OS, PCI-E Versions and Performance, Storage and Motherboards

[BonzaiDuck]

Let me describe my home server.

It is an olden-times ASUS top-end 680i motherboard with three PCI-E x16 slots, of which two would only operate with 2x 8x in terms of bandwidth and lanes. The nForce controller is not AHCI compliant; the PCI-E slots are all version 1.0.

But it had been an RMA-repair or replacement board, which I put back in storage. That board was released around 2006, but when put in commission last year, had less than a year's accumulated usage.

So, toward disabling the nForce controller, I installed two $70 4-port, port-multiplier capable controllers limited to any single port of the four, with BIOS options for JBOD, RAID0, RAID1, RAID10, or "Not Configured" for AHCI with native MSAHCI driver. In addition, the Marvel controller included a "Hyper-Duo" feature parallel to Intel's ISRT SSD-caching, HDD acceleration feature.

But these cards have their maximum bandwidth at 250MB/s -- at the most. This, in fact, corresponds to readings taken with the StableBit Scanner program, with graphs of MB/s against time for each drive viewed separately at any given time.

The linked Anandtech article below focuses on AMD versus Intel technology of the year written, but the useful information for my purposes here is the discussion about PCI-E 1.0 versus PCI-E 2.0:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2973/6gbps-sata-performance-amd-890gx-vs-intel-x58-p55/2

At the same time, I anticipate replacing the 680i board with an EVGA 780i "SLI" 3-way-capable second-tier board. The board provides PCI-E 2.0 in all the x16 slots.

To this end, especially since the same storage hardware, drives, virtual-drive software would simply move to the new motherboard and that the 780i would follow the plan to disable nForce, the only hardware and drivers that would effectively change is the chipset with its chipset and system drivers. The earlier 680i would likely be a subset of the 780i, so Windows Home Server 2011 would boot without problem, and I should only need to install the 780i chipset drivers if WHS did not provide a WHQL set on its own.

So I'm thinking to skip the SYSPREP and just about everything else except the chipset and perhaps the audio drivers (audio is disabled for the 680i). I would like to have the ability to revert to a cloned 680i-configured OS disk if something goes wrong.

So the most pressing of all these questions is this one. I've been happy that I can reinstall WHS 2011 on new hardware, and I think the most recent pairing with the 680i system is the second of such pairings with the OS.

I understand that OEM disks have a limit of three such activations. Or am I wrong? Is the limitation accurate only for branded OEM disks?

Should I worry about installing WHS on a third hardware configuration?

I want to keep consistent with the common principle: "Don't fix it if it ain't broke," while I take a chance on using newer hardware for better disk performance. This has to be reversible to the last pairing of OS and hardware if something goes wrong.

I'm not ready to shell out yet for Server 2012 R2 or "Essentials." In addition to the cost, I'm not ready to go through any reinstallations of OS and all the software unless absolutely necessary. CoveCube should guarantee free license activation for StableBit on the same OS's reinstallations -- they did it before. Even if not, that's ~$35. The only other add-ins are AAC or Advanced Andministrative Console, the stablebit scanner, Serviio -- which is free, and the NOD32 AV program.

So again: Should there be any problem for a fresh reinstall of WHS2011 on new hardware after two previous such installs? And does the fact that the 680i drivers manage a subset of 780i features likely mean I can get a clean transfer of boot disk and Event-Log bill-of-health by simply installing the 780i drivers or seeing WHS make the update automatically?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I honestly don't see anything positive coming out of the move. Isn't the 680i and 780i essentially the same silicon? I didn't think that there was a difference in the PCI-E revision between them.

Is the current arrangement a bottleneck for the disks somehow? Or is this an e-peen issue with disk benchmarks?

I wouldn't waste another OEM WHS (WHS only came in OEM) activation. Even if it activates three times per key on different hardware, I would save that for a necessary move. Like if, the mobo actual failed on you.

Or, if you're dead-set on moving, then consider an A88X board with Kaveri, and EIGHT "native" SATA6G ports. Should be plenty for your server. Plus, if you get an ATX-format board, it will come with multiple PCI-E 2.0 (or maybe 3.0, with Kaveri) slots.

 

[ArisVer]

It's probably better to clone the OS disk for your move.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It's probably better to clone the OS disk for your move.

That would indeed by the strategy. It could be just a little tricky, because I went through this exercise last year struggling to configure what is now an entirely "clean" and rock-solid configuration.

Acronis Disk Director 11-Update only works with Windows 7. Acronis True-Image 2014 (which I also have) will clone WHS-2011 successfully. Last year's cloning attempt failed, because I made the bootable utility disk with the Microsoft base instead of the bootable-Linux version.

