Windows Home Server

[Ol Bob]

What is the sweet spot today for whs best performance. I have a home made unit that started out with a p4 northwood and I have re-done it to now a 2.13 duel core e6400 with a p-35 mobo.Would this thing do any thing better if I were to go to a lower end quad core or a faster 2 core? It seems ok for now but im sure it could always be better.

 

[Madwand1]

A way to judge this is to look at CPU utilization in Task Manager / Perfmon while the computer is busy. Odds are that your CPU isn't stressed much at present, so getting a faster CPU wouldn't give you any advantage.

 

[Raduque]

Drive Extended likes cores, but you're probably going to be fine with that cpu.

 

[zerogear]

I dunno, for Home Server, I use a low power 45W Celeron, and it putts along just fine

 

[ViRGE]

Just about any dual-core CPU faster than an Atom will do the trick. It's not particularly CPU intensive.

 

[dbcooper1]

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Just about any dual-core CPU faster than an Atom will do the trick. It's not particularly CPU intensive.

Actually, that's exactly what I'm using for mine- an Atom 330 on an Intel board since it came with Gb Ethernet onboard with 2GB RAM, a 100GB system drive with 2x1TB for data. It sits on a shelf in the closet and does it's thing with no keyboard, mouse, or display. It does so 7x24 while drawing the power of a light bulb.

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: dbcooper1

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Just about any dual-core CPU faster than an Atom will do the trick. It's not particularly CPU intensive.

Actually, that's exactly what I'm using for mine- an Atom 330 on an Intel board since it came with Gb Ethernet onboard with 2GB RAM, a 100GB system drive with 2x1TB for data. It sits on a shelf in the closet and does it's thing with no keyboard, mouse, or display. It does so 7x24 while drawing the power of a light bulb.

Yeah, WHS is fine enough on 1.4 athlon t-birds and pentium IIs, even. But your approach is spot-on. The key to the best CPU and mobo for WHS is all about power consumption and efficiency. I'm waiting for dual core atoms or low power phenom IIs before I leap.

 

[JackMDS]

If you just using it as a Server the Best would be the Intel ATOM since it would take the least electrical power.

As a server, the function of the computer is to shuttle info in and out i through the Network. Since a peer-to-peer Giga optimized Networks are capable to max. of about 50Mb/sec., there is No point in computer that work faster and have No where to go.

If you install on the server a None server application like doing dircet ripping, or Video Encoding on the server, you need to use a CPU that can do well the function that you installed on.

Please Note that the current rendition of WHS does not really go to sleep, so using 24/7 a computer that takes un need electrical power is a real waste.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: nerp I'm waiting for dual core atoms or low power phenom IIs before I leap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813153131

 

[mc866]

I think it all depends on what you are doing with your box, if you just use it for storage, backups, and streaming standard media the CPU speed shouldn't matter much. On the other hand if you plan on doing any HD streaming or movie encoding the faster the better.

 

[RebateMonger]

I just moved my personal WHS server onto my office server, running as a virtual machine under Server 2008 Hyper-V and a Q6600. I gave WHS a single core and 512 MB of memory. Most of the time it just sits there, at 0% CPU usage. While simultaneously making a backup, playing a song, and playing a video, I've seen it soar as high as 2% CPU utilization.

It's on its own Volume on a separate disk, so I don''t have to back it up along with my other virtual machines. It plays movies and music and makes backups just fine, so it's OK for me.

I was going to run it under Virtual Server 2005 on a Vista x64 box (and did so briefly), but I figured I'd move it to the one PC that I HAVE to keep running 24x7.

 

[dbcooper1]

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: dbcooper1

Originally posted by: ViRGE
Just about any dual-core CPU faster than an Atom will do the trick. It's not particularly CPU intensive.

Actually, that's exactly what I'm using for mine- an Atom 330 on an Intel board since it came with Gb Ethernet onboard with 2GB RAM, a 100GB system drive with 2x1TB for data. It sits on a shelf in the closet and does it's thing with no keyboard, mouse, or display. It does so 7x24 while drawing the power of a light bulb.

