Windows 7 as OS for home server?

[Fjodor2001]

Hi,

I'm going to build a home server that mainly will be used as a file server, as file backup, and to stream media to a HTPC, among other things. On the client computers I will be running Windows 7. Now I just wonder if Windows 7 would work fine as OS for the server as well? Or would e.g. Windows Home Server be a better option, and in that case why?

Thanks!

 

[pcgeek11]

Hi,

I'm going to build a home server that mainly will be used as a file server, as file backup, and to stream media to a HTPC, among other things. On the client computers I will be running Windows 7. Now I just wonder if Windows 7 would work fine as OS for the server as well? Or would e.g. Windows Home Server be a better option, and in that case why?

Thanks!

WHS is hands down better for your purposes than Windows 7. Why because it was designed to be a server and not a user OS.

Automatic backups, Streaming media, file and print server easy as pie.

Capability Description Availablity in WHS

Media Server
Store and organize digital memories and media in one central location. Stream the digital content to Media devices such as XBOX 360tm and PlayStation®3

Backup Software
Store and organize digital memories and media in one central location. Stream the digital content to Media devices such as XBOX 360tm and PlayStation®3

Data Recovery
Easily restore lost files or even entire hard drive contents in a few steps

Document Management
Get complete access to files from both inside and outside the home

Remote Access
Share photos and home videos with friends and family with the built in secure and personalized website address

Add-ins
Easily extend the capabilities of the Server using software add-ins. Expand storage capacity easily as your needs increase.

 

[Fjodor2001]

But can't all of those features be achieved using Windows 7 and third party software for e.g. handling the backup? Is it mainly the configuration of the system that becomes easier with WHS? I.e. with WHS you get a bunch of pre-installed server applications/services that are easy to configure?

Also, aren't there any features in Windows 7 that WHS does not have? Is WHS limited in any way compared to Windows 7?

 

[IndyColtsFan]

But can't all of those features be achieved using Windows 7 and third party software for e.g. handling the backup? Is it mainly the configuration of the system that becomes easier with WHS? I.e. with WHS you get a bunch of pre-installed server applications/services that are easy to configure?

Also, aren't there any features in Windows 7 that WHS does not have? Is WHS limited in any way compared to Windows 7?

Let's ask a different question -- why are you so set on using Windows 7 as your server OS? What specific features does it have that you can't do without? I don't see anything in your list that can't be done by just about any version of Windows (esp. if third party apps are not off limits), but keep in mind client OSes have a 10 client connection limit.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Ok, here are some issues and concerns that I have:

1. I've heard that the networking performance (i.e. file copy over the network) is worse with WHS than with Windows 7. I don't know if this is true though.

2. I intend to use an Atom D510 1.66 GHz CPU for the server. Rumours regarding WHS 2010 (Codename "Vail") to be released this year says it has a minimum requirement of 2 GHz for the CPU. If this is true, and enforced by Microsoft, then an upgrade will not be possible without buying new hardware.

3. As I understand it, when adding a new harddisk to WHS, it will have to be formatted first. I.e. you can't add a disk that already contains data, and chose to keep that data?

4. The Atom D510 motherboard that I intend to use only has 2 SATA ports. I will use those for 2 x 2 TB harddrives. On those rare occations that I need a DVD-drive in the system (e.g. when installing the OS and similar), I intend to disconnect the non-boot harddisk and connect the DVD-drive temporarily. I don't know how WHS will handle that though, since it presents all disks and one logical disk (the "DATA:" disk), and automatically distibutes the files among the collection of disks?

5. Can all pre-installed WHS services/applications be turned off in case one wishes to use a third party solution instead? For example, can one choose to turn off the disk handling in WHS (i.e. that all disks are aggregated into one logical disk), so that the disks are just treated as individual disks as in "standard" Windows editions?

Those were just some examples. It's hard to forsee all issues, and some might not become obvious until one has used WHS for a while. So that's why I wondered if anyone who has been using WHS for some time could think of anything they miss compared with Windows 7?

 

[notposting]

1. Networking performance is fine for me, handles multiple HD playback streams fine.

2. Rumor so far, and it depends on whether or not it's a hard limit or just something they say. More important is the 64-bit requirement.

