so no user needs to be logged in.

and as Killroy stated, you can setup utorrent to run as a service, also. You can really set any application to run as a service.
 
greengolftee87 said:
http://www.syba.com/index.php?controller=Product&action=Info&Id=750
I would estimate that it works about 1 out of every 10 attempts, and not quickly at that.


I didnt know you could make programs into services. Im assuming you can just set these to run at startup? that would be amazing if I could get utorrent and VNC going without logging in.
Click to expand...

You can even create a special user for some or all of the applications that has only the rights/privileges those programs need.
 
thanks for all the help guys. Ill be trying this next week as im done with work tomorrow and finals monday. Ill report back how it goes and probably with some more questions.
 
greengolftee87 said:
Also, with every OS this thing has ever seen (Ubuntu, Win 7, Vista, and XP) hot swapping a sata drive has frozen the OS to the point of no recovery. On Ubunto it worked sometimes but it was still plagued by the eventual crash and holding of the power button to kill it.
Click to expand...

Check your drives. Make sure they are hot swapable. Not all drives are. That is more then likely the source of that.
 
drozenski said:
Check your drives. Make sure they are hot swapable. Not all drives are. That is more then likely the source of that.
Click to expand...

SATA SAS and SCSI are all hotswappable
Has nothing to do with the drives.

Its the controller.

In all honesty what did you expect from a $20 controller?
 
Wodz said:
On that old hardware, your best bet would be Win 2000 Server at best. Even 2003/2008 would choke to death
Click to expand...
You're on a roll lately. I agree, this is bad advice. Take a look at the system specs. Windows Server 2003 would run beautifully on that system, and my guess is, Server 2008 would as well.

To the OP, pick up the absolute latest Maximum PC. They have a guide in there on how to set up FreeNAS as a WHS alternative.
 
nitrobass24 said:
SATA SAS and SCSI are all hotswappable
Has nothing to do with the drives.

Its the controller.

In all honesty what did you expect from a $20 controller?
Click to expand...

I wasn't expecting mad speeds or anything. Its just a simple PCI controller. I wanted to update to the supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 but it doesn't seem to support windows spinning the drives down. If someone has another suggestion for a decent card im open to it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009
 
nitrobass24 said:
SATA SAS and SCSI are all hotswappable
Has nothing to do with the drives.

Its the controller.

In all honesty what did you expect from a $20 controller?
Click to expand...


Not true. We have drive here where i work. I have one right infront of me that is a SATA drive and it is not hot swapable. The drive itself comes in two flavors. Hot swapable and non hot swapable.
 
drozenski said:
10k 320GB WD Raptors
Click to expand...

Well WD doesnt make 320GB raptors, but if they did they would be hotswapable just like my vraptors.

Its the controller, not the drive.

Srsly if you really think its not hotswappable because of the drive show me in the drives documentation where it says its not.
I know for 100% fact that they are.
 
GREAT SUCCESS! Mostly.

I installed Win Server 2008 Enterprise without issue and have pretty much everything up and running. I got hot-swapping working by flashing the controller to IDE mode vs RAID mode. I dont know what the implications of doing this was but it seems the controller maxes out at 90 MB/s. Fine by me.
Bottom left is a WD 750G green
HDTune.jpg


I have uTorrent, Apache, and FileZilla running as services so no on has to be logged in. Getting VNC working as a service is proving to be a hassle but I think the issue is Windows firewall. Ive messed with a ton now and still cant get it so if anyone has any pointers id appreciate the help.

Pics of the server.
ServerPic1.JPG

ServerPic2.JPG

ServerPic3.JPG

ServerPic4.JPG
 
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So the 1st of many issues arises. I have encountered a very strange sharing issue. Here's the setup
2 normal users,1 admin. Log into admin to set permissions for shared hard drives using the "Advanced Sharing" option under the sharing tab. log out admin.

From remote computer, map all drives using normal user name. This works perfectly.
Permissions are correct for all SATA drives.
Permissions for a single folder on the OS drive only worked after setting the permissions through the "share" option instead of the "Advanced Sharing" option.


Permissions for IDE storage drive are read only NO MATTER WHAT I DO. It's driving me nucking futs. The "share" button above "Advanced Sharing" is grayed out for all drives and is only click-able for folders and I have shared, unshared, restarted, and what not prob 20 times now.

EDIT: Oh and if I share a folder on said IDE drive it works perfectly too. Explain that.
 
Try sharing the drive with the Advanced Sharing button. For some reason the display of the other Share button is linked to how the inheritable permissions option is set in the Advanced NTFS permissions settings.
 
I finally got it working. For some reason all of the "group or user names" under the security tab were all wrong. By adding "Authenticated Users" to the list everything returned to normal. I also gave up on the VNC thing and found a really nice Remote Desktop client for mac so I can connect to it that way.

Thanks for all the help!!
 
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