Suggestions for WHS system?

[imported_browsing]

I'm getting ready to take the dive and make a Windows Home Server system but I'm looking for advice. I'm leaning against going with a pre-built solution just because I'm not really interested in having the extra software loaded (HP's rigs come to mind) and they don't seem to have enough HD slots. My main points of focus are:

-Lots of storage space / at least 3-4 TB (drive suggestions?)
-Plenty of drives so I can have everything duplicated
-Something that will be hardware-compatible with WHS v2 when it actually comes out
-Preferably not as large as a regular ATX case

Anyone have rigs running similar to this or specific barebones suggestions?

 

[nerp]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128436

Atom, low power, perfect for WHS, 4 SATA onboard with a slot for a SATA card down the road.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811112265

Mini-ITX case, fits the above mobo perfectly, *6* 3.5 inch drive slots plus 1 5.25 that could be converted bringing you to 7.

I threw in 2GB ram and have 5 HDs purring away. I can't say enough about the case. It's one of the few mini-itx cases that has lots of room for HDs and can fit a standard ATX PSU.

I agree, a prebuilt WHS box isn't the best.

 

[Zap]

A pre-built isn't always the best, but it isn't necessarily the worst either as long as it is close to what you want. For instance I've seen hot deals on the Acer Easystore (or whatever they call it) which is a small cube case with a 120mm fan cooling it, four hot swap bays, Atom processor and comes with WHS OS. They're often bundled with 500GB or 1TB drives from the start.

 

[imported_browsing]

Thank you nerp, that looks like a pretty nice case that looks like it would have more than enough hard drive space. Anyone know if these are regularly stocked at Fry's or any other brick and mortar?

Could someone confirm that the atom will be able to handle vail with no problems when it gets out of beta? Any thoughts on the amount of ram? Would it actually improve anything to have larger than the two gigs or are home servers not as ram intensive as a desktop? (I apologize if this is an obvious question, I'm not exactly server savvy, to say the least.)

I was looking at the Acers Zap moreso than any of the other pre-builts but I'm still concerned about having to mess with software add-ons and the reasonably priced Acers that I saw had either 2 or 3 bays, one of which was already being used.

Anyone have any experience/opinions/uneducated opinions on what hard drives are currently the best for home server usage? I know there was talk of trouble with some of the 1.5s and 2 TB drives but to be honest I stopped following it a while back. I'm just concerned about dumping everything into this box and having multiple hard drive failures in a short enough timespan that I can't recover from it.

 

[BTA]

I do love my WHS box. Mine is currently a Pentium E2180 w/4gigs of DDR2 on a Foxconn G33 mATX motherboard. It's in an old Antec Sonata I think it was...whatever their old huge HTPC case was, it kind of sucks but it works. I use a cheap SIL based 2port RAID card just for the extra sata ports.

As far as the Atom goes, I think it depends what you plan to do with your WHS. If you're just going to run the standard WHS setup, where you use it as file storage and for PC backups, I'm sure it is fine. Personally I run quite a few extra things from my WHS that I wouldn't be able to use an Atom for. (I also have 5 other Atom based machines around the house for various uses). Also, I'm not sure if Atom will work with Vail or not. Peruse the www.wegotserved.com forums, I'm sure they've tried it already. I do know Vail is supposed to be 64bit only. Also if you do go the miniITX route, make sure the MB you pick has enough SATA ports...some only have 2.

I do like that Lian Li ITX case though.

As far as hard drive failures...I just got hit by a couple of WD Green drive failures (one 1.5tb and a slightly older 640gig). Thankfully WD RMA service is great and I got replacements quickly. WD sent me a different model # of the 1.5tb and the PCB is markedly different than the one that failed. I have a feeling they had a problem with the early green drives. So far both replacements are fine. (they sent me a Black drive to replace the 640gig Green...that got put into the wife's PC). Unfortunately one of the drives that failed was my system drive, so I had to rebuild. WHS' rebuild procedure basically builds your storage pool based on files it leaves on each of your data drives, so you don't lose any data. You end up having to re-install your Add-ins, setup your users again, install any seperate software you installed. It wasn't too bad really.

