Windows Home Server FAQ

Old Hippie you want to stick with Intel or Broadcom NICs, usually those work the best and the Broadcom’s work well in linux too.

Another great resource for the WHS is www.homeserverland.com , I like that add-in gallery a lot more too.

Is anyone running WHS v2 VAIL yet?
 
OMG is this thread really 960 responses long? Maybe some admin can chop it into bits, this is insane?
[sorry guys i am new here]
 
blizzard77 said:
OMG is this thread really 960 responses long? Maybe some admin can chop it into bits, this is insane?
[sorry guys i am new here]
Click to expand...

:D

Lemme help ya out a little.......This thread has been going, and going, and.......for over 2 years.

There's no rhyme nor reason to the flow and I doubt you'll ever be able to locate specific answers.

Sorry!
 
Old Hippie said:
Lemme help ya out a little.......This thread has been going, and going, and.......for over 2 years.

There's no rhyme nor reason to the flow and I doubt you'll ever be able to locate specific answers.
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What he said. This thread has been going on for longer than the Duracell bunnies... :D AND without any sort of TOC... lol

Given the size of the thread, there have been questions answered more than once for sure. Take a look at +-5 pages back for your answer. If you don't find it, probably either 1) it hasn't been answered yet or 2) it HAS been answered, but nobody really remembers anymore, so it's OK to repeat it... IMMV on that last one, but we're all here to help, though I know I don't mind in that case. Even us long-term lurkers don't remember everything that has been replied (nor where...).
 
Hahaha I see, well I have never seen anything quite like it.
I am going to give it a stab, interested in chit chatting about media centric matters, home storage and SBS.
 
If someone responds to my thread do I get an email notifciation? Sorry to ask these lame questions, otherwise I am going to have to bookmark and I can see myself getting lost already.
 
you can configure it to email you, yes.
Look in your user control panel.
 
I've recently put together a WHS using an athlon I had and 2GB memory.

I bought an Intel PCIe network card based on recommendations and also was given an Areca 1210 SCSI Controller for free so I put 3x 1TB Samsung drives on it into a RAID5.

My OS drive is a 160GB Samsung, SATA.

I added the RAID5 array into the storage pool.

My concern now is: If I expand the array with a new 1TB drive, what if anything needs to be done in WHS to expand the size in the storage pool? With the 3 drives the array is just under 2TB, when the new drive comes online should I carve a LUN with the new space and present that to the storage pool for adding?

Also, if I ever have to re-install WHS what headaches am I looking at in regards to breaking apart the storage array and adding it back to the new install.
 
What you should do when you add the new drive is expand your RAIDset. Then create a new volume set with the remaining space and add it to the drive pool separately from the current volume set.

WHSv1 does not play nice with volumes over 2tb.
 
nitrobass24 said:
What you should do when you add the new drive is expand your RAIDset. Then create a new volume set with the remaining space and add it to the drive pool separately from the current volume set.

WHSv1 does not play nice with volumes over 2tb.
Click to expand...

Ah, had my terminology messed up. Volume, not LUN, thanks.

Sounds like it shouldn't be a problem then. :D
 
Is it possible to get DXVA to work in WHS?
I'm thinking about using the server as a secondary HTPC.
 
So here's a good question: Do you use WHS to backup Windows 7 PC's or do you use the built in backup feature of Windows 7.

Can WHS even create a proper image of a Windows 7 machine?
 
Since I am still getting slowdowns after disabeling drive extender when streaming HD media, I'm tempted to upgrade my network card, although I still think its a hard drive or WHS issue. What is the good intel card going on ebay? I think I'm pretty limited to PCI card as all my slots are filling up. Is there any advantage in going with a dual network card?
 
hl3395 said:
Is it possible to get DXVA to work in WHS?
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Hmm, I believe MPC-HC should be able to access DXVA features on the GPU/IGP, IF they are available. Just follow the Windows XP recommendations here and you should be all set.

