WHS works fine with RAID. Setup your array, create a logical drive, install WHS to said drive, away you go with the same RAID features you'd have with any other OS. Since it's a single drive, you don't have to worry about the "simple-minded" DE doing it's thing.
WHS works fine with RAID. Setup your array, create a logical drive, install WHS to said drive, away you go with the same RAID features you'd have with any other OS. Since it's a single drive, you don't have to worry about the "simple-minded" DE doing it's thing.
I don't think that is true.
If I remember correctly WHS intentionally does NOT support RAID and you need to use some trick to install it on a RAID system.
At the same time WHS supports its own proprietary data duplication across multiple disks.
It's kind of true -- the WHS team said things like "RAID is not recommended or supported", so you're on your own to get it working, and if WHS or it messes up somehow, you'll get "told you so" for your efforts, but you can get various RAID configurations working with WHS.
What I was referring to was sort of at this level -- resolving the conflict with what WHS wants to do and what you can do under WHS without WHS being directly aware of it. If WHS was RAID-smart, like Drobo, I think it would be a better design and give better value to the user. Of course, the likelihood of that happening is probably nil for the next release, unless MS buys IP from Data Robotics perhaps..
heymrdj
Diamond Member
- May 28, 2007
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In my humble opinion WHS is better than RAID. WHS stores and replicates (backs up) your data acrossed drives (if you tell it to) in a non-proprietary way in which you can retrieve your files in the event of a catastrophic OS failure (resetup requiring kind). RAID can't do this. A single card failure (if you don't keep another around that's of like chipsets ect) can render all your data within the array useless as you can't get a replacement to read the files stored. Also with WHS you can take the drives and retrieve their files on any system, RAID is locked to the system the drives were stored in.
In short, I think that WHS featuring RAID would be a step back rather than a step forward.
In short, I think that WHS featuring RAID would be a step back rather than a step forward.
RebateMonger
Elite Member
- Dec 24, 2005
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I'm a big fan of keep-it-simple. I'm VERY happy with WHS in its current form. I'd like an automated way to back up file shares and I'd like a built-in system drive backup utility, but I'd hate to see the cost of a WHS system go up to support features that many homes and businesses won't need.
WHS' current features are sorely needed in millions of homes and businesses. Keeping WHS simple, reliable, and cheap is, I believe, key to increasing its popularity.
I can see why RAID 1 of the WHS system disk could be useful, and I can see why some folks would like more media center capabilities in WHS. I'd just hate to see it increase the cost of buying or deploying WHS where it's needed. The current feature set is already vastly superior to what 99% of homes and small businesses currently have in place (meaning no automated backups, no image backups, and no disk redundancy).
WHS' current features are sorely needed in millions of homes and businesses. Keeping WHS simple, reliable, and cheap is, I believe, key to increasing its popularity.
I can see why RAID 1 of the WHS system disk could be useful, and I can see why some folks would like more media center capabilities in WHS. I'd just hate to see it increase the cost of buying or deploying WHS where it's needed. The current feature set is already vastly superior to what 99% of homes and small businesses currently have in place (meaning no automated backups, no image backups, and no disk redundancy).
All you people slobbering over entertainment functionality from a BACKUP SERVER are asking for trouble. WHS should do one thing and do it well because when you lose data, nothing else in the world matters.
You are right in that you can use RAID1 but it is a more complicated setup because the WHS installer does not support RAID per se and fails with a bluescreen:
WHS Runs better on RAID:
BTW - does anyone know when the new Acer WHS systems will become available? They look real sweet.
RebateMonger
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- Dec 24, 2005
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Press release says yesterday in Japan. Don't see any more info. Darned. When are those fancy WHS-centric cases going to be available to home builders?
Hopefully soon, because the prices they are charging for these premade WHS boxes is an outrage. Thats the main reason they havent caught on IMO.
People arent going to spend $500+ on a glorified file sharing and backup solution. As much potential as I think WHS has, it really doesnt justify it's price for the prebuilt systems. Either it needs to do more, or cost less.
The newest HP mediasmart is $549 for 750GB, and its got a slow celeron and 2GB of memory. The Acer has an atom for crying out loud, and its $600 for a 1TB system.
