Windows Home Server FAQ

First of all, thanks guys. This is a great source of information on WHS and much better then doing the old Google hunt for information.

Question: Is there an ideal setup for a WHS? I saw the minimum system requirements (and even those who are running below min sys requirements lol) but want to have something optimal. I'm primarily looking to build one for storage and maybe eventually to stream HD stuff, but right now just plain old storage. I'd like to buy quality components so I don't have to worry about my machine failing within a year or 2.
 
Bonksnp said:
First of all, thanks guys. This is a great source of information on WHS and much better then doing the old Google hunt for information.
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Glad to be of help.

Bonksnp said:
Is there an ideal setup for a WHS?
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"Ideal" is a strange word. It's hard to know exactly what you would need tomorrow...

However, I believe I can shed some light on what kind of setup might work:

- Get yourself a decent NIC, either add-on or integrated. Lousy NICs cause excessively high CPU usage and can lead to sub-par network performance. Obviously, this is not an issue with 10/100 speeds, but when you hit Gigabit link speeds, 250Mbps+ transfer rates need decent NICs and drivers;

- CPU speed only matters if you're thinking about multitasking on the server (VMs, databases, busy webservers, etc.), if you have a decent NIC, CPU load should remain sufficiently low;

- While choosing a CPU, keep in mind to get a 64-bit capable one, if you're planning to upgrade to WHS2 down the line. Which means the D945GSET is probably not a great idea, but just about anything else will be able to handle it;

- Large memory quantities only matter if you plan on moving large stuff around with low speed HDDs on one side of the link (for caching purposes) and you just can't wait a little longer to be done with it, or if you plan on using VMs or databases. Also, since WHS is x86-32 only, more than 4GB is a moot point right now. WHS2, on the other hand, might benefit for more memory, since it's x86-64 only.

- As for HDD and controllers, you can go with just about anything, but controllers are best to be of the "dumb" kind. WHS can duplicate data, and data will be available in case an HDD dies if it's duplicated, so expensive RAID arrays, while interesting and probably great performers, might not bring that much of a headache-free experience.

That being said, here's my WHS setup:

- ASRock G31M-GS motherboard (my oldest motherboard still in serviceable order [decomitioned it a couple of months ago, in favor of an Atom-based board with 1/3rd the power consumption... :p] is from ASRock, and it has endured through several YEARS of 24/7 operation, including a MASSIVE short-circuit);
- Integrated Realtek Gigabit NIC, very competent (albeit being a Realtek chip);
- Celeron E3200, sips power, especially when using the motherboard's low power mode.
- Samgung HDDs (I'm a sucker for Samsung since the 321KJ era, and plus they're about 20-30% cheaper than similar WD HDDs in Portugal, so...).

So far, not a single problem with this setup, since the only times playback suffers stem from DE-related activities, and I can actually saturate a Gigabit link while transferring data (constant 800-900Mbps+ write speeds until I hit the 4GB RAM barrier on the WHS).

You can probably build something just as competent using less powerful hardware, but this works very well for me right now, and it will most likely last for a long time.

Hope this helps.

Miguel
 
Bonksnp said:
Question: Is there an ideal setup for a WHS? I saw the minimum system requirements (and even those who are running below min sys requirements lol) but want to have something optimal. I'm primarily looking to build one for storage and maybe eventually to stream HD stuff, but right now just plain old storage. I'd like to buy quality components so I don't have to worry about my machine failing within a year or 2.
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As usual, Miguel has pretty much crushed the answer again, but I will throw in my 2 cents and re-emphasize a couple of his points.

-First is the WHS2/V2/Vail factor. Keep hardware in a class that will run the next version because you will probably quickly see threads like this convert at a rapid pace to it. So an x64 cpu is a must and multiple cores probably won't hurt your future cause.

-Since you are looking for basic now with some streaming later and no crazy vm or db programs taking over, a good place to start this hardware hunt would be Fry's IF you have one near you. I have built a few WHS boxes for others with their combo deals because they are crazy cheap and if you wait for a good solid combo of components, you will have a great foundation for future expansion and an effective server. You don't need 3 PCI-E x16 slots or spdif ports to get the most out of WHS so be patient if you want to save a little scratch.

