Need help with WHS problems

C

coolrunner84

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 5, 2008
Messages
147
I have a few problems with WHS, that I am hoping people can help me resolve. Since WHS is such a hit here, maybe more people here would have experience with it and have come across some of these issues.

Note: The only change I have done to my system is that I bought a new switch (HP 1800-24g). The server has all the latest updates installed.

1. On Christmas, I had some family over, and we decided to watch a movie from my server. At some points of the movie, the video and audio began to stutter. It would eventually correct itself after 20 seconds, but I was a little embarrassed. At first, I though it was just the extender (Popcorn Hour A-110) since it was a blu-ray video, but last night it happened again through my HTPC. I am clueless as to what the cause can be. Disk Management does not show any disk as unhealthy.

To me it appeared as though the drive was being written to, which caused it to stutter. However, I am the only one that writes to the server in the house, which I was not doing at the time these occurred. The majority of my drives are 1TB WD green drives which are only 5400 rpm and have a 16MB cache. Could this explain it? What was WHS doing that caused this to happen?

2. When WHS came out, I remember reading about the auto-balancing feature, where the content would be distributed evenly across all the HDDs. After I installed the Disk Management Add-In, I can see this is not the case. All my content is going to only 3 out 8 of my drives. Is anyone else seeing this?

3. I want to build a Wireframe with the Disk Management Add-in, but I cannot identify where the disk is located in the server. The serial number does not appear in Disk Management. The only descriptive thing it gives me is the GUID (e.g. 8f7cdce0). What does the GUID represent?

While creating the wire frame, the "Drive Path" gives the port ID, e.g. 2:1:1:0. How can I determine which port the drive is connected to?

4. Has anyone used the Remote Access feature of WHS? I can connect to my WHS outside my home, and browse the shares. However, when I try to connect to a client PC, it always tells me that the connection timed out. Has anyone been successful with remoting into their client PC using WHS?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
 
"1. On Christmas, I had some family over, and we decided to watch a movie from my server. At some points of the movie, the video and audio began to stutter. It would eventually correct itself after 20 seconds, but I was a little embarrassed. At first, I though it was just the extender (Popcorn Hour A-110) since it was a blu-ray video, but last night it happened again through my HTPC. I am clueless as to what the cause can be. Disk Management does not show any disk as unhealthy."

Sounds like it could be the new switch. If you weren't having problems before and are now on both a popcorn hour AND a HTPC it must be something with the network and seeing as you just got a new switch....
Can you go back to your old switch of whatever setup you were using and test for the stutter?
I just use some cheap(under $30) rosewill gigabit switches, 2 to be exact, never had a problem.


"2. When WHS came out, I remember reading about the auto-balancing feature, where the content would be distributed evenly across all the HDDs. After I installed the Disk Management Add-In, I can see this is not the case. All my content is going to only 3 out 8 of my drives. Is anyone else seeing this?"

This is normal as of PP1. It doesn't really balance anymore. The data you send to the server goes straight to it's final desination. Before it would go to a landing zone and then get moved off.


"3. I want to build a Wireframe with the Disk Management Add-in, but I cannot identify where the disk is located in the server. The serial number does not appear in Disk Management. The only descriptive thing it gives me is the GUID (e.g. 8f7cdce0). What does the GUID represent?

While creating the wire frame, the "Drive Path" gives the port ID, e.g. 2:1:1:0. How can I determine which port the drive is connected to?"

You open up your computer and look. Just build your wire frame based on what drive is physically located at what bay in your computer. It's easier to set this up when you first install WHS. But you can do it now. Just pull out a drive one at a time and look at the serial number.


"4. Has anyone used the Remote Access feature of WHS? I can connect to my WHS outside my home, and browse the shares. However, when I try to connect to a client PC, it always tells me that the connection timed out. Has anyone been successful with remoting into their client PC using WHS?"

Yes, works fine for me.
 
On building the wireframe:

What I did is turn off power to all my drives except one and then identify that one. Then shutdown and power up an additional drive and repower up. I did this for my 5 drives and it worked great.

Zack
 
CarlsonCustoms said:
On building the wireframe:

What I did is turn off power to all my drives except one and then identify that one. Then shutdown and power up an additional drive and repower up. I did this for my 5 drives and it worked great.