$600 could buy me a monster quad core 1TB system from dell these days.
The only differentiating thing about these cases is that you can put a HDD in front the front. That shouldnt add several hundred dollars to the price.
As it stands I still find it pretty hard to recommend WHS to people over buying a 1TB external HDD for ~$100, sharing it across the network and setting windows backup to run every night. Right now, it really doesnt do much more than that.
RebateMonger
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- Dec 24, 2005
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Well, there's a HUGE difference between a Windows backup (at least the XP version) and what WHS provides.
I have a WHS box at a client with eleven PCs. The office manager decided that they'd skip backups on one of the PCs and asked me to make an NTBackup of that box and store the .BKF file on their WHS.
Six months ago, Windows got trashed on one of the WHS clients. Over the phone, I told them how to restore it. It took about five minutes of work and about an hour of restore time.
Two days ago, the one PC with the NTBackup needed to be restored. They had to re-install Windows, update it to SP2, and then run an NTBackup restore. I don't know if they are done yet, but it'd take an hour or two of labor and several hours of restore and update time. Downtime on the PC would be most of a day.
Also, NTBackup in unattended mode has no easy notification of completion or errors. It's common for folks to think they are running backups and find (at the worst time) that their automatic backups have been failing all along. I don't know if the Vista backup program(s) provide better notification.
I still don't think that the HP WHS boxes are overpriced. IF there was a $100 SFF case that would hold four drives, then it'd cost this much to build a comparable WHS server from new components:
$100 - WHS software
$90 - Atom motherboard w/CPU
$100 - Case w/P.S.
$25 - DVD drive
$20 - Memory
$100 - 1 TB hard drive
----------------------
Almost $450 total cost, and you have to build it and there's no technical support for the system. HP's system draws about 35 Watts and will hold three additional drives if necessary.
You can build your own with higher-power components and used parts for cheaper, but you won't build one that's so small, so silent, holds so many drives, and draws so little power for significantly less money. Dell could do it, but you and I can't.
And I agree with you, but I've bolded the relevant part.
This is supposed to be windows home server, not windows small business server. As it is right now, its certainly justifiable for a small business to use WHS, and its great for that purpose. But it doesnt do enough for the home with 1-3 PCs to justify it's cost.
WHS is good, but its not good enough. It can stream media to other PCs, but any Windows PC can do that with WMP. It can host files on the network for all...but so can any PC. Remote access is built in to all PCs. The backup in WHS is great, but backup isnt anything new either.
When I'm thinking of what a home server, I'm thinking much bigger. It should be the centerpiece of home computing, not a cute little file server backup box. It seems crazy the way it is to me now, where you get a warning if you even try to log into the thing, as if using it for anything but file sharing and backup is out of the question.
I shouldnt need a wireless router - the server should be/contain the router. This way it should be able to monitor all incoming traffic and provide firewall and antivirus duties for the entire network, so I can take that burden off the individual PCs.
I should be able to run thin client terminals into every room in the house, where anyone can log on to any PC/Terminal and get the exact same desktop up and running just as they left it, because the server is doing the real processing.
I should be able to throw two tuners into it and have it handle everything media center is doing, and let an XBox 360 do the rest.
It's always connected to the internet, so I should be able to take a netbook with me and access my files from the coffee shop without having to think about syncing or going through some silly web interface.
It should not only be able to duplicate across drives, but sync to the cloud for documents and pictures, and other small, precious data.
I think right now its totally backwards - atoms are going in the servers to handle clients with quad cores. The quad core should be in the server, the atoms should be in the clients.
Granted, this would take an entire rethinking of the home computing environment, but that would be what I'd call added value. I'd like to be able to order a network from HP, complete with server, desktop thin client and netbook, all made to work perfectly with each other out of the box. That would be badass.
But these are pre-built systems, and the prices for the WHS pre-built servers are not in line with the regular desktop pre-builts for the hardware you get. Especially if theyre going to throw atoms in there. Vista OEM is about the same price as WHS OEM nowadays, so the OS can hardly be the reason they cost so much.
My own personal server is a dell prebuilt, and has much more powerful hardware than a mediasmart. Though I have to open the case to add a HDD, it came with an OS, not to mention a mouse, keyboard and monitor and support. It cost much less, draws 45W idle, and is dead silent.
