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  • Iketh - Sunday, September 16, 2007 - link

    My current computer will be my file server/backup device in the future. My question is will WHS take advantage of 2gb of ram or should i make use of it in my new system and just throw a 512 or 1024 single channel stick in this one?
  • FrankM - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    Had this idea for a time, posted it at various forums, and now I see it implemented - glad to see that this feature made it to implementation.
  • LoneWolf15 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    quote:

    Many RAID controllers however aren't supported in spite of the availability of drivers due to WHS's unique method of handling disk drives.


    I found this out testing the Beta and RC. Using a Foxconn nForce 6150-chipset board, even with BIOS support for RAID 5 and drivers, I couldn't get it working. MS blamed it on the drivers, but essentially said "Why would you want to run RAID 5 when Windows Home server does (yada yada yada...)?"

    I know darn well why I want to run RAID 5...because some of my media files are important enough that I don't want to lose them, and RAID 5 is a far more secure way than WHS' methods. I really wish MS had worked harder on this part, because it makes deciding between purchasing WHS and staying with my 25-CAL copy of Win2k3 Server Enterprise (gotten at an MS conference) a much harder decision.

    I want Windows Home Server, eventually. I'm just not sure I want the first version.
  • tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    > RAID 5 is a far more secure way than WHS' methods

    how so?

    i believe in the real world you will find this is not the case (unless you're using truly enterprise level hardware everywhere, and no nForce RAID is NOT enterprise level)
  • n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    nForce (i'm not sure, but i think there is intel's chipset based MoBos with raid 5) raid still better in terms of stability, redundancy and performance then any soft raid.
    think what will happen if your WHS will crush unrecoverably.
    how will you restore your data ?
  • tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    > think what will happen if your WHS will crush unrecoverably.
    how will you restore your data ?

    pull the drive out
    stick it another system
    copy files off

    what will happen if your raid5 gets corrupted? how will you recover data?

    pull out all drives
    send to data recovery specialists
    pay $$$$$
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    If one drive die, you just replace it, other problems can mostly be fixed by the controller/software rebuidling the stuff, and if not, raid5 has a more or less standard way to be implmented, so you can easily use recovery tools. If that fails, you can always fall back to your backup.

    That beeing said, I do agree that onboard-raids are crap, I would much rather use a "pure" software-implementation, like mdadm or win2k3s implementation. Mobo-raids have had a horrible track-record data-security-wise.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Win2K3S costs about $750 OEM with 5 CALs, is considerably more difficult to administer than WHS, and does not include the backup client developed specifically for WHS.

    No linux-based implementation will give you SIS (Single Instance Storage) which will, in a typical home usage scenario, save you far more space than RAID5 over RAID1 could ever hope to.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Yes, win2k3 is an entirely diffrent product, but I don't see why that makes the need for software-raid5 in WHS any less. If anything you are arguing for implmenting software-raid5 in WHS. It's built on win2k3 and should be able to make a raid the same way w2k3 can.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    As an example, you can look at Intel SS4000-E NAS. It runs Linux kernel 2.6 with software RAID5 as one of the options on an Intel IOP80219 processor clocked at 600MHz. Read performance on a 4-drive RAID5 caps out at 12MB/s on large files at 6MB/s on small files; write performance is approximately 7MB/s and 1.5MB/s respectively.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    All NAS-boxes have horrible performance. (at least all I have seen). It hardly seems fair to use benchmarks from them, when this is a "Proper" computer, there are plenty of benchmarks from software raid 5 run on "real" computers to find, see this for instance:

    http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/19/using_windo...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/19/...appen/pa...

    MDADM is as far as i know even faster, hower for whs it would likely be built on the software-raid of win2003.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    All NAS-boxes have horrible performance.

    Wrong. Proper NAS boxes have superb performance. Look at NetApp FAS270 for example. Of course a FAS270 in a typical configuration will run you in the $20,000-30,000 range.

    That Tom's Hardware test is running a 2.8GHz CPU. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/121499/tranquil-t7h...">This WHS box is running a 1.3GHz VIA C7, for example.