The other failed drive was a data drive. I enable folder duplication so replacing that amounted to telling WHS to "remove" the drive from the pool, and then take it out and RMA it. WHS then duplicates the data again to another drive if available.

After getting my drives back and purchasing another, this is my current HD setup:
2tb Samsung F3
1.5tb Seagate
1.5tb Seagate
1.5tb WD Green
250gb Seagate System drive.

Though I do prefer Samsung drives in most cases, I do like having different makes of drives, I'd hate to buy like 8 of the exact same drives and get a bad batch and have them all possibly die around the same time, that's when you can be hosed. The Samsung's perform well, are completely silent, and I've yet to have a failure of one (knock on wood). They also seem to operate cooler than my Seagates or WD's. Granted my Seagates are 7200rpm drives. If I were to do it from scratch today I'd probably go with a combination of WD Green drives and Samsung's 5400rpm drives. (yeah, I had some WD's fail, but their RMA support is so good and fast that it's hard for me knock them too much...these are the first WD failures I've had in years anyway).

This was probably a lot of rambling but maybe it helps some.

Again, the www.wegotserved.com forums are a great resource.

 

[imported_browsing]

Personally I run quite a few extra things from my WHS that I wouldn't be able to use an Atom for. (I also have 5 other Atom based machines around the house for various uses). Also, I'm not sure if Atom will work with Vail or not.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding or just projecting my own limiting beliefs on the add-ins. What sort of things can you have WHS do? I didn't realize there was anything else it could do beyond provide the large shared space.

Thankfully WD RMA service is great and I got replacements quickly. WD sent me a different model # of the 1.5tb and the PCB is markedly different than the one that failed. I have a feeling they had a problem with the early green drives. So far both replacements are fine. (they sent me a Black drive to replace the 640gig Green...that got put into the wife's PC). Unfortunately one of the drives that failed was my system drive, so I had to rebuild.

I've never RMA'd a hard drive. Just too many horror stories about people buying repaired drives with the original contents still intact on them on ebay or pallet auctions. Then again, I don't know the specific RMA process for WD.

Though I do prefer Samsung drives in most cases, I do like having different makes of drives, I'd hate to buy like 8 of the exact same drives and get a bad batch and have them all possibly die around the same time, that's when you can be hosed.

That's what I'm concerned about. I like to buy things all together, and of course if I think something is the best deal then it's usually from the same supplier, who isn't likely to be grabbing from different stacks as they go. You've got a 2tb and 1.5... if you were to continue with these sizes, any preference?

All this advice was pretty helpful and I can appreciate a good ramble now and again. I'll check out the other site.

 

[BTA]

Add-ins are really just applications that have been specifically made to be managed through the WHS Console application. WHS itself though, underneath all the special WHS stuff, is just Windows Server 2003. You can run any application you want on it, installed from the desktop (I remote into my server mostly). I run use PlayOn to stream media video media, and I have a Squeezebox server app running, some seperate backup storage, and some other stuff. Pretty much anything you would want running all the time. There's a utorrent add-in also btw.

Honestly I don't keep anything super secret on my WHS. And I think the "omg I got someone else's drive" stories are a bit over blown. WD RMA process consists of entering the serial number of the drive into their website, enter the reason for return, and print out the shipping label. A week later you get your new drive back. (there is also an option to get the new drive first, you have to provide your CC info in case you dont send your broken one back within 30 days).

If I keep adding drives it'll probably be the 2tb Samsungs.

 

[imported_browsing]

So can you boot to a regular desktop environment on it? I have no experience with Server 2003. Could it run regular applications like a browser or games with the proper graphics card?

 

[RaiderJ]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128436

Atom, low power, perfect for WHS, 4 SATA onboard with a slot for a SATA card down the road.


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811112265

Mini-ITX case, fits the above mobo perfectly, *6* 3.5 inch drive slots plus 1 5.25 that could be converted bringing you to 7.

I threw in 2GB ram and have 5 HDs purring away. I can't say enough about the case. It's one of the few mini-itx cases that has lots of room for HDs and can fit a standard ATX PSU.

