Building first WHS.. Need suggestions..

[newfiend]

Ok, Well I have decided to work on adding a WHS to my setup. I mainly need it for media storage and backups of the main PC's in the house. I have 3 Pc's plus the HTPC which is quickly running low on storage space for movies etc..

I have never built a server so consider me a complete noob and any input you guys have would be appreciated.

What I have:
Intel E6600 (Socket 775) CPU
I have a Intel DG965OT board that came out of an old Gateway PC. It works fine but I am not a huge fan of the board... Think I may replace it with something better.
I have a Antec PSU (spare part from an older build still works fine) (I believe it's 500 Watts it's been awhile since I looked at it)

What I need:
A case,.. I have considered this one here : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811152123 the case needs to be short (and black) as I want to place it on the bottom shelf under my TV and I am not into a rack mount of any type at the moment.

HDD's. I will most likely start with a 2TB drive (probably a WD Black Drive) and add more as I go...

A version of WHS.. I have no Idea what version is best.. So I need your suggestions on what one to get and how to set this up to work best. All the PC's in the home are running Windows 7.

RAM.. This I know will depend on what board you guys suggest I get and How much RAM would you say it would need? I was told a small amount would suffice as it's mainly a storage unit for media (2GB?)

Mainboard.. Suggestions would be appreciated...Thanks.

Questions..
Do I need a dedicated drive for the OS? If so should i get an SSD? Or should I just buy the 2TB and install WHS on that?

When adding more drives what configuration should I use so I can easily add another drive?

I am sure I am missing a ton of questions I should be asking .. Feel free to enlighten me with any info I'm sure I forgot to ask about.
Thanks..
newfiend~

[gcoupe]

I can't answer all your questions, but FWIW, I have a few comments on them...

I notice that you say you already have an Antec PSU, but then you say you're considering a case that comes with its own PSU... With regards to a case, ask yourself what you think the maximum storage capacity will eventually be, and work back from there. If you think you're going to have 6 or so drives in the case, then you might also want to reconsider your plan to place it under the TV. Servers with storage generally involve fans and noise, so having it humming away under the TV might not be the best place.

Version of WHS: there's really only one to consider at the moment, and that's WHS 2011. It's cheap at $40 (or often less). Be aware that Microsoft will no longer support it after April 2016. Microsoft would like you to buy Windows Server Essentials 2012 as the replacement, but at $425, it's really an unappealing option for me. WHS 2011 is a decent OS, but it does have some limitations.

WHS 2011 will support a maximum of 8GB RAM. For a storage server, you could use a minimum of 2GB, but 4GB is what I've gone with.

Personally, I think it's a good idea to have a dedicated drive for the OS, and use physically separate drives for the data. Be aware that WHS 2011, by default, requires a drive of 160GB minimum to install (it is possible to get it to install on smaller drives, but you need to edit configuration files). WHS 2011 will partition the system drive into 60GB for the OS and then allocate the rest of the drive for data as the D: drive. Again, I personally move all the critical data off the D: drive onto other, physically separate drives. Moving shared folders should be done using the WHS 2011 Dashboard. Some people, used to working with Windows Servers, bypass the Dashboard for moving folders and setting up user accounts. This generally comes back to bite them, because WHS 2011 does things under the covers, and things become fragile if you don't use the Dashboard.

WHS 2011 (unlike WHS v1) does not have drive pooling, so adding drives means they get assigned additional drive letters. There are third party add-ons (Stablebit Drivepool or Drivebender) available if you want to have single level storage in a pool. Personally, I haven't gone down this route. I also don't use RAID (a) because, to me, it's more trouble than it's worth and (b) RAID is not backup.

You might want to check out the WeGotServed forums, particularly the WHS 2011 and the Self-build forums for more info.

[newfiend]

Well I wasn't sure if the psu in the case would be enough wattage... If not I have the antec to swap it out with..
I am looking at probably a maximum of 4 2TB drives. I don't want to go too crazy here but add some more room for media and back-ups. I may end up moving it to under my PC desk instead of the tv.. I'll decide that after I hear how loud it gets.
I guess I'll look into 4GB of ram then, since its cheap now anyway.
I'll get a separate OS drive as well.. Most likely a smaller SSD. Is there a way to install it on a 2tb drive and then migrate that to a smaller say 90gb SSD?
I'll check the forums you suggested as well. Thanks for your input.

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[Tracer]

I'm still using WHS v1, didn't like the idea of loosing drive pooling or purchasing additional software to add drive pooling to WHS 2011.

I'm using an old 500gb drive as the dedicated OS and 1gb of RAM, which is plenty for WHS v1. I think the RAM requirements changed for 2011. I've also added ten 2tb drives for storage, however I have data duplication turned on so I loose half of my available storage. You might want to consider going with low power drives. WHS doesn't really require fast drives since all your storage is being served over the network drive speed isn't really a big issue.