-I would recommend getting a little more horsepower if it means a small monitary hit. I built a WHS for basic needs just like you for a nas, backup, remote login server but quickly started using it for streaming and other small things. Once I discovered what it was capable of (thanks to forums like this) I quickly approached a performance wall and a couple extra dollars could have gone a long way.

If you have a good experience setting up WHS and getting the hardware up to speed quickly, you will wonder how you lived without one before.
 
Would love to move from my ATX P3 Server 2003 machine to Dual-core atom 330 (64-bit support, right) WHS2/Vail. A)am I crazy, B)how's WHS' support for IIS/MySQL/PHP? I'm very familiar with S2K3 and IIS and would prefer to use IIS instead of switching to *nix.

Already have a NAS with 4x2TB Hitachis so using WHS as a backup system/media machine is not high on my priority list for this sort of build.
 
__Miguel_ said:
- Get yourself a decent NIC, either add-on or integrated. Lousy NICs cause excessively high CPU usage and can lead to sub-par network performance. Obviously, this is not an issue with 10/100 speeds, but when you hit Gigabit link speeds, 250Mbps+ transfer rates need decent NICs and drivers;

- As for HDD and controllers, you can go with just about anything, but controllers are best to be of the "dumb" kind. WHS can duplicate data, and data will be available in case an HDD dies if it's duplicated, so expensive RAID arrays, while interesting and probably great performers, might not bring that much of a headache-free experience.

Miguel
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I have a couple of questions for you. First, My motherboard has dual onboard gigabit nic's (realtek) Should I look into getting a pci intel gigabit or just stay with what i have?

Also I have debated with a friend over harddrives for WHS. If i am on a gigabit network, should i get 7200rpm drives or would 5400 work just fine? He refuses to get green drives because he thinks they kill performance (And i'm talking about for networked use not boot drives or any local attached drives since there is a performance difference there)
 
He refuses to get green drives because he thinks they kill performance (And i'm talking about for networked use not boot drives or any local attached drives since there is a performance difference there
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When I installed my first green drive in my WHS the performance dropped and never recovered to what it was previously.

I'm thinkin' it's just like RAID and the slowest drive will dictate the performance for the whole thing.

AFAIK your buddy is correct.
 
Of course they hurt performance. GP drives are 25% slower by specification.

Depending on the performance needed/wanted they are great.
If you are just streaming and movie and storing stuff, then the GPs are great drives. IE you only need sequential performance.

For me they didnt work cause i am running 20-30 torrents at any given time. Running VMs, NZB, Encoding, streaming. All at the same time.
Now i have an extreme case of insanity, and am by no means an avg WHS user.

At my parents house i bought them an HP WHS and put three 1tb GPs in there and its working great and they dont have issues, but its solely a Media Storage tank.

So it depends on

1) Whats the intended use?

2)how many people using it at the same time?
 
nitrobass24 said:
So it depends on

1) Whats the intended use?

2)how many people using it at the same time?
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1) Mainly storage but also does torrents,streaming media to lan/wan, virtual machines, protein folding, shared truecrypt drives, WHS built in backups along with other automated ones, hosting 2 websites, "security" web cam streaming, virus scanning...

2) People? 2 max.
Machines? 8 on average. My 7 and my roommates 1.

I am looking into switching to server 2008 r2 and have a WHS vm, that way I can let whs handle all it's nice backups and host my documents for me, and let 08 handle most everything else. If i do go that route i will use the existing drives for WHS and any new drives will be 7200rpm for 08 to use. That way I can offload my video folder from whs and move it to 08 since it takes up the most space and is really just storage.
 
dokument said:
1) Mainly storage but also does torrents,streaming media to lan/wan, virtual machines, protein folding, shared truecrypt drives, WHS built in backups along with other automated ones, hosting 2 websites, "security" web cam streaming, virus scanning...

2) People? 2 max.
Machines? 8 on average. My 7 and my roommates 1.

I am looking into switching to server 2008 r2 and have a WHS vm, that way I can let whs handle all it's nice backups and host my documents for me, and let 08 handle most everything else. If i do go that route i will use the existing drives for WHS and any new drives will be 7200rpm for 08 to use. That way I can offload my video folder from whs and move it to 08 since it takes up the most space and is really just storage.
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I think you have a good plan there;)

I use my WHS VM just for backups and remote access, and have all my shares hosted through 2008
 
dokument said:
First, My motherboard has dual onboard gigabit nic's (realtek) Should I look into getting a pci intel gigabit or just stay with what i have?
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Well, some people will just say "Get the Intel NIC", period. Also, a bunch of people will say "steer away from integrated NICs, especially from Realtek".