So I would have to try again with the Linux-based boot disk and test it. There is also a year's history of successful backup images of the OS/boot-system disk, and I know that using it for a restoration works.

Addressing Larry's remark, looking at the EVGA 780i motherboard documentation and archived web-pages at EVGA, it is certain that the PCI-E slots of the motherboard fulfill the PCI-E 2.0 standard. According to the link I provided earlier, this would double the bandwidth/throughput potential to 500 MB/s.

Even now, it is clear that the PCI-E 1.0 implemented on the 680i chipset is slightly crippling: the boot-system disk is an 840 EVO drive, and all benchmarks with Magician -- sequential read/write -- fall below 400 MB/s. (seq read is only 390). On a much newer board, we know these benchmarks reflect the ~500 MB/s spec for the EVO drive. Of course, the usual EVO benchies are taken against a scenario with SATA-III onboard controller connections.

Are things "slow?" No. The server is "more than adequate" the way it is. Would they be faster with the motherboard swap? Likely. Not sure how much. Obviously, with an uncertain payoff, there's no panic or hurry about either committing to make the swap to the 780i board, or doing it right away. There is only a need to assure -- success or failure -- that it isn't any sort of disaster for me.

Also, Larry reminds me that there were more necessary reasons that I put the 780i board aside -- or planned to through late last year before I actually was able to put it aside as a spare. The one necessary factor behind the thought was the possibility of hardware failure on the existing 680i board. (Takes a licking, keeps on ticking . . . )

It's a little like the climactic scene in the original "Flight of the Phoenix" movie, Jimmy Stewart holding five or six "ignition" cartridges in his hand to start the airplane engine. It brings the movie-viewer to the edge of his/her seat as the cartridges dwindle to the very last one and the little German engineer goes into a panic about using them all up. But I'm not about to die in the desert here . . .

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Here's an interesting thread from last October (2014) on the "We Got Served" web-site:

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index....board-and-cpu-without-re-installing-whs-2011/

If I were planning to replace WHS-2011 with Win 2012 Essentials, I'd also be more inclined to use newer hardware than a 780i replacement to 680i.

All this hair-pulling is obviously about expense. I've GOT the spare hardware offering a better refresh over the 780i board. It's the license for Essentials that kills my enthusiasm at the moment.

I may have lost the opportunity -- would have to check flea-bay again today -- but somebody was offering the COA for another WHS-2011 with a broken/shattered install disc -- for $50. That would allow me to simply clone the 680i boot disk for use with the 780i board, and meet the activation screen with a different product key. Thus I could have two near-identical WHS servers running together before choosing to decommission the 680i hardware entirely.

 

[Essence_of_War]

All this hair-pulling is obviously about expense. I've GOT the spare hardware offering a better refresh over the 780i board. It's the license for Essentials that kills my enthusiasm at the moment.

Have you heard the good news, brother BonzaiDuck? If you have hardware, and want an OS to run on top of it, there is a penguin who wants to help.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Have you heard the good news, brother BonzaiDuck? If you have hardware, and want an OS to run on top of it, there is a penguin who wants to help.

Here's a Linux joke, then.

Guy drives up to Reno to find the Moonlight Bunny Ranch.

He goes into an empty room. Soon, a hooka opens the door and walks in.

"Whaddya want?" She says. $50-dollah for straight . . ."

Guy says: "I've only got $20 dollah."

She says: "I'll give you a penguin for $20 dollah."

He says: "OK."

So she pulls his jeans down to his ankles, and then runs from the room.

With the jeans around his ankles, he waddles hurriedly toward the door.

"What's a penquin?! What's a penguin?!"

There is absolutely no moral to that story -- for info-tech or generally speaking.

=== SERIOUSLY ===

I'm sort of the old retired guy who gets a kick out of maintaining his network in the residence. Some folks would lay out the basement of their house with structures and tables containing little trees, little houses, . . . electric-train tracks. They put on an "Engineer Bill" hat, and sit at a stool, flipping the switches on the transformers and other devices. You could play "Taking of Pelham 1-2-3" in the basement! No kidding!

So I'm trying to balance well-planned hardware changes and the time they take to do, with any unexpected learning curves.

Which version of Linux do you recommend? I think the most recent Maximum PC for May or June has a little "how to . . " for installing -- maybe -- RedHat or Ubuntu. Am I right about those as being in a range of options?

See -- the way I'd want to do it means making an outlay. I think I'd start shopping for a new case with a budget of ~$100 +/-. I've got the PSU -- 650W modular Seasonic brand-new in carton. Then there's the EVGA board -- still socketed with a Wolfdale E-8600, 8GB 4x2GB, an NVidia 450 or 9600 GT.