The server sits in a closet since it can get pretty noisy with the various fans and that is where all the network drops terminate to.

I had purchased WHS 2011 that I was going to upgrade to but, when I found out Microsoft was dropping WHS I ended up selling it on Ebay. I'll probably just stay with WHS v1 until my server dies or something better comes along.

Overall I've been happy with WHS works great for additional storage for Media Center and backups all the PCs in the house.

[Crash2009]

I am using WHS2011. I have 3 Win 7 Ultimate workstations connected to it. It does all that backup stuff for me, and allows me to connect from work and watch my non-DRM recordings from at work. I do like the Remote Desktop feature, it works like the old VNC, only faster, it's like I am right there. I know there is a whole bunch of other stuff that it can do, but basicly, right out of the box, it did everything I wanted, and a bit more.

In my case, I found this old IBM 325 Eserver laying on top of a pile of trash, on the side of the road. Took it home and it fired right up. Dual Opterons, 4 or 6 GB of ram, and dual NICS. It even had a working 160 GB Hitachi hard drive in it. This one is kind of a dead end though, all the slots are PCI-X. The cards are outrageous in price. Lifetime warranty though. It will outlast me.

There are some advantages to getting a pre-built server. First of all they are designed to be left on all the time. They use special ram, I think its called ECC. The ram refreshes itself every so often. Dual Gigabit NICs can come in handy if you want to do some teaming/aggregation or dual for redundancy. Check out this link http://www.ebay.com/itm/RACKABLE-2U-SER ... 1c27481241 $249.00 and just add a hard drive or 2. Fan noise yes, but what a way to go.

[gcoupe]

I'll get a separate OS drive as well.. Most likely a smaller SSD. Is there a way to install it on a 2tb drive and then migrate that to a smaller say 90gb SSD?

I think you'd be better off installing it directly on the SSD rather than installing it on a 2TB drive and then migrating it. This WeGotServed tutorial will probably be useful to you.

[bob_p]

For me, the big advantages of WHS 2011 over v1 is RAID. I had one of my drives on my v1 server fail - and lost all of my backups.

On my WHS 2011 server, I'm using RAID for all of the disks - plus I'm getting backups of the server. This should provide increased protection for all of the backups on the server - and a single drive failure shouldn't cause any problems (just remove the failed drive and plug in a new one).

In theory, you could also run a true backup of the entire server - but that would require even more disk space than using duplicate disks for RAID - and recovering from a single drive failure would be much more time consuming.

One major complaint about WHS 2011 is the 2TB limit - you can't really use drives larger than 2TB. I believe that will be fixed in the new Essentials release.

As for using an SSD as the system disk - I don't think you'll really notice the performance gains of using an SSD - and, if you have the option, would recommend investing in lower cost small HDDs using RAID rather than relying on a single small SSD for the system disk.

If you have a TechNet subscription, you might also consider running your WHS 2011 in a virtual machine on a Windows Server. This gives you the ability to install more than one server instance on the same machine. On my server, I've run preview copies of Windows 8 - and also have the preview of Essentials running. And, I ran my old WHS v1 in a virtual machine for about a year - so that I could still access my old backups on the server, even after upgrading to WHS 2011 (which won't migrate the v1 backups to the new server).

[duffman984]

Not to bash on the WHS idea but why not just go with a NAS setup? It sounds like you just need a large amount of storage space which may or may not need to be reachable from your home theater. You can get NAS systems that come with one click backup software for all of your PCs and offer RAID as well. They are usually very small depending on the amount of drives you need and usually have some type of power management to keep the drives parked while not in use which increases their lifespan.

[newfiend]

I thought about a NAS.. Everyone I talked to on the old GB forum which is now WEC.. Said that WHS was a better way to go. What are your thoughts on a NAS vs. WHS everyone?

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[barnabas1969]

I don't have any thoughts about NAS vs. WHS, but I have to say that every time I see duffman's posts, I have to laugh at that picture. That is so darn funny!

[gcoupe]

Personally, I've not come across anything that has the elegance and simplicity of the single-instance centralised backup of multiple client PCs that WHS has... Certainly not for the price of WHS 2011. And you get shared folder server storage thrown in as well!

If you're interested in the details and the features, here's Microsoft's Technical Brief: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... x?id=10788

[newfiend]

Well for my needs I think I'm still leaning toward WHS over a NAS. I just need to figure out how to pull this off on a budget. I blew through my PC upgrade allowance earlier this year...lol

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[duffman984]

Personally, I've not come across anything that has the elegance and simplicity of the single-instance centralised backup of multiple client PCs that WHS has... Certainly not for the price of WHS 2011. And you get shared folder server storage thrown in as well!