    Also, WHS is designed to be easily and transparently expandable by end-user using external drives. Please show me a RAID setup of any kind that will work in a mixed ATA/SATA/USB/FireWire configuration with drives of varying sizes.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Ok, all consumer NAS-boxes then, I thought that much was implicit. It doesn't matter anyway, the point is that your comparison to a box like that isn't very good when it comes to "proving" that software-raid automatically has bad performance.

    A lot of boxes with WHS will be using a CPU that is better than a 1.3 Via, if the hardware isn't suited for the job, then you just don't run a software raid5, it's that easy.

    I don't see how the WHS storage-pool is incompatible with raid as a concept, a raid-array presents itself as a single drive, more or less, wich can be merged into the storagepool if one feels like it.
  • Gholam - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ is a consumer level NAS. However, it's built on an SBC running a 1.4GHz Celeron M ULV, and in actual testing outperforms many self-built systems. On the other hand, it also costs over $1000 without drives.
  • ATWindsor - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    The benches I have seen points to a read-performance of 30 MB/s give or take lets say 10 MB, thats hardly good performance, it doesn't even outperform a single drive. One can easily build a software raid with several times better speed.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    WHS is made to run on low-power, low-end and old hardware; calculating parity blocks in software is bad enough on a modern desktop CPU, an old PIII/800 or a VIA C3/C7 (present in some OEM WHS box implementations) will get murdered.

    In addition, recovering data from a failed RAID5 array is quite difficult, requiring specialized (and expensive) software as well as user expertise. Recovering data from a failed WHS box with duplication is as simple as mounting the drives separately.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    The raid will not fail before two drives goes down, if that happens in WHS, you still need to run recovery-software and hope to get out data. WHS will be run on diffrent kinds of systems, even the cheapest of CPUs today are pretty powerful. More than powerful enough to get reasonable spped on raid5. Why limit WHS in this way? That is exactly the problem I'm adressing, the lack of flexibility, the reasoning that all WHS-users have the same needs, I think a pretty large number of WHS-machines wich poeple build themself will have performance several times higher then a P3@800, if not most.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    The raid will not fail before two drives goes down

    Oh how I WISH that was true. Let me give you a recent example I've dealt with. HP/Compaq ProLiant ML370G2 with SmartArray something (641? don't remember) running a 4x36 RAID5 array, Novell Netware 5.0. DLT VS80 tape backup drive. Worked for 4 years or so, then the tape died. Took the organization in question 4 months to buy a new one, LTO-2 - which means they've had 4 months without backups. Downed the server, connected the new tape, booted - oops, doesn't boot. Their "IT guy", in his infinite wisdom, connected the tape to the RAID controller, instead of onboard SCSI - which nuked the array. It didn't go anywhere, the controller didn't even report any errors, but NWFS crashed hard. They ended up rolling back to 4 months old backups because pulling data out of a corrupt RAID5 array would've cost several thousands.

    I work for a small company that specializes in IT outsourcing for small and medium businesses - basically shops that are too small to afford a dedicated IT department, and we give them the entire solution: hardware, software, installation, integration, advisory, support, etc - and I've got many stories such as this one. We also deal with home users, but not as much.

    This said, I don't consider RAID5 a suitable for home use, at least not yet. It's too expensive and dangerous - mirroring files across a bunch of drives is cheaper and easier. Also, as far as I understand, when a drive in WHS drive pool fails, it automatically syncs protected folders into free space on remaining drives, so the window where your data is vulnerable is quite small. RAID5, on the other hand, will be vulnerable until you replace the drive (which can take days or even weeks) and then until it finishes rebuilding (which can also take a very long time on a large array). You can keep a hotspare, but then you'll be eating up another drive - in case of 4 drives, RAID5+hotspare eats you the same 50% as RAID1/RAID10 - while WHS mirroring makes your entire free space function as hot spare.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Hardly a very plausible scenario for a home user, of course a RAID can go down if you mess it up, but you can just as easily mess up non-raided drives to the point that running recovery-software is needed, when it comes to normal drive-failiures two of them have to die.