3. You could install and not add it to WHS storage pool, then copy the files to the existing drive in the pool. Then format it and let the folder duplication handle things.

4. On the one hand you could get a USB enclosure on the other hand you could get a USB SATA adapter or on the gripping hand you could get a better motherboard. I'm using a Biostar 760G AM2 board which has 6 SATA ports. Including a dual core processor, and a 640GB Blue and 1TB Green drive it idles at around 48W from the wall. Saw someone over in FS/FT had the same board up for sale a couple days ago. When installing the OS you won't have the 2nd HD added yet obviously so it won't be a problem.

Point being the Atom platforms aren't a whole lot better than a carefully thought out conventional low power system.

5. Don't believe you can turn off the Drive Extender technology...and the better question is "Why the heck would you?!" It sounds like voodoo but it's pretty easy to understand, and makes things a lot simpler than RAID.
* You can add any size disk at any time
* Choose what you want duplicated over multiple drives (like maybe you don't want all your TV recordings wasting space like you would get with RAID but all your music, documents you do.
* The network share is always the same, no mounting individual drives...

As far as usage--been using ours since the fall. Can't imagine going back to not having it. The daily backups are a godsend. The full bare-metal restore process works. I've started loading all the standard utilities and drivers to it so if I ever need them they are there. Along with bigger less used files (like service packs for games/apps etc). Been ripping all of our CD's to it. Can monitor AV status from it, wake individual PC's from it, and some of our Recorded TV gets dumped to it after recording. My next project will be figuring out a way to get movies ripped to it for playback on the PC's and our Media Center Extender. Oh yeah, actually had a disk start to go bad in it (already knew the SMART data was looking concerning, it quickly went worse) it warned me, let me prepare the drive for removal (it copied everything off to the other drive) and then let me remove it. Then I put in the 1TB Green and it distributed everything back.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Thanks for your feedback.

1. Well HD streams don't require that much bandwidth (~20-30 Mbit/s). What I wonder is if there is any difference in file-copy performance compared to Windows 7 when used on a Gigabit-network. From what I've heard, that functionality has been improved in Windows 7. So, will I for example get ~30-50 MByte/s with WHS, and ~70-90 MByte/s with Windows 7?

2. Yes, 64-bit is also said to be a requirement for WHS 2010. But since the Atom D510 is 64-bit that's no problem. 🙂

3. Yes, assuming there is enough space on the already existing disks to fit the content on the disk to be added.

4. Since the system will be on 24-7, I want it to have *really* low power consumption. A "standard" Atom D510 based system can use as little as ~20 W when Idle (it will be more if there is any power hungry additional hardware of course).

5. I probably won't turn off Drive Extender technology. It was just an example to figure out what parts of the WHS could be turned off, and/or replaced by third party software. In other words a test of how customizable the WHS solution is.

As for the last part of your answer, you said that you cannot imagine going back to not having a server, and I can understand that! What I wonder however, is if you could be equally as happy (or even more happy!) with the server if it was running another OS? After all, what you described could probably be set up with most OS:es and the proper third party software, and all solutions have their pros and cons.

 

[VirtualLarry]

2. I intend to use an Atom D510 1.66 GHz CPU for the server. Rumours regarding WHS 2010 (Codename "Vail") to be released this year says it has a minimum requirement of 2 GHz for the CPU. If this is true, and enforced by Microsoft, then an upgrade will not be possible without buying new hardware.

Given the number of existing WHS boxes based on Atom, I would think that would be a major mistake by MS.

 

[RebateMonger]

The automatic backups, restores, and backup management of Windows Home Server are better than anything available with Win7. If you own more than one or two PCs, licenses for the commercial backup software that offer many of the features of WHS are going to cost a lot more money than a single WHS license.

Secondly, there's nothing in Win7 that can do the automatic disk management that WHS can do. Data capacity for backups and shared data grow automatically as soon as you pop in another disk. There's no need to worry about where to put the data and how to arrange your files. If you add a new disk to a Win7 box, you are likely going to have to move a bunch of folders around to take advantage of the new storage. Also unique is WHS' one-click folder redundancy.