If you're interested in the details and the features, here's Microsoft's Technical Brief: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download ... x?id=10788

I do agree that WHS has a much simpler interface. I was in the same boat as newfiend with my budget and a NAS worked out better for my purposes. I don't use the automated backup features for my PCs because I've never had much luck restoring from them. I use Symantec Ghost to take backups which I've found to be a little more fault tolerant with the switches they provide to the exe as well as the ability to compress the images it takes. Being in the Security field I like being able to take full forensic disk images and since I already have the whole thing setup.

[newfiend]

Update:
Well after some consideration I decided to get these parts so far.
WHS 2011 x64
A Chenbro Chasis here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811123173 This is actually a very well built case...Perfect for a small WHS build IMO.. PSU = Meh...
An Intel BOXDQ45EK LGA 775 Intel Q45 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813121358

I used my old Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU.. I am hoping this Motherboard and CPU combo will be good enough for media streaming etc.. My network is Gig all the way through and all on Cat 6 cables.
Added 4 GB Corsiar RAM.

This is where I need a little more input..
I have 4 SATA ports onboard all of them are attached to the Chenbro 4 port back plate one for each HDD Bay. I originally wanted to install the OS on a SSD but I am out of SATA ports.
The motherboard has 1 PCIe 1x slot where I can add in another SATA PCIe card I guess and still install a SSD for the OS.. Should I bother with this or should I just get a 2TB HDD and let it partition the 60GB space for the OS and use the rest as storage and add more drives as I go? (I'm trying to keep costs down as much as possible.)
Also when Installing WHS 2011 should I set it up as RAID or should I just use AHCI mode? .. Sorry, Like I said at the beginning I'm a WHS noob.. lol
newfiend~

[gcoupe]

Update:
The motherboard has 1 PCIe 1x slot where I can add in another SATA PCIe card I guess and still install a SSD for the OS.. Should I bother with this or should I just get a 2TB HDD and let it partition the 60GB space for the OS and use the rest as storage and add more drives as I go? (I'm trying to keep costs down as much as possible.)
Also when Installing WHS 2011 should I set it up as RAID or should I just use AHCI mode?
newfiend~

As I said in my first reply, personally, I would have the OS on a separate drive from the data drives, but that's me. Also, personally, I wouldn't bother with RAID, for the reasons I gave above. If you're not using RAID, you still need to have AHCI enabled on your motherboard (rather than use the SATA drives in IDE mode). That's because AHCI is needed for hot-swapping of your drives.

[newfiend]

Ok thanks gcoupe.. I figured I would need ahci at a minimum. I'll start looking into a pcie 1x card and a ssd.

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[newfiend]

Ok 180gb SSD and a PCIe 1x SATA card in route.. Should have it up by Monday hopefully.
Thanks for the help gcoupe.
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[newfiend]

Any add-ins I should look into for WHS after I have it installed? It will be mostly used for HTPC storage expansion and backups.

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[flocko]

Flex raid is what I use . Yes, it is $65 but the best I have ever used . http://www.flexraid.com/

Just to fill u in a bit .

I use an Asus MB , 8 giggs of ram , Intel G620 . WHS 2011 along with Flex raid . 1) 320 gig hdd for the os , 5) 2tb hdd (SAMSUNG F4 GREEN DRIVES) for storage and 1) 3tb WD green drive for parity .

Some nice things about flex raid .

1. You can and should use 5400 rpm green drives as they work great. I highly discourage the use of blue or black drives as they are loud and run hotter.
2. You can add drives to the Flex Raid pool that have data on them already with out worry of loosing the data during the pool building process .
3. flex Raid only spins up drives that u need to access the data . All other drives remain idle . Hello power savings !!

Assassin and I collaborated on this build together and it is the finest piece of server hardware for home use I have ever had . http://www.assassinserver.com/ Thats my server in the pics as you scroll down . This is what the server feeds . http://assassinhtpcblog.com/?p=303 I modded in a Ceton pci card which was a pita but worth it

Just to give you some food for thought or ideas

[CyberSimian]

flex Raid only spins up drives that u need to access the data . All other drives remain idle.

In a previous arrangement of my current system, I had 6 data drives connected via USB, with their power supplies connected via a Trickle Saver, so that the drives powered up when the HTPC woke from sleep.

The problem with this was Windows penchant for tickling the drives periodically. After the drive spin-down timeout had expired, the drives would spin down, but Windows would periodically spin them up again, even though I was not accessing any data on those drives. Worse, if I was playing a recording on one of the USB drives, the video would stutter for a few seconds as the other drives were spun up.

I now use a separate remote switch for each USB drive, and power up only the drive that I want to use. But here is the question for you:

Does FlexRaid prevent Windows periodic tickling from actually spinning up the drives (possibly by faking the response that Windows is expecting), or do the drives still spin up periodically, even though not being used? Thanks.

-- from CyberSimian in the UK