I dabbled with the idea of the mediasmart, but its too expensive, and too limited for the price. Especially for the limited use WHS currently has.
I'm sure it'll only get better with time, but this still feels like a side project from MS and OEMs, rather than something theyre really putting some effort into.
RebateMonger
Elite Member
- Dec 24, 2005
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You said the magic word: Dell. HP has the market to itself and is grabbing an extra $100 in profit and to pay for R&D costs. Hopefully Dell will jump in and the prices will drop a bit. Of course, if it's decided to ADD things like TV tuners to WHS, the price wil go UP, which would be sad.
I agree that a product that would provide terminal services and more robust DVR and media serving duties is desirable...but hosting those sort of services on a box that also does and stores your backups of your entire network just isn't a good plan. Not to mention having it do your NAT/routing duties.
I know RebateMonger is an SBS pro and knows about integrating a lot of these functions (aside from media, of course) into one box for small businesses and the risks you take by doing so. I've had clients come close to being burned by having a single point of failure like this. Honestly, I'm doing all I can to get clients with more than 2 or 3 users off of SBS boxes, but that's another rant for another thread.
Back to your idea -- it sounds desirable in theory, but when the PSU fails in your HP "do it all" home network server and you have to wait for a replacement from HP and are stuck with no workstations, files, TV or other media, or even internet, it dawns on you that it isn't such a great idea. Too easy to end up DIW. I think the idea of splitting WHS and media serving/DVR duties between 2 network devices is the way to go. If you want to do NAT/Routing on a PC, you can install 2 NICs and run RRAS on your WHS box and go to town. I still think it's a bad idea, though.
This is true, and is obviously the achilles heel of any such system. I would imagine that a decent home server would be built to last, but alas, shit happens. But as it stands right now, I hesitate to even call WHS a true server. It does so little of what a server should be capable of.
A major issue they have to deal with is that unlike a business, they have to take into account that the home server can be added or removed from the network at any time, and has to work with already established systems, so it can be integrated only to a point.
Another interesting addition would be effortless ripping of CDs and DVDs and the like by just inserting a disc, but the MPAA and RIAA would throw a fit. I know third party software exists somewhat to the effect, but from what I've seen its a bit half assed, and probably needs proper first party treatment to be done right.
RebateMonger
Elite Member
- Dec 24, 2005
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You are a tough sell. WHS is a web server, a remote access server, a file server (with drive redundancy, and a backup server. Some folks are making it into a DNS and DHCP server, but you have to be cautious of MS licensing questions.
I count four definite server functions, which is more than many corporate servers perform, and the possibility of performing several more server functions.
This makes absolutely no sense and between this and your last post I question if you actually have a full grasp on the technologies you are discussing.
Uh...what? I completely don't understand what you are saying here.
MyMovies for WHS isn't half-assed at all. It is an excellent add-in and works quite well. It works in conjunction with its MC client to bring the sort of media integration you are clamoring for. There are many CD ripping utilities out there for WHS as well. Hell, RipNAS bases a whole business off of selling prebuilt WHS systems with their software.
I would be interested to hear more about your deployment of WHS in a small biz environment.
My company currently has 13 people / PCs (10 laptops, 3 desktops).
We currently use some LaCie server/NAS (I think WinCE) which isn't great and are looking to upgrade.
Windows Server or SBS are currently the preferred options although I would be very open to using something simpler like WHS.
We currently have only two different access levels/shares but probably want to move to a more distinguished approach (maybe by department).
Having the WHS back up the laptops would be great, since that is a nightmare waiting to happen.
For a small biz, I don't really see what benefit Server and SBS offer over WHS, aside from the WHS 10 user limitation?
For your needs, it's probably moot, but SBS offers (besides user limits) Exchange, ISA/Forefront, SharePoint services, WSUS (2008), and SQL (Premium versions) in one package at a very reasonable upfront price.
Both SBS and Windows Server Standard offer features like Active Directory, Group Policy, Terminal Services (licenses required), and all of the other services like DNS, DHCP, IIS, RRAS, etc that you might want to deploy on a corporate network. You can enable a lot of these services on a WHS box as well because of its Server 2003 underpinnings, but of course anything you do with them is unsupported.