I agree, a prebuilt WHS box isn't the best.

That's a slick case. Hard to find ITX cases that can hold 4 or more hard drives.

 

[imported_browsing]

Below is what I'm leaning toward after everyone's great input. I'm trying to be sure that I have plenty of room for the full vail release, as well as being able to handle on-the-fly video encoding without any problems for the foreseeable future, so I think I'm going a little over. I think it will be worth the extra ~$100 but I'm more than happy to hear others out if they think it's too much overkill.

Motherboard
Intel Media Series Mini-ITX Motherboard Supporting Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RAID) BOXDH57JG

CPU
Intel Core i3 Processor i3-530 2.93GHz 4MB LGA1156 CPU BX80616I3530

Case
Lian Li PC-Q08B Black Aluminum ITX Cube SFF Case
(Never heard of this retailer before but no one else seems to have it in stock -- anyone have any experience with them?)

Storage Hard Drives
Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Black SATA 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD2001FASS

WHS OS Hard Drive
Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD6401AALS

Any critique on this or suggestions for RAM, PSU?

Also, I like to use Amazon when possible because I've got a PRIME subscription and rewards card.

 

[DivideBYZero]

My WHS build was completed last Dec. I use it for Backup, Storage, PS3 streaming of video/music, and fireplay for remote music streaming when I'm away.

- E1400@2Ghz
- 2Gb RAM
- 2 x Hitachi 1Tb drives
- Small, cheap ASUS case, 7volt'd cooling fans and added some modded fans to cool HDD's

It's super quiet and sits in a closet, serving all my needs. I love WHS as it's painless, unlike the equivilent Linux options.

 

[pjkenned]

Below is what I'm leaning toward after everyone's great input. I'm trying to be sure that I have plenty of room for the full vail release, as well as being able to handle on-the-fly video encoding without any problems for the foreseeable future, so I think I'm going a little over. I think it will be worth the extra ~$100 but I'm more than happy to hear others out if they think it's too much overkill.

Motherboard
Intel Media Series Mini-ITX Motherboard Supporting Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RAID) BOXDH57JG

CPU
Intel Core i3 Processor i3-530 2.93GHz 4MB LGA1156 CPU BX80616I3530

Case
Lian Li PC-Q08B Black Aluminum ITX Cube SFF Case
(Never heard of this retailer before but no one else seems to have it in stock -- anyone have any experience with them?)

Storage Hard Drives
Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Black SATA 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD2001FASS

WHS OS Hard Drive
Western Digital 640 GB Caviar Black SATA 7200 RPM 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD6401AALS

Any critique on this or suggestions for RAM, PSU?

Also, I like to use Amazon when possible because I've got a PRIME subscription and rewards card.

That is a great motherboard and CPU. I just built a i3-530/ H57JG system for a HTPC.

One thing to consider is that you only get 4 internal SATA ports with that board. If you are not totally against a mATX board consider a Q57 based motherboard with an i5-650 or a Supermicro X8SIL-F with the i3-530. KVM over IP is basically the must-have feature on any server at this point.

On the OS drive, skip the WD black. If you are like most people, your WHS will boot in the middle of the night once every few weeks. You just never notice it boot so there is no real reason for a "fast" OS drive. Plus, blacks generally consume more power and generate more heat than similar capacity green drives.

 

[BTA]

Agreed on the Black drives...don't even get them for your storage drives. WAY too loud for a WHS and there's no point in a performance drive in a server like this. You'll be listening to them grind away constantly...unless you wanna feel like it's 1998 again.

Also no you cannot game and really shouldn't do any productivity tasks at all from your WHS. Technically yes you can web surf and what not but it's not recommended and unless you want to spend money you won't get an active scanning virus app running on a server OS either. Just not a good idea.

 

[imported_browsing]

On the OS drive, skip the WD black. If you are like most people, your WHS will boot in the middle of the night once every few weeks. You just never notice it boot so there is no real reason for a "fast" OS drive. Plus, blacks generally consume more power and generate more heat than similar capacity green drives.