At this time, I don't see any compelling reason to move to WHS V2. Regardless, V2 likely won't be available until 2011 and many folks (including me) won't touch any new OS for a year after general availability. That makes it 2012 before you'll want to trust your data to it.

 

[JackMDS]

Maybe this can Help,

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2029756

BTW. If you have a Psychological issues with using WHS, there is No reason to endure the over head of fully grown OS, you are probably better Off using Windows 2000 Pro as a NAS rather than Win 7.

 

[Madwand1]

What I wonder is if there is any difference in file-copy performance compared to Windows 7 when used on a Gigabit-network. From what I've heard, that functionality has been improved in Windows 7. So, will I for example get ~30-50 MByte/s with WHS, and ~70-90 MByte/s with Windows 7?

I've done quite a lot of large file transfer testing on various OSs, and confirm that WHS is lacking in capability compared to Vista and W7 generation OSs. It's impossible to give specific numbers reliably without testing the actual setups, but double the performance can be seen in some cases.

Here are some numbers I obtained a couple of years ago, testing the same hardware, changing the OS, and tuning the OS as well as I could at the time. Caveat: These numbers are strictly illustrative of relative performance in that configuration. They're actually backwards from what the OP is asking, varying the server and using a fixed client OS. He can get better performance than illustrated below, but will be limited by WHS (and anything pre-Vista).

WHS is based on the 2003 code base, so 2003 (and XP-64) are representative of its performance. W7 is an evolution of the Vista code base and Vista performance is representative of it.

I tried WHS and tuned it to the best of my abilities and then uninstalled it because I didn't like it. I don't recall the specific performance results, but as I say above, WHS is based on the 2003 code base, and performs accordingly.

To me a home server must be a good file server, and with the very large files that we deal with often, file transfer performance is important.

The most interesting thing about WHS 2010 or whatever to me would be the updated code base. I think they should have done that to start..

 

[Fjodor2001]

Madwand1: Thanks for your response and the excellent file transfer performance measurements - just what I was looking for. May I ask what OS you currently use on your server, and what hardware you run it on?

 

[JackMDS]

I do not know what others are using.

I have WHS on End-user peer-to-peer Giga network.

All the computer's TCP/IP are optimized to Giga, and the WHS pushes and pulls about 60 to 78 MB/sec.

Thus far, with all my wide spread effort, using state of the Art hardware, I never saw actual peer-to-peer Home Network using Client OS' (with or without WHS) pushing/pulling more than 78MB/sec.

P.S. Numbers yield by benchmarks are Not considered by me a real performance report.

The numbers that I quoted are result of real hundreds of MB or tens of GB of files transfer.

I must admit that there is one practice that do that might be different.

I do not form End Point ideas based on Rumors and Personal/Social preferences, and then look for data to support it (practices that is also the reason for our political and economical disaster too).

I form End Points ideas only after I try different Functional approaches on my systems.

 

[Emulex]

i thought WHS was based on 2003 R2 storage server so it has tweaks to speed up that can be applied to 2003/xp/etc.

you can tell - zip up a file say 300gb-500gb end size over network. one file. then unzip it a few times over network. if you see odd errors like out of resources - its not tuned properly and the kernel pages are hitting the limits (64bit o/s doesn't have this problem at all).

I was thinking of using vmware to create a few huge vmdk's and running WHS on a win7 machine so i could do media center and WHS on the same machine rather than have to waste two boxens to handle.

 

[Fjodor2001]

FYI: The network file transfer performance differences between WHS and Vista/Windows7 could perhaps be explained by the fact that WHS uses the SMB1 protocol for network file sharing, where as Vista uses SMB2 and Windows7 uses SMB2.1. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIFS (specifically the section "SMB2") for details.

 

[RebateMonger]

FYI: The network file transfer performance differences between WHS and Vista/Windows7 could perhaps be explained by the fact that WHS uses SMB, where as Vista uses SMB2 and Windows7 uses SMB2.

My question is: Does it really make any difference?