Personally, I haven't used Intel NICs since my old P4C800-E Deluxe, and that one was also of the integrated kind.

I believe heavy users might reap some benefits from stuff like dedicated Intel NICs (or even a KillerNIC), but the thing is, my WHS can handle 900Mbps+ speeds on a Gigabit link between two Realtek integrated NICs with a Dlink 5-port unmanaged Gigabit switch in between... Can't complain about CPU usage, either.

So, yeah, I reckon only high end will actually *need* an Intel NIC. But that's just me.

dokument said:
If i am on a gigabit network, should i get 7200rpm drives or would 5400 work just fine?
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There is no short answer for this one, I'm afraid. It all depends on the intended usage. Both have strengths and weaknesses.

My setup consists on one 1TB Samsung F1 drive (system), plus two 1.5TB Samsung F2 drives (data). So, 7200rpm for the system and the start of the "D" drive (not used ATM), 5400rpm for the rest.

My usual usage patterns: small semi-constant read/write accesses (uTorrent), semi-regular video and audio streams (read), some large linear writes (usually 500MB+, most of them 1GB+, given my taste for 1060p video...).

VMC/7MC caps my network data transfers (so I can't really tell how when it behaves in multi-stream situations), but as I said before, the only times when I have dropped frames are when DE does its thing and gobbles up data transfer. Apart from that, network speed seems to be limited more by the Gigabit link than the "green" HDDs, since very large files (bigger than available RAM space) still average above 60MBps when writing to the WHS machine.

However, if your usage pattern favors random reads and writes, then probably 7200rpm drives are better suited, due to lower latencies.

Cheers.

Miguel
 
Wipeout said:
Would love to move from my ATX P3 Server 2003 machine to Dual-core atom 330 (64-bit support, right) WHS2/Vail. A)am I crazy, B)how's WHS' support for IIS/MySQL/PHP? I'm very familiar with S2K3 and IIS and would prefer to use IIS instead of switching to *nix.

Already have a NAS with 4x2TB Hitachis so using WHS as a backup system/media machine is not high on my priority list for this sort of build.
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A) Think about the i3 or i5 series. Idle power is similar to the N330, but performance in 2008 R2 is SIGNIFICANTLY better (Vail is built on R2).

Also on the NICs, for streaming video, I got stuttering with Realtek NICs. Even with cheap $15 PCI NICs from ebay, I now have no stutter to any machine. Transferring data over a single link old WHS to new WHS with a single Intel-Intel link I sustained 100MB/s for 3TB of data. There is no torrent software on my network though so I can't comment on that performance.
 
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okay another issue guys :(

I got my WHS running and then today I was using fastcopy to transfer all my data from non-storage pool drives to the storage pool.

transfer went well and then I did a no overwrite transfer and it spit out like 500 errors.

I now have all my folders and files, names and types, for all my movies (500+) but they all show 0KB

they worked before the non-overwrite transfer happened and now I cannot play any of the video files.


anyone have any idea. I have back of the data... but it will require some physical work to get it working and it is not super current.

I need to fix all the files.... at the moment they all show 0KB and are unopenable. I know they are still there, just something made them show as 0KB

have any ideas?
 
Adidas4275 said:
okay another issue guys :(

I got my WHS running and then today I was using fastcopy to transfer all my data from non-storage pool drives to the storage pool.

transfer went well and then I did a no overwrite transfer and it spit out like 500 errors.

I now have all my folders and files, names and types, for all my movies (500+) but they all show 0KB

they worked before the non-overwrite transfer happened and now I cannot play any of the video files.


anyone have any idea. I have back of the data... but it will require some physical work to get it working and it is not super current.