Thanks for the reply. After I put that together last night I was thinking about it and you're right. When I was writing it, I decided against the 2TB green drives because I saw a number of reviews at different sites talking about problems with that particular size in the green line. It just carried over into the OS drive as well. Correct me if I'm wrong but the hard drives aren't really going to be the largest bottleneck for this anyway, are they? Can anyone else chime in on running the OS from a green drive with no problem?

Also, I'm considering two very similar boxes down the road (a few months from now) for dedicated media PCs. What else did you pair the mobo/cpu with for your HTPC?

Agreed on the Black drives...WAY too loud for a WHS and there's no point in a performance drive in a server like this.

The 2TB green drives didn't have very good recent reviews and I'm really concerned about reliability for data. I haven't been able to find anything that has more reviews and more recent positive reviews than the 2TB black. But you're definitely right from an OS disk, it's too much overkill.

Also no you cannot game and really shouldn't do any productivity tasks at all from your WHS.

I just wanted to know if there was actually a quasi-familiar windows gui behind it. I feel better already.

 

[BTA]

Yeah it looks and acts just like XP. There's more security policies in place, so you may have issues there but that's what google is for . You really won't need to even look at the desktop unless you're doing something that isn't standard WHS functionality anyway. (beyond driver installation since you are doing a home-built WHS).

I hear you on the Green drives. I'm hoping my replacement 1.5tb keeps working okay. For 2tb check the Samsung EcoGreen. This is the one I have http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822152202.

It seems like every drive has reviews from people with problems. Seems like a crap-shoot anymore to me. You could always order a couple different model 2tb drives (Get a WD Green and a Samsung or a Seagate)...

I almost forgot something:

- When installing, you might have to set your SATA controller to IDE mode in the BIOS. It did not like RAID or ACHI mode for me (ICH9R) and I've read of a lot of other people with the same problems. IDE works fine. So if you get any blue screens or errors during installation, check that.

 

[nerp]

WD Green drives are perfectly fine - just be on the lookout for the newer "advanced format" drives, which use a different sector size and run like garbage on server 2003/XP systems. You'll have to use a jumper to bump it into a compatibility mode, or you have to run a WD Align program, but the align program will only work if you use the drive as the system drive and you have to do it AFTER the OS is installed, etc. It's a pain.

I have a 1TB advanced format green drive as a storage drive and it works just fine with the jumper.

Vail will not have any problems with advanced format drives.

There's a lot of info on the We Got Served forums about the issue.

Good job on the case, BTW. It really is a great case. It's nice and small without being too cramped. It's a great balance between being big enough for many HDs and a normal PSU while staying quite small, smaller than most mATX options.

If you're really anal about cable management, consider a modular PSU. It can get a bit hairy in there once you have a lot of drives kicking around.

 

[pjkenned]

On the HTPC's I tend to use something like an X25-V 40GB, Patriot PS-100 32GB (not the fastest but usually dirt cheap and I haven't had any issues with them), Agility 60GB or some other small SSD. Once you have the WHS up and running, there is little need for optical storage on HTPCs.

On the green drives, I am a bit mixed. I've lost three WD greens this year out of ten (maybe more) that I purchased in the last 7 months, so I am not a huge fan. I won't use the WD Green EARS drives in WHS just because I do not want to deal with the hassle of preparing them for WHS. My EARS drives all run well on Windows Server 2008 R2 though.

Performance wise, the Greens will probably be OK, however I am a really big fan of the Hitachi 2TB drives. They are dirt cheap, a bit loud, run a bit hot but they are fairly reliable and I haven't had any issues with them dropping out of raid arrays or anything. Of course, saying hard drive heat when you are basically dissapating 6-8w on a 3.5" disk is a bit misleading since you can fairly easily cool four drives with one 120mm fan.

My big point of advice is to make the system remotely manageable with KVM over IP. Hard drive noise and etc matter little when you have the box tucked away in a closet or somewhere away from where you are.

BTW in case you were wondering, a few weeks ago I tallied the egg ratings at Newegg for 1TB+ internal drives.