Other have reported that WHS is perfectly capable of streaming Blu-Ray moveis to multiple clients simultaneously. WHS nightly backups typically take fifteen minutes per PC and are done automatically while you sleep. If you need to copy Terabytes of files to a WHS server, you drag and drop the folders/files and go do something else.

My primary concern with backups is ease of use and reliability. My experience is that if you hand somebody an external hard drive and a backup program, when you come back six months later, there's only a single backup on the external drive. That's the one you started when you left last time.

If I put a WHS server in place and come back six months later, there's backups spanning the last six months and there's a backup from last night.

 

[Fjodor2001]

Yes, WHS uses SMB. Vista/Win7 use SMB2 when they are talking to other SMB2 computers. My question is: Does it really make any difference?

Yes, if the chart by Madwand1 is correct, it seems to make quite a difference.

Other have reported that WHS is perfectly capable of streaming Blu-Ray moveis to multiple clients simultaneously.

Streaming Blu-ray movies does not require much bandwidth - max 54 mbit/s (and less in average), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc. Not much compared to the ~900 mbit/s that can be achieved during file transfer over a Gigabit-network.

WHS nightly backups typically take fifteen minutes per PC and are done automatically while you sleep. If you need to copy Terabytes of files to a WHS server, you drag and drop the folders/files and go do something else. SMB versus SMB2 is hardly the end of the world when it comes to the practical use of a file server/backup server.

I guess that's a matter of opinion. If I work on a client computer and want to read files from the file server (or write files to it) I want it that operation be really fast. For me, that's one of the most important aspects of a file server. Especially since I intend to have client computers with only an SSD containing the OS + Apps (i.e. no harddisk), and all other data will be stored on the file server.

If I put a WHS server in place and come back six months later, there's backups spanning the last six months and there's a backup from last night.

Sure, that's a nice feature. However it can be done with lots of other backup software solutions as well.

 

[pcgeek11]

Yes, if the chart by Madwand1 is correct, it seems to make quite a difference.

Streaming Blu-ray movies does not require much bandwidth - max 54 mbit/s (and less in average), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc. Not much compared to the ~900 mbit/s that can be achieved during file transfer over a Gigabit-network.

I guess that's a matter of opinion. If I work on a client computer and want to read files from the file server (or write files to it) I want it that operation be really fast. For me, that's one of the most important aspects of a file server. Especially since I intend to have client computers with only an SSD containing the OS + Apps (i.e. no harddisk), and all other data will be stored on the file server.

Sure, that's a nice feature. However it can be done with lots of other backup software solutions as well.

Why bother with this discussion as it seems obvious you have your mind made up anyway. Set up your Windows 7 Server and enjoy it...

Ola
pcgeek11

 

[Fjodor2001]

Believe it or not, but I have not made up my mind! I started this discussion to get some opinions on what advantages and disadvantages there were to using Windows 7 as a server, mainly compared to WHS.

But unfortunately most of the responses just mentioned the features available in WHS, and there were not many negative aspects mentioned. I was actually hoping for a more balanced discussion. That's part of the reason I so stongly argued for some aspects of Windows 7, i.e. to prove that there are advantages to using other OS:es than WHS as well!

In my own opinion, I have so far found WHS to have the following positive and negative aspects:

Positive:

+Easy to configure
+Ability to aggregate several hard drives to one logical volume
+Easy to backup client computers
+Easy to mark certain folders for duplication to two hard drives
+Easy to add a new hard drive to the server when more storage is needed
+Comes with a package of pre-installed server applications/services

Negative:

-Worse network file transfer performance than SMB2 based Windows versions (e.g. Vista/Win7/Server2008)
-Not as customizable as some other solutions
-Cannot add a new hard drive with existing content on it without having to erase that content (unless the existing drives in the system have room left for the content on the new drive)
-Not sure how temporararily disconnected hard drives are handled
-Uncertain upgrade path to WHS 2010 due to hardware restrictions for WHS 2010
-Only 32-bit version available

If you have more positive or negative aspects to add, please do so!

 

[JackMDS]

Negative is some thing that is within the specs of a product and it does not do it well.

Like Wireless that is market as can do 300 feet, and ends up with 30 feet.

If you need a x64 bit product, then do not buy WHS which is currently x32 product.