Zack
Click to expand...

I did the same thing. It's a pain but it worked out.
 
CarlsonCustoms said:
On building the wireframe:

What I did is turn off power to all my drives except one and then identify that one. Then shutdown and power up an additional drive and repower up. I did this for my 5 drives and it worked great.

Zack
Click to expand...

Did you boot all the way into WHS?
 
Archer75 said:
"2. When WHS came out, I remember reading about the auto-balancing feature, where the content would be distributed evenly across all the HDDs. After I installed the Disk Management Add-In, I can see this is not the case. All my content is going to only 3 out 8 of my drives. Is anyone else seeing this?"

This is normal as of PP1. It doesn't really balance anymore. The data you send to the server goes straight to it's final desination. Before it would go to a landing zone and then get moved off.
Click to expand...

I also miss this feature. I just installed a new 1TB drive and it's barely being touched while 2 of my other drives are at %97 capacity.

4. Has anyone used the Remote Access feature of WHS? I can connect to my WHS outside my home, and browse the shares. However, when I try to connect to a client PC, it always tells me that the connection timed out. Has anyone been successful with remoting into their client PC using WHS?"

Yes, works fine for me.
Click to expand...


Keep in mind that Home versions of Windows, XP home, Vista Basic and Vista Premium do not allow incoming remote desktop connections even via WHS remote access. I'm not sure if this includes Live Mesh or not.
 
you might try and defrag the hdds......

could be the studdering..... i have WD GP drives and play multiple streams of hd video at a time, bottle neck is the LAN speed
 
Adidas4275 said:
you might try and defrag the hdds......

could be the studdering..... i have WD GP drives and play multiple streams of hd video at a time, bottle neck is the LAN speed
Click to expand...

Is it safe to defrag drives in the pool?

Two of my drives have around 2% free space, and if I try to defrag them it tells, me that I need at least 15%.
 
Vague said:
Keep in mind that Home versions of Windows, XP home, Vista Basic and Vista Premium do not allow incoming remote desktop connections even via WHS remote access. I'm not sure if this includes Live Mesh or not.
Click to expand...

The client PC is running Vista Ultimate, so remote desktop should run.
 
coolrunner84 said:
Is it safe to defrag drives in the pool?

Two of my drives have around 2% free space, and if I try to defrag them it tells, me that I need at least 15%.
Click to expand...

No, do not defrag with the built in tools. There are defrag programs out there specifically for WHS. Disk keeper makes one such program.
There is a reason why you can't defrag with the built in defragger but I don't recall the technically specifics.
 
Remote Desktop IS enabled by default. You should be able to log in as %whsservername%/Administrator with the admin password.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Windows Home Server Console is simply a Remote Desktop session with a custom GUI on top of it. I've been looking for documentation that says so for the past 20 minutes, to no avail.
 
I have been able to remote into both my WHS and client PC without any problems using Remote Desktop Connection. Its is when I try to remote into the client PC using WHS's homeserver.com domain that it does not work. I always get a connection timed out error.
 
coolrunner84 said:
I have been able to remote into both my WHS and client PC without any problems using Remote Desktop Connection. Its is when I try to remote into the client PC using WHS's homeserver.com domain that it does not work. I always get a connection timed out error.
Click to expand...

Make sure your router isnt blocking access, sounds like thats whats happening
 
leezard said:
Make sure your router isnt blocking access, sounds like thats whats happening
Click to expand...

I am running a Dlink DGL-4100 router. WHS was able to auto-configure the router. However, to be on the safe side I just set it to forward incoming data from ports 80, 443, and 4125 to my server. I will have to wait until tomorrow to test it again. Thanks for the suggestion.

BTW, does anyone know the difference between TCP and UDP. In my routers config I can set to forward data from both types of ports. I have set the TCP ports to those above, but would I need to set the UDP as well?
 
coolrunner84 said:
I am running a Dlink DGL-4100 router. WHS was able to auto-configure the router. However, to be on the safe side I just set it to forward incoming data from ports 80, 443, and 4125 to my server. I will have to wait until tomorrow to test it again. Thanks for the suggestion.

BTW, does anyone know the difference between TCP and UDP. In my routers config I can set to forward data from both types of ports. I have set the TCP ports to those above, but would I need to set the UDP as well?
Click to expand...