Do keep in mind you might need to install things like DirectX, .Net and miscellaneous drivers to make it work, plus either have a DXVA-capable IGP or add a dedicated card. Neither of those things is recommended for a server, since it adds heat output, and extra software points of failure.

Also, WHS wasn't really designed to be accessed from the console (a.k.a. with a keyboard, mouse and monitor directly connected to it), you may need to make some adjustments to the startup.

All in all, I'd skip that. It may well become a rather large pain in the behind on the long run.

Justintoxicated said:
Since I am still getting slowdowns after disabeling drive extender when streaming HD media, I'm tempted to upgrade my network card, although I still think its a hard drive or WHS issue. What is the good intel card going on ebay? I think I'm pretty limited to PCI card as all my slots are filling up. Is there any advantage in going with a dual network card?
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Before coughing up cash for a new NIC, please try to check if you're having IRQ sharing issues. My brother had a SERIOUS problem with the GPU sharing the same IRQ as one of the PCI slots (where the NIC was), the result being VERY low transfer speeds over LAN.

Also, on another occasion, he found out one of the IDE controllers on the motherboard was defective (old P3 board), which prevented it to function on DMA mode, meaning VERY low HDD transfer rates and VERY HIGH CPU usage values when accessing the HDD.

Finally, I experienced reduced transfer speeds over LAN (down to about 40%, from ~80% at Gigabit speeds) when I ran background F@H-like software. Context switching is very taxing on the CPU, and running F@H and similar software, even on "idle" priority, while moving stuff over the NIC interface still causes lots of context switches on the CPU.

Oh, I almost forgot! Make sure you have ALL the drivers installed on your server, especially VGA ones. The standard Windows VGA driver is a pure software-based driver, meaning graphics output (which still happens even when you don't have a monitor plugged in) is handled entirely by the CPU, which, again, causes high CPU usage and lots of context switches.

Check those things out before buying anything, you may find you don't actually need it.

As for the NIC recommendations, I'll let that for more knowledgeable people than me on that area. I'll say this, though: dual-port NICs on the PCI bus is a rather bad idea, since the desktop PCI bus is limited to ~133MBps (there are 266MBps variants, but not on consumer-grade boards) shared between all PCI devices on the system, and with some overhead attached to it, and Gigabit tops out at 125MBps PER NIC PORT. Not the best idea, at least from where I'm standing...

If you were referring to having two NICs on the system (instead of a dual-port NIC), there shouldn't be a problem, especially if you have your server using DHCP. You can actually make it a router that way (using ICS or RRAS), though you might want to read up on that one first. Or you can go into the BIOS and disable the onboard NIC, if you're not planning on using it ever again.

Hope this helps.
 
__Miguel_ said:
Before coughing up cash for a new NIC, please try to check if you're having IRQ sharing issues. My brother had a SERIOUS problem with the GPU sharing the same IRQ as one of the PCI slots (where the NIC was), the result being VERY low transfer speeds over LAN.
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What exactly should I do to check this? I'm using the onboard Lan, and the GPU is onboard as well although I am not using it.

__Miguel_ said:
Also, on another occasion, he found out one of the IDE controllers on the motherboard was defective (old P3 board), which prevented it to function on DMA mode, meaning VERY low HDD transfer rates and VERY HIGH CPU usage values when accessing the HDD.
Click to expand...

I don't have any IDE, but I seriously doubt that a sata port has gone bad when 95% of the time I'm not having issues with DE turned off). I suppose it is possible but this MB isnt that old. This is the one I am using.
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/detail_overview.aspx?ID=en-us0000415

__Miguel_ said:
Finally, I experienced reduced transfer speeds over LAN (down to about 40%, from ~80% at Gigabit speeds) when I ran background F@H-like software. Context switching is very taxing on the CPU, and running F@H and similar software, even on "idle" priority, while moving stuff over the NIC interface still causes lots of context switches on the CPU.