.

 

[ViRGE]

The problem with Madwand1's data is that it looks like it takes in to account buffering. He didn't list the hardware used, but no single drive on the market can sustain 100+MB/sec. I can get 100MB/sec writes to WHS up to the point that my box runs out of memory to buffer the write, before falling back to the 50MB/sec or so that the drives can run at.

Trust me when I say that the data provided has some kind of flaw, likely that it's buffering and/or considering the write done before it's out of the buffer and on the disk. I have no problem maxing out file transfers at near-disk speeds. Also keep in mind that the big performance boost for SMB2 is asynchronous and pipelined operations - both of those are for high latency WAN networks. SMB1 has never been hard to max out on a LAN.

-Not sure how temporararily disconnected hard drives are handled

So-so. WHS has a fit about the missing drive, but will ultimately pull itself together if the drive is found again. You're not supposed to be removing drives anyhow.

-Uncertain upgrade path to WHS 2010 due to hardware restrictions for WHS 2010

There's a pretty good chance that there won't be an official upgrade path even for users that have the hardware. WHS is an appliance OS - most of the boxes built to run it are not 64-bit capable, and a number of them are completely headless. Not to mention that the larger OS is going to require a different system/data partition split size than WHS v1 did.

At this point I would not recommend planning on there being any kind of upgrade path. If we're lucky, we'll get some variant of "drop in a new hard drive, install v2, and then reindex everything off of the other drives."

 

[JackMDS]

I can get 100MB/sec writes to WHS up to the point that my box runs out of memory to buffer the write, before falling back to the 50MB/sec or so that the drives can run at.

Yap, there are different ways to employ Disinformation without Lying, or Doctoring visual info. (Sophisticated marketing people are very good at it).

Example, I have a Residential Broadband connection for $39.99 a month.

Look at what I get for a Download (this is a real screenshot no faking).

Not bad 9.6 MB/sec. half a GB in 55 Sec.


The following I can keep to myself and make you all Green from envy.

After the download stabilize the sustained real download is this,

So while the first Screen is real, it does not really reflect the functional outcome of my Internet download which is 1.3MB/sec.

So to repeat my previous post.
"I never saw actual peer-to-peer Home Network using Client OS' (with or without WHS) pushing/pulling more than 78MB/sec."

.

 

[inspiron]

Windows 7 sounds fine, unless you are going to do things like playing older games... files should store perfectly with Win7 as OS.

 

[Madwand1]

Yes, if the chart by Madwand1 is correct, it seems to make quite a difference.

My chart was correct, but I'd like to qualify that further. You're off to a good start with W7 (or Vista) as the client OS. That + (properly configuration +) WHS can give you great push performance from the client to the server. Pull (read) performance off the server however has not been as great in my experience, despite efforts, which is where I find it's better to go with Vista or newer on all sides.

 

[Madwand1]

The problem with Madwand1's data is that it looks like it takes in to account buffering. He didn't list the hardware used, but no single drive on the market can sustain 100+MB/sec. I can get 100MB/sec writes to WHS up to the point that my box runs out of memory to buffer the write, before falling back to the 50MB/sec or so that the drives can run at.

Who said anything about single drives? My tests were RAID to RAID, and moreover, when I say WHS can have great write performance, I mean great write performance when it's configured using great drives or using a RAID array, as I've done and measured.

BTW, if you can get that sort of buffered speed, you help make my point -- if you take care of the drive speed (as you must if want to get the max speed over gigabit) by RAID or some other means, then as you show, the system has the capability to give great performance. Now all you have to do is to take care of the drives, and update the server OS if you want as good speed on pulls -- have you also experienced the push/pull asymmetry which I mention?

Trust me when I say that the data provided has some kind of flaw, likely that it's buffering and/or considering the write done before it's out of the buffer and on the disk.

No, my tests were done with 10 GB files, with nowhere near that amount of RAM -- in most cases, 2 GiB.

The hardware beyond having passably modern CPUs and the obvious storage, network speed and bus bandwidth is not important. There are however clear differences between the MS OSs, which must be taken into account, and once you clear the Vista threshold, you're home free for gigabit.