I have the same router and I just let WHS set it up. No issues.

You really need to go back to the source. Before you had the switch you had no problems. And now you add the switch in and you have problems. Therefore the switch is your problem.
 
The stuttering on the video could be several things. It could be A) the new switch or B) giant file size. How big is the file you're playing from? Often times with extremely large video files there is a lot of the stuttering > catch up > stuttering > catch up. The only real way to fix it is to convert the file to a new, compressed format.
 
n00zler said:
The stuttering on the video could be several things. It could be A) the new switch or B) giant file size. How big is the file you're playing from? Often times with extremely large video files there is a lot of the stuttering > catch up > stuttering > catch up. The only real way to fix it is to convert the file to a new, compressed format.
Click to expand...

Yes, it would be several things. But seeing as the problem only started after he got the switch.....

I play 4gb - 18gb movies across my network all the time. Never a stutter.
 
The movie I was playing back was an uncompressed blu-ray. So I am not entirely convinced that it was a server issue. We also watched another movie that night, which was a dvd, and nothing happened during the whole playback.

As for the HTPC stutter, it was the first time I noticed it, and it was after watching like 2 hours of video. It could have been the HTPC hdd that was being written to. As I have noticed that if I am writing something to my HDD (heavy writing, not recording) while trying to play back a video, the video will stutter.

I am actually trying to reproduce it my HTPC, but the other night I watched around 1.5 hours of video, and nothing happened. Can it really be a switch issue if it happens intermittently?
 
coolrunner84 said:
I am running a Dlink DGL-4100 router. WHS was able to auto-configure the router. However, to be on the safe side I just set it to forward incoming data from ports 80, 443, and 4125 to my server. I will have to wait until tomorrow to test it again. Thanks for the suggestion.
Click to expand...

This did not work either. The connection still times out when I try to connect to my WHS or client PC from outside my home.

I think the next step will be to check if the ISP is blocking the 4125 port. Does anyone know if Time Warner does that?
 
My ISP blocks servers on port 80. Maybe yours does too. I have to use https to connect to my home server remotely.
 
Sounds like the switch to me. Packet size setting perhaps? I'd imagine the stuttering is relative to network traffic/utilization and the huge file. If you're maxing out the packet handling capability streaming a file and there's another network request then you're probably going to get a stutter. Not sure of the specs of your particular router, but that would be my guess. If your router supports it, configure your server and HTPC for jumbo packets too. That should help a bit.

As for the remote access, make sure it's enabled for starters, and the user password complexity requirements are stronger if you have remote access enabled. The remote access is separate from the remote desktop connection. Your router could simply not be forwarding the correct port, or it could be an ISP limitation. Although you should be able to use your router to redirect a specific port to your server's port 80. So external IP:8080 as an example can become SERVERIP:80.

As huskerpat said, I'd use https regardless of weather your ISP requires it. If your WHS box is setup for it, which is most likely is, I'd always use the secure port.
 
Sorry if I seem skeptical about the switch being the issue. It is a $330 switch, the specs can be found here.

I am still trying to reproduce it, without much success. I am hoping it was a one time thing. Nonetheless, I plan on replacing the network cable between my server and switch.
 
coolrunner84 said:
Sorry if I seem skeptical about the switch being the issue. It is a $330 switch, the specs can be found here.

I am still trying to reproduce it, without much success. I am hoping it was a one time thing. Nonetheless, I plan on replacing the network cable between my server and switch.
Click to expand...

It's very easy to test. Anything else is just wasting time. Remove it from the network and go back to what you were doing. Very easy test. Then you will know for sure. It's basic troubleshooting 101. You add A and get problem B. So remove A and test. If problem B goes away then A is the source of the problem.

Just because you spent alot of money on a switch doesn't mean it's not the problem.
Did you really need that switch for a home network? You have 22 computers at home? My 5 port rosewill switches work great. Less than $30.
 
Noticed that popcorn box is 10/100 only. Being uncompressed blue ray, any chance that media box is not able to keep up?
 
slash1 said:
Noticed that popcorn box is 10/100 only. Being uncompressed blue ray, any chance that media box is not able to keep up?
Click to expand...

An HD movie stream doesn't use very much bandwidth. Maybe 5MB/s give or take.
 
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