I need to fix all the files.... at the moment they all show 0KB and are unopenable. I know they are still there, just something made them show as 0KB

have any ideas?
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I dont understand what you did.
If you did a no overwrite, then isnt where you copied from still there?
 
it looks like they are lost files....
I am running R-studio in trial mode and it is finding them all... so hopefully I can restore them in a easy way that does require renaming all my files :D
 
Adidas4275 said:
it looks like they are lost files....
I am running R-studio in trial mode and it is finding them all... so hopefully I can restore them in a easy way that does require renaming all my files :D
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Im not sure what to say about all that, cause i have never used fastcopy.
I was planning on trying it this week on my WHS, but i think i might take a pass.
 
I am not sure why it messed up. I used it to migrate all my data off old WHS drives and it worked fine.

I installed the old WHS system drive and I think it copied over DE files or something and jacked my whole setup up.


I am still trying to get my data back. I have a backup on a bunch of old drives but installing them all is going to be a pain and slow at migrating data off them.


all the files are still on the drives, but in the shares folders they show up as 0kb and unopenable. :(

This is no bueno
 
shftup said:
I have searched for the best method to use utorrent with the WHS only found 1 or 2 that rreally work. Can a few guys chime in with some of the pros/cons of the methods that they are using right now.

Thanks
S
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I have utorrent on my WHS box. It works wonderfully. I have utorrent store active torrents on 250gb ide drive that is not in the pool. Then move the finished torrents to a folder on the same drive called Torrents. Inside /Torrents/ I have a folder for video,music,applications,iso's.... which uTorrent moves the appropriate file type into the folder by appending labels. Then i have a script that runs every 12hrs that xcopy's the contents of each folder to the appropriate share and once the folder is empty it deletes it and remakes it (This way there aren't any duplicates or files copied that I don't want copied). I have had this running for 3 months now without any problems. I use the webui to add torrents or the bittorrent webui firefox plugin to add torrents.

so, torrents progress.

linux site >download torrent
webui > add torrent file and add label
Utorrent downloads the file to the non-pooled drive
When finished the file is moved according to the label to the appropriate folder in the /Torrents/ folder
Every 12hrs a batch file (xcopy) moves the contents of each folder to their respective shares
The contents of /Torrents/ is deleted
The folders are re-recreated.

.dok
 
Some explanation is probably needed as a preface...

I had a Samsung HD103SI drive failing with 3 Pending Bad Sectors the other day. Since the drive is fairly new I decided to remove it from the pool (I've got 4 identical 1TB drives). So far no problems. I physically removed it from the system and then ran it through ES TOOLS on a spare computer and did a low level format. Retesting showed the drive good so I reinstalled it in the WHS and added it back to the pool. So far so good.

After a day or so I ran drive balancer and forced data back onto the newly formatted drive. I did wind up with chkdsk errors after things were done but after rebooting and checking all the drives again things showed no problems. The same thing happened the first time a ran drive balancer a while back so it may be related to not rebooting. Anyway, another couple of days go by and the C drive is filling with a chkdsk log file.

I tried logging in and the Administrator account had issues and a new account was created; however it's got graphics problems. The old account is still there but it can't be renamed so I moved the system drive to another computer to switch over to the original desktop setup - which worked fine. However the screen when not logged on is still partially corrupted.

Anybody got any suggestions on how to fix this w/o doing a reinstall?

Corrupt Logon Screen

The image is on the RDC but it's the same as the main display as well.
 
I still have yet to be able to make the shares that were afftected by symantec show up as healthy.

The shares that are "faulty" had files that symantec quarantined, symantec was being a whore regarding restoring its "backups"

It has since been uninstalled.

Anyone have ideas?

If I have to reinstall WHS and transfer 7tb over again im going to murder someone. (ahem)
 
erebus720 said:
I still have yet to be able to make the shares that were afftected by symantec show up as healthy.

The shares that are "faulty" had files that symantec quarantined, symantec was being a whore regarding restoring its "backups"

It has since been uninstalled.

Anyone have ideas?

If I have to reinstall WHS and transfer 7tb over again im going to murder someone. (ahem)
Click to expand...

What happened?
 
tgmorris99 said:
Some explanation is probably needed as a preface...

I had a Samsung HD103SI drive failing with 3 Pending Bad Sectors the other day. Since the drive is fairly new I decided to remove it from the pool (I've got 4 identical 1TB drives). So far no problems. I physically removed it from the system and then ran it through ES TOOLS on a spare computer and did a low level format. Retesting showed the drive good so I reinstalled it in the WHS and added it back to the pool. So far so good.