I wish any version of SBS offered an integrated image-based backup utility like WHS's. That would be killer.
But which of these do I really want?
- Exchange: Nice, but I rather have that hosted and supported externally, with 24x7 support and (ideally) uptime (add to that the need for Blackberry support).
- ISA/Forefront: what's the benefit?
- Sharepoint: Nice, but would have to get users to use it and teach them how to use it.
- WSUS: no need ... updates are enabled on all clients and I don't care about the network overhead; service packs might/can be installed manually.
- SQL: not needed ... this is essentially an overrated NAS.
- Active Directory: what's the benefit and why would I need it?
- Group Policy: what's the benefit and why would I need it?
- Terminal Services: what's the benefit and why would I need it?
- DNS, DHCP, RRAS, VPN: handled by our super-duper firewall - what is the benefit of the server doing this?
- Image based backups: KILLER!
We use our current setup like a NAS and I don't really see the benefits of adding more complexity.
What do I want from a new server:
- better/more distinguished file access levels (per client or per defined groups/departments)
- client PC backup (at least for laptop users)
- server backup to off-site server (was thinking of using some P2P solution for that)
I don't really care for all the other fancy functionality.
I just explained the benefits/features SBS and Server have over WHS, as you asked. Like I said, for simple fileserver duties like you're looking for, these benefits are moot.
Using WHS you could accomplish these items easily:
1: I'm sure you could create "users" in WHS that could correspond to departments and have users share those credentials. Not the most elegant solution, but does what you want. WHS console users can't be "grouped."
2: WHS backup takes care of this handily. Make sure you test backup & restore before relying on it completely. I have had issues with restores to some hardware, namely laptops with mini-pcie SSDs.
3: Look into the jungledisk plugin for WHS. Backups to Amazon S3 servers.
RebateMonger
Elite Member
- Dec 24, 2005
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First, WHS' image-based automated backups are, indeed, killer. I have WHS boxes now at several of my clients. You can have several WHS servers if desired. My own WHS box is virtualized on my office's Server 2008 Hyper-V server. I've also virtualized it under Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2.
Active Directory and Group Policy makes managing PCs, sharing, and security vastly easier. Active Directory would quickly solve those access issues you are having.
I refuse to work on a network larger than four PCs without Active directory. Things that would take five minutes to do using Active Directory can take hours to accomplish without it. I hate wasting my time and people's money.
My experience with Exchange is that uptime is better when you are hosting your own Exchange server. I've never had an internal Exchange Server down, while I've seen hosted Exchange down. Blackberry offers a low-cost server that's installed on SBS and integrates Blackberry and Exchange services.
SQL is a heavy-duty database program. It's required by many application programs. There's also a free version that is used on SBS for monitoring and reporting.
It would take an hour-long discussion to properly go over all of your questions and how they would affect your operations.
I guess I am. I'm no IT guy, I guess I just expect a $550 server to do a lot more than what any of my PCs on their own or with a little help from NAS. I've certainly made it do more, but apparently I'm committing some sort of mortal sin by logging in to it to run some programs on it to extend its usefulness.
Dont you think it's rather odd that in this thread, there seems to be quite a bit of focus on using WHS for small businesses rather than homes?
How much would your PC plus a NAS cost? Because my WHS only cost $300. Same price as a Time Capsule, which does a lot of similar tasks, but is pretty much stuck with its out-of-the-box feature set. You get a router out of the deal as well, but honestly, who doesn't already have one? We've already established that the reason the big OEM brand WHS boxes cost what they do because no one else has the cases (and the nonstandard designs to psus, motherboards, etc they must design and manufacture to fit within) they do. HP's mediasmart is attractive (to me and everyone else I've talked to) because of its small design with front-facing hot-plug-like bays).
Why do you say that you're committing some mortal sin? And you can extend its usefulness quite a bit without ever having to log in through remote desktop.
One person asked a question about using WHS in a business scenario. A question I don't find odd at all, nor a "fuss" of any sort. Innumerable small businesses use "home" products for "business" pursposes. Who cares if the product gets the job done? It's just marketing.
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