Oh, I almost forgot! Make sure you have ALL the drivers installed on your server, especially VGA ones. The standard Windows VGA driver is a pure software-based driver, meaning graphics output (which still happens even when you don't have a monitor plugged in) is handled entirely by the CPU, which, again, causes high CPU usage and lots of context switches.

Check those things out before buying anything, you may find you don't actually need it.

As for the NIC recommendations, I'll let that for more knowledgeable people than me on that area. I'll say this, though: dual-port NICs on the PCI bus is a rather bad idea, since the desktop PCI bus is limited to ~133MBps (there are 266MBps variants, but not on consumer-grade boards) shared between all PCI devices on the system, and with some overhead attached to it, and Gigabit tops out at 125MBps PER NIC PORT. Not the best idea, at least from where I'm standing...

If you were referring to having two NICs on the system (instead of a dual-port NIC), there shouldn't be a problem, especially if you have your server using DHCP. You can actually make it a router that way (using ICS or RRAS), though you might want to read up on that one first. Or you can go into the BIOS and disable the onboard NIC, if you're not planning on using it ever again.

Hope this helps.
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I'll check the Display Driver, but I believe it is fine. The E7300 should be fast enough to stream media I would think?
 
Justintoxicated said:
What exactly should I do to check this? I'm using the onboard Lan, and the GPU is onboard as well although I am not using it.
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To check for IRQ sharing issues, go to the Device Manager and select "View->Resources by type". Then open "IRQ" and see which devices are sharing what IRQ lines. Having low-bandwidth (or latency-agnostic) devices sharing an IRQ (like USB and PCIe controllers, or stuff like that) is not too bad. Having NICs and GPUs sharing an IRQ is BAD, since both are highly latency-dependent.

It might actually help if you disable unused peripherals in the BIOS. I usually disable COM, LPT, IDE and even the Audio codec on a server (I can't really remember the last time I used COM, LPT or IDE devices, and each and every one of those devices not only draws power but uses up one IRQ channel). That way the BIOS/OS has more free IRQ lines, and might shuffle them around more effectively.

As for the IGP, as I said before, and this is especially true with Intel-based chipsets, even if you don't have a monitor plugged in, it's still outputting a video signal at about 60Hz. Intel IGPs don't have an "off" switch, unless you lug in a GPU, but either way you WILL have a video output and an IRQ line being used.

Justintoxicated said:
I don't have any IDE, but I seriously doubt that a sata port has gone bad when 95% of the time I'm not having issues with DE turned off).
Click to expand...
I was only referring to possible causes. Hell, Intel motherboards are a MAJOR pain to get working correctly because of non-100% compliant data cables. I've been there with a D945GCLF board, I was just about ready to throw it out the window when I remembered to change a cable I was using and presto, everything was working fine.

Justintoxicated said:
I'll check the Display Driver, but I believe it is fine. The E7300 should be fast enough to stream media I would think?
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I stream media with a 4GB G31-based WHS machine with an E3200. The only hiccups I get come from DE balancing data at the same time I am trying to watch a movie.

The general consensus is that you should move your data to the WHS, turn DE on and let it sit for about one day to make sure you don't have any surprises. Also, from my personal experience, it seems DE likes to run twice a day in 12-hour intervals, the first one being around 12 hours after the machine first being turned on. So make sure you turn your WHS machine at odd times, keeping in mind about 12 hours later you should be experiencing hiccups on data transfer.

Hopefully Vail will change the way DE works so it will at least try and sense if you're streaming something before balancing storage...
 
MS says vail will not change the way DE does not sense usage before running in Vail :( . Although I have heard that DE replication will run as it writes data to dives, rather than when DE kicks off the next time (about every hour). I'm not convinced this is a good thing though, in fact I'm not sure the current work around for scheduling the DE to run at certain times will still work in Vail.

The way it sounds like it will be working I'm tempted to build a whole new machine to prototype it before switching over, but that is going to be a real pain and I'm broke.
 
Justintoxicated said:
Although I have heard that DE replication will run as it writes data to dives, rather than when DE kicks off the next time (about every hour).
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I've read that, too.