After a day or so I ran drive balancer and forced data back onto the newly formatted drive. I did wind up with chkdsk errors after things were done but after rebooting and checking all the drives again things showed no problems. The same thing happened the first time a ran drive balancer a while back so it may be related to not rebooting. Anyway, another couple of days go by and the C drive is filling with a chkdsk log file.

I tried logging in and the Administrator account had issues and a new account was created; however it's got graphics problems. The old account is still there but it can't be renamed so I moved the system drive to another computer to switch over to the original desktop setup - which worked fine. However the screen when not logged on is still partially corrupted.

Anybody got any suggestions on how to fix this w/o doing a reinstall?

Corrupt Logon Screen

The image is on the RDC but it's the same as the main display as well.
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Create a backup and write down the diskID.
Run spinrite
See if its fixed.

If not get a new HDD and reinstall.
 
erebus720 said:
Anyone running symantec on their whs?

..long story short roomie decided to install it on the WHS.

It nommed the piss out of files in 5 shares, now whs reports those shares are "failing"

I have rarely used symantec, I tried recovering the files it fucked with, I will just have to replace them.. after I uninstall symantec. Will WHS return to normal after removal of symantec, and replacing the disrupted files?

Fucking annoyed.
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Thats what happened. Every file symantec quarantined was in a share that is now failing.

Its just annoying, Ive checked the disks and they all are fine.

Short of making a new share with a diffrent name, copying data, deleting old share, and renaming the new one.

Anything else I can do thats less involved?
 
Alright, I check on this thread every day and I haven't seen anything like this so here it is. This may be filed under "networking" but since it is occurring with my WHS then I am asking here first. I was having trouble with my network and was poking around to see what could be the culprit. While looking at all devices I went to my router to see if something was physically wrong. When I looked at the activity light for the port that the WHS was plugged into I noticed that it is constantly flashing even when there is no network activity for the WHS to deal with. When I log into the WHS there is no cpu utilization or activity in the networking tab of Windows Task Manager. Is this a symptom of WHS or is it probably just the nic going ape shit? I don't think this is the problem with the network but it does seem troublesome.
 
sxesynesthesia said:
Details.
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One day while playing BFBC2 I started getting horrible packet loss or latency, I wasn't sure. After ordering a new Intel nic, buying a new cable modem, and resetting the router completely I am still getting what is now dropped packets. Of course the ISP says nothing is wrong but I get the same behavior when I direct connect to my gaming rig. It was only then when I hooked everything back up I noticed the crazy activity on the router coming from the WHS. Now, my house is prewired and I think that may have something to do with it overall so the next step is to bypass even that and sit the damn modem right next to my machine.
 
Anyone knows if there's any significant advantage running WHS on 2GB (2x1GB DDR2) vs 1GB (1x1GB)?
 
SOSTrooper said:
Anyone knows if there's any significant advantage running WHS on 2GB (2x1GB DDR2) vs 1GB (1x1GB)?
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As a general rule of thumb, I don't recommend running ANY Windows machine with less than 2GB of RAM. In the WHS case, you might start to have HDD paging if you have some add-ons running.

That being said, memory serves a second purpose on a NAS: (huge) write buffer. If you look over at the SmallNetBuilder NAS performance charts, you'll see write (and sometimes even read) throughput performance drop quite a bit as soon as the file size exceeds the RAM size available to the NAS device. I feel it too in my 4GB WHS machine: as soon as files go over ~3.5GB (rather common, I might add, since I'm quite fond of HD content), throughput drops from 100MBps to 60MBps.

So, if you frequently move 2GB+ files, 2GB (or more) of RAM will be great, especially if your HDDs are slow.

Cheers.

Miguel
 
I found a solution to symantec eating my files.

I just deleted all the affected files inside each share, and rebooted.

Was going to be seriously annoyed if I couldn't fix it.
 
so i dont think you can install the connector software in win2k3. but what if you dual boot that box with xp. can i boot into xp, manually do a backup of the drive?
 
I just picked up 5 2TB WD green drives to replace 4 750GB Seagates in my server. Can someone with experience removing drives in WHS give me a ballpark on how long it takes to remove a 750GB drive from the storage pool? I don't bother with storage balancing, so all four of the drives are basically full. I'm assuming 10-12 hours per drive, but that may be optimistic.
 
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