 

[Homerboy]

I never understood the need for such beefy CPUs and RAM in WHS machines.

My first build for WHS was an old AMD1700+ w/ 512 RAM and all the HDDs I had laying around. Worked PEREFECTLY fine.
I then had a Barton 3000+ laying around and 2x512. I had to do some migration on the WHS so I built using that and to this day (2 years+ later) its running perfectly fine too.

It's doing WHS, SABNZB, SickBeard, FTP, etc etc and it all functions flawlessly.

 

[arod]

Agreed.... I have an atom (2 gigs ram) in my acer h340 and have never had a problem but I also don't run very many addons.

I chose the acer over building my own because even buying parts I was at best only going to match the acer so I saw no reason to build my own and not get things like hotswap hard drives, warranty, etc.

 

[pjkenned]

I never understood the need for such beefy CPUs and RAM in WHS machines.

My first build for WHS was an old AMD1700+ w/ 512 RAM and all the HDDs I had laying around. Worked PEREFECTLY fine.
I then had a Barton 3000+ laying around and 2x512. I had to do some migration on the WHS so I built using that and to this day (2 years+ later) its running perfectly fine too.

It's doing WHS, SABNZB, SickBeard, FTP, etc etc and it all functions flawlessly.

My WHS is now in a Hyper-V VM in Server 2008 R2 so the CPU's are for other things. That being said, once you start offloading video encode/ transcode duties to the WHS, beefy CPU's are needed. DEmigrator wrecks my Sempron 140 WHS test system's throughput too.

The other thing is that 32nm clarkdales have really, really low power consumption at idle.

 

[nerp]

My dual core atom setup is more than enough power for WHS, for sure.

 

[imported_browsing]

Went looking for a reliable modular PSU to help with the cable management. What about the OCZ Fatal1ty OCZ550FTY 550W ATX12V v2.2?

Also, I'm concerned about expansion and the OS drive given that the mobo only has 4 SATA on it. Does anyone know of a decent pci-e sata controller that would pair well with this or am I going to be limited to 4 drives including the OS drive?

This memory was on the list in the mobo manual as definitely working and I've had good luck with g skill before. G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9D-4GBNQ I want to give it some extra space for vail / encoding on the server.

Also was reading over this and now I'm even more indecisive than I was before about choosing the drives.

 

[pjkenned]

If it makes you feel better, the "definative 2TB HD roundup" excludes the Hitachi 2TB drives... which are ultra popular in large home servers (10+ drives) because they have super raid card compatibility and are cheap. Plus, most people with home servers either have cases with standard hard drive fans (i.e. rackmount storage cases) or know enough to provide at least minimum drive airflow.

On the Atom running WHS... try a N330 or D510 with Windows Server 2008 R2 (they have a 90 day eval) and if you can stand it for more than a few days more power to you. I lasted no longer than 8 hours on either setup. The D510 also supports only 4GB of RAM which is good for the current WHS but the 64-bit WHS V2 based on Server 2008 R2 uses much more memory. Plus the D510 only has two SATA channels native I thought which makes it a poor choice for WHS applications. I have seen a board or two with what looked like a JMicron SATA controller which usually means way worse than Intel ICH performance.

If you do get an Atom, get a Supermicro X7SPA-HF. It is basically the best Atom D510 based server board by a longshot. Dual Intel NICs, KVM over IP, 6 SATA ports, an internal USB header, and a PCIe x4 slot to boot. Sure it costs more, but the featureset for an Atom based home server can't be beat.

 

[BTA]

Like I said before if all you are doing is serving files and doing PC backups then an Atom will be fine but anything more and you'll likely want to upgrade.

I've got a lot of Atom based machines in use so I know how they perform...and while I like it very much for some tasks, WHS is not one of them.

 

[Homerboy]

One thing that irks me about WHS is that it doesn't TRULY balance the HDD usage. I was near maxing out my 2.5TB of space (via 4 HDDs) and tossed in a new 2TB drive last night. Now that 2TB sits empty and all those other HDDs are still near max capacity. I wish it balanced out for % of HDD used so that they all sat at relatively the same % of available space used.