It's actually a good thing, at least from my perspective. If DE runs every time there is a write, data will ALWAYS be duplicated when the write operation ends. That's basically the way software RAID1 works, and I think it's general consensus that there is a very low CPU overhead with that approach. The only thing Vail needs to do to make DE work even less at regular schedules is to keep a list of available HDD space in memory. That way, when a write command arrives, it will only have to choose the two HDDs with most disk space available. Done.

Btw, has anyone toyed with Vail on a machine with per-HDD access LEDs, to verify exactly how DE works now?
 
On my whs box, I have a unhealthy disk. Can I just let this go? Will this create a problem if I need to restore a pc? It did this about 3 months ago on a different disk, so I repaired it. It wouldnt boot after and I had to reinstall everything. I have 3 drives in here, and they are all new. The pc isnt even a year old. I dont think the drives are bad, just whs likes to be picky. I dont want to have to reinstall everything again.

any suggestions?
 
Worst case scenario is you "remove" the afflicted drive via the console and add a new one. You can pull it out and run the manufacturer's diagnostic tools on it. If it's bad you can RMA it.
 
Hey guys,

Whats a good "add-on" program to automatically turn the NAS on and off (morning and night), and to schedule different times for that?
I don't want to have 4TB's of drives running all the time...
 
Hello everyone

So I've finally decided to put together a Windows Home Server system. I already have a case, 500W power supply and 4GB of DDR3 memory and a WD 1TB Green HDD. So I'll be getting a CPU, Mainboard and another 500GB HDD to get started. I want the system to be powerful enough to handle the next version of WHS (that's coming out) as well

I have decided on a following CPU and Motherboard. Are these powerful enough to run WHS comfortably? Will they be able to handle the next version of WHS as well?

CPU = AMD Athlon II X2 250 (65W) Dual-Core Socket AM3

Motherboard = Asus M4A77T/USB3 Socket AM3, AMD 770 Chipset, DDR3 1800(O.C.)/1600(O.C.)/1333/1066Mhz, 8-Channel HD Audio, Gigabit LAN, 2x USB3.0+10x USB2.0, 6x SATA, ATX

Memory = 4GB DDR3 1333MHZ

Power Supply = 500W

Does this make a capable WHS for backup and streaming media? Is Dual Core enough?

Thank you
 
WAKASHIZuMa said:
Hello everyone

So I've finally decided to put together a Windows Home Server system. I already have a case, 500W power supply and 4GB of DDR3 memory and a WD 1TB Green HDD. So I'll be getting a CPU, Mainboard and another 500GB HDD to get started. I want the system to be powerful enough to handle the next version of WHS (that's coming out) as well

I have decided on a following CPU and Motherboard. Are these powerful enough to run WHS comfortably? Will they be able to handle the next version of WHS as well?

CPU = AMD Athlon II X2 250 (65W) Dual-Core Socket AM3

Motherboard = Asus M4A77T/USB3 Socket AM3, AMD 770 Chipset, DDR3 1800(O.C.)/1600(O.C.)/1333/1066Mhz, 8-Channel HD Audio, Gigabit LAN, 2x USB3.0+10x USB2.0, 6x SATA, ATX

Memory = 4GB DDR3 1333MHZ

Power Supply = 500W

Does this make a capable WHS for backup and streaming media? Is Dual Core enough?

Thank you
Click to expand...

Absolutely powerful enough. In fact, probably overpowered...you don't need 4Gb of memory, you don't need expensive, fast DDR3 memory. Unless you are going to run a dozen or more disks you don't need 500W of psu, and most of those extra USBs are just wasted on a WHS machine...

Suggestion: good choice on the CPU (though price out the 250e version if you can find it to save a few watts). Use a BioStar A760G M2+ motherboard instead. Buy 2Gb of ECC memory (this is pretty much the only cheap desktop board that will run ECC memory). Take the money you save and buy a really good Intel NIC card - the Realtek NICs on most MBs are just junk and almost nothing else does more to improve WHS performance.
 