Yeah, WHS is fine enough on 1.4 athlon t-birds and pentium IIs, even. But your approach is spot-on. The key to the best CPU and mobo for WHS is all about power consumption and efficiency. I'm waiting for dual core atoms or low power phenom IIs before I leap.

The Atom 330 I referred to is a dual core, each with Hyperthreading - essentially two 270s.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
I just moved my personal WHS server onto my office server, running as a virtual machine under Server 2008 Hyper-V and a Q6600. I gave WHS a single core and 512 MB of memory. Most of the time it just sits there, at 0% CPU usage.

It's on its own Volume on a separate disk, so I don''t have to back it up along with my other virtual machines. It plays movies and music and makes backups just fine, so it's OK for me.

I was going to run it under Virtual Server 2005 on a Vista x64 box (and did so briefly), but I figured I'd move it to the one PC that I HAVE to keep running 24x7.

How does that work out? It seems strange to me, you would have virtualized storage drives for WHS, no? Kind of defeats the purpose of WHS.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Kind of defeats the purpose of WHS.

In what way? It makes backups, serves files, and hosts web sites just like all WHS servers do. I can even have it back up the other virtual servers on the same box, although none of them are officially supported by Microsoft for backup by WHS anyway.

In addition, I can back up the WHS system drive, since it's contained in a single .VHD file on a 1 TB hard drive. And I can easily move it to a new computer if my server melts.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

How does that work out? It seems strange to me, you would have virtualized storage drives for WHS, no? Kind of defeats the purpose of WHS.

WHS is a peer-to-peer Server that is geared toward Home users and as such has some capacities that are much better on it rather than using regular full blown server (like Windows 2008).

However some of us (look at RebateMonger sig.) Need to run a real server with AD, etc. for professional purposes.

RebateMonger came with a very good idea. Instead of runing two computers24/7 (which a guy like me is doing), he put the WHS on Widows 2008 with Hyper-V and hardware wise runs only one computer 24/7. :thumbsup:

 

[Ol Bob]

Power consumption isn't much of a concern for me with this one as it normally runs only on the weekends anyway. Performance is of course and I know that the network speed limits me as for as backups go so thats not cpu dependant.I am interested in virtualisation but not to install whs as a guest but rather to use it as the host.I would like to see a console add-in to manage a number of virtual machine's and allow rdp access to them from my clients.For now tho I'm keeping 2 backups of each client on the whs box, one via whs drive extender and a second via shadow copy stored on a non-pooled drive managed by svr '03. I'm thinking the little 2.13 cpu will be fine untill a more demanding app that I just have to have is released.Now if I could only get WOL to work. Thanks to All

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I have a E2140 in mine, and I've never had a problem (even with it crunching).

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: JackMDS

Originally posted by: nerp I'm waiting for dual core atoms or low power phenom IIs before I leap.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813153131

Woooo. Thanks for the link. I've fallen behind the times.

 

[dbcooper1]

Or this one; I've had it running for a few months now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813121359

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: dbcooper1
Or this one; I've had it running for a few months now:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813121359

Yeah, that 330 Intel board has been out a while. I'd missed it, too.

How's it working? Have you measured the power consumption?
A few folks said the chipset cooler was noisy. What do you think?

 

[dbcooper1]

Works great; I can't hear any noise from the fan and the CPU doesn't even have one. It's in the closet anyway so it doesn't matter. The case is cool to the touch; room temp at best. It feels cool because I have a case fan spinning on the slowest of three speeds. I log in once in a while from one of the system that it backs up, just to see what's going on.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: dbcooper1
It feels cool because I have a case fan spinning on the slowest of three speeds. I log in once in a while from one of the system that it backs up, just to see what's going on.

I built a WHS with the previous (Atom 230) board. It only drew 30 Watts, so, yeah, things keep nicely cool.

The new board uses the same basic chipset and the 330 CPU supposedly draws 8 Watts instead of the 4 Watts of the 230, so I'm guessing the board draws 35 watts or so. I haven't seen any Intel specs on the power draw of the board.