For DrivePool capability, I'll budget $30 for it or about the price of a StableBit license. I think I can buy the COA and product key with a broken disk. [But seller won't mail the pieces -- what gives?] That's about $50.

I'll consult with CoveCube tech support -- I know the guy by name -- and see if their "OS version limitation" can transfer to another WHS, 2008 or 2012, but if both the servers are running, I don't want to break the pool on the first one. With a second license, I could remove two drives from the pool of four, and if the data that gets moved to the remaining disks is still left on the two removed, I can just connect it to the new server. Come to think of it, I'd really have to copy all the files to the unpooled disks, or copy folders over the network.

How that plays out between WHS, Win 2012R2, Linux whatever flavor -- I don't know.

So which penguin?

 

[VirtualLarry]

unRAID or FreeNAS are probably the two most popular, for NAS-specific distros. FreeNAS isn't actually Linux, of course, it's FreeBSD. unRAID is based on Linux.

I have only just started to catch up to new developments with unRAID, but v6.x provides VM hosting as well as "Docking Containers".

Which, if you read my thread in the CPU subforum, there's a link to the new stuff in unRAID v6.x (beta).

It seems like you could run unRAID as the base / host OS, to manage your disk pool, and then run Windows 7/8.1/10(?) on top, in a VM, as well as a VM for Linux Mint.

At least, that's what I would want to do. I might be able to reduce my "main" PCs down to a single "big" storage / VM server, and change out my client PCs to be just remote-terminals. (Could break out the Foxconn C-70 NanoPCs again, I think, for VNC or RDP duties.)

 

[Essence_of_War]

Which version of Linux do you recommend? I think the most recent Maximum PC for May or June has a little "how to . . " for installing -- maybe -- RedHat or Ubuntu. Am I right about those as being in a range of options?

Ubuntu has an easy to use "server" distro that can be administered headlessly. I use Ubuntu as a dual-boot for my desktop and I find it exceedingly pleasing.

Linux has mdadm to build RAID block devices and LVM to build logical volumes baked in, and you can combine those with Samba to set-up SMB/CIFS shares without too much trouble for the rest of your users.

I think you might have fun playing with the hardware with a new OS on top, even if you later decide WHS fits your actual use case better.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Ubuntu has an easy to use "server" distro that can be administered headlessly. I use Ubuntu as a dual-boot for my desktop and I find it exceedingly pleasing.

Linux has mdadm to build RAID block devices and LVM to build logical volumes baked in, and you can combine those with Samba to set-up SMB/CIFS shares without too much trouble for the rest of your users.

I think you might have fun playing with the hardware with a new OS on top, even if you later decide WHS fits your actual use case better.

Thanks, and also thanks to Larry for his insights.

I might, indeed, have fun with my spare hardware as you say. The worst problem I've had lately is the clutter: too many computers in one place.

For the current WHS box, I did some more poking around to see how much the 780i board might offer in performance improvement. There seems to be a fairly noticeable difference between SATA-III and SATA-II HDDs connected to my two StarTech (Marvell) PCI_E SATA-III controllers.

The SMART information I have from StableBit Scanner shows the SATA-III disks (the four 2TB units in the drive pool) as giving a throughput in excess of 300MB/s.

So I'm thinking I don't really want to swap in the EVGA 780i board anytime too soon. But I still want to formulate "a plan" given the orphan status of the Home Server OS.

Do the Linux/Ubuntu server versions make it possible to back up entire client systems regularly that can then be used for bare-metal restoration in event of a workstation failure? This is one valuable feature of WHS that I'd come to depend on. To replace it, the only choice I could see as a certain bet would be "Essentials," and that's going to cost around $250 from my recent survey of the offerings.

I'm also seriously retarded on the matter of VM's -- never having tried fiddling with VMware or anything similar. To use the hobby electric train analogy, I can see this might be like Lionel versus HO, but the other priority against exploring any learning curves -- "keep the trains running on time."

 

[Essence_of_War]

Do the Linux/Ubuntu server versions make it possible to back up entire client systems regularly that can then be used for bare-metal restoration in event of a workstation failure? This is one valuable feature of WHS that I'd come to depend on. To replace it, the only choice I could see as a certain bet would be "Essentials," and that's going to cost around $250 from my recent survey of the offerings.

Do you use some specific software to do your backups, or do you use the built-in backup/restore in windows? If you're using the built-in backup/restore, you should be able to share the RAID volume from the linux server w/ SMB/CIFS, then use that as a network backup location.