Just finished setting up a new WHS build and have a couple questions.

I plan on running SABnzbd and uTorrent on it. I want to setup up download folders and curious if its ok to create my download folders for each on the root of the D drive? I was thinking d:\downloads\torrent and d:\downloads\nzb


Reason I was wanting to do this is because SABnzbd's built in PAR utility does NOT like UNC paths.

I know under earlier Power packs it was never a good idea to write directly to the D drive. Is this still the case? I do NOT plan to write to the shares directly via the D drive, just create my own folders off the root.


Yeah or Nay?
 
Look on wegotserved wiki there is a utorrent and sabnzb wiki. I can't link on my phone.
 
I run utorrent and SABnzbd w/ a Windows XP Virtual Machine, keep the VM on an old 500gb Hard drive. exclude that from the pool, works great. I'm paranoid and don't want to do all my downloading on my server directly incase of virus's, drive extender issues, and otherwise keeping WHS "clean". Plus it makes managing my downloading machine a breeze since i can store back images of the XP and revert anytime.
 
MrMitch said:
I run utorrent and SABnzbd w/ a Windows XP Virtual Machine, keep the VM on an old 500gb Hard drive. exclude that from the pool, works great. I'm paranoid and don't want to do all my downloading on my server directly incase of virus's, drive extender issues, and otherwise keeping WHS "clean". Plus it makes managing my downloading machine a breeze since i can store back images of the XP and revert anytime.
Click to expand...


What kind of performance do you get out of your downloader VM?

I had thought about that, except I didn't want to have to dedicate a seperate, non pooled disk to it.
 
Download performance is a non-issue, I max my bandwidth at about 1mbs down, 100k up. The un-raring of torrents and whatnot is a little slow, but I'm just running XP in Virtualbox, no fancy hyper-v setup or anything, and I do keep microsoft security essentials realtime running on the VM, so performance is gonna suffer. Not running a monster system hardware wise either, but works great for me.
 
Mathemabeat said:
I want to setup up download folders and curious if its ok to create my download folders for each on the root of the D drive? I was thinking d:\downloads\torrent and d:\downloads\nzb
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This question has been debated a while back between myself and another two users (not sure who, though), and there are mixed feelings about that one. I recommend you check a few pages back (I use a non-standard page size, with 50 posts per page, so I don't really know how many), to have the full rundown on the subject.

My knowledge about DE tells me that using non-UNC paths for anything out of the system drive is generally a bad idea, but it does seem to work. I wouldn't put my hands on fire for it though, just to be on the safe side.

The VM idea, with or without a dedicated non-pooled drive, seems a good one, though. If the VM host software can handle UNC paths, it's even better, you can actually have your VM protected by DE... hehehe

Hope this helps.
 
I wasn't able to find any info on this so here it goes:

I'm getting file conflict warnings "The file is open" From what I understand WHS doesn't like it when you keep files open for more than 24 hours.

Is it a big deal if I ignore these messages? From what I understand they are only important if you are relying on DE to protect your files. Since I am using a hardware array this seems irrelevant.

Also, is there a way to tell it to stop notifying certain PC's about these file open conflicts?
 
Has anyone been running the Beta version of the new Windows Home Server?

I'm currently running the WHS PP3 in 30 days trial to evaluate the product. I'm wondering if it is worth purchasing the current version or go for the beta version and buy the new version when it comes out

Any thoughts?
 
The latest beta appears to have some known data corruption issues. Until we know more about just how serious they are, I would not trust it for important data.
 
I am running the beta, and i would not put any "Production Data" that you value on WHS Beta, there are serious data integrity flaws with the current Beta.
 
Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

I won't be buying the 64bit version.

After 1.5yrs I'm just getting the old version to work correctly. :D

Major factor to me is that the new version isn't NTFS and can't be read by any Windows machine.

I'll probably go with some other server OS rather than pay MS another 100 bucks for another 1/2 baked OS.

As you can tell I've had a less than steller experience with WHS. :)
 
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