    If you only need 2 Drives worth of storage, you might as well mirror, but when you need for instance 10, it adds up, but drive-cost, electricity PSU-size and physical size (especially if you want a backuo-machine in adition, I would never keep my data on only one computer like that). If the syncing is going to work,you also need to have at least a disk of usalble free space, so you basically need to "waste" a whole disk on that to if you wnat to get hot-spare-functionality.



  • Gholam - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Hardly a very plausible scenario for a home user, of course a RAID can go down if you mess it up, but you can just as easily mess up non-raided drives to the point that running recovery-software is needed, when it comes to normal drive-failiures two of them have to die.

    Not quite. WHS balances data between drives, so if one of them becomes corrupt and one of the copies of your protected data is gone, you can still access it on the other - no extra tools required, just mount the drive in a Windows system. You will only lose it if both drives become corrupt simultaneously.

    If the syncing is going to work,you also need to have at least a disk of usalble free space, so you basically need to "waste" a whole disk on that to if you wnat to get hot-spare-functionality.

    Again, not quite. Since you protect the data on a per-folder basis, your free space requirement depends on the actual amount of data you're keeping redundant, not the total, and there's little point in wasting redundant storage on backups - they're redundancy in and of themselves.
  • ATWindsor - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    And if one drive in a raid5 goes corrupt, you can still accsess the data. That doesn't mean you can't mess it up to the point where additional recovery is needed, and its the same with WHS, you can stand to loose one drive, but no problems "bigger" than that.

    Thats not the point, the point is that for you to have "hot-spare-functionality" as you talk about on WHS, you still need to have that amount of aditional free space, so having that dta will cost you extra HD-psace, just as having a hot-spare will. Depending on usage, WHS will need more or less free space than a hot-spare drive will provide.

    You might think it's little point having redundancy on backups, i feel like it's worth it. If one doesn't feel the need for this redundancy, the duplication-system in WHS isn't that useful either (that if if you don't want to risk having all your data on a single machine).

    To repeat the point yet again, the system should be more flexible, there are of course quite a few people who don't need the extra functionality, but there is also quite a few that want's to have smething easy to set up, but still maintain some features and flexibility.
  • Gholam - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    Thing is, however, on first glance RAID5 is very alluring - on paper, you get great performance, high reliability, and minimal loss of usable HD space.

    However, in practice, it is far, far more complicated, expensive and dangerous - but your typical home user doesn't have the depth of experience to know that.

    Therefore, if you absolutely must have a RAID5 setup, just buy a controller, set up WHS on a single large volume and disregard its drive pooling features.

    As for myself, I'm currently planning replacing my system which is getting a bit long in the tooth to handle the latest games. It's an A64 3200+ on ASUS A8N with 3GB RAM and GF6800GT, housed in a CM Stacker case. So, since upgrading a S939 CPU is currently next to impossible, once WHS is available over here (Israel, supposed to arrive sometime in october-november) I'm planning to build a new system, and in this one, replace the graphics card with something passively cooled (7100/8400), stick in a bunch of drives (probably 4x500GB) and run WHS drive pool on it. I considered getting a hardware RAID5 controller, but after examining my options, dismissed the idea as too expensive - I can get 3-5 extra 500GB drives for the price of a decent RAID5 card with cables. With room for 12 HDDs in the case, 8 SATA + 2 PATA connectors on the motherboard and ability to expand via USB/Firewire, I don't see this system capping out anytime soon.
  • ATWindsor - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    I agree that raid5 has some pitfalls, but once (properly) setup, I think it's pretty easy to handle, just stay away from it until a drive goes down, and then replace it :)

    However I would still like to have it implmented in WHS, if needed under some kind of "advanced setup", one has to activate.

    Personally I use a 16-port-hardware-controller, with the same controller also in my off-sote backup-computer. It might be over the top, but I find it worth the convinience when i have well over 10 sata-drives, restoring from backup is a hassle, so it's nice to be able to handle a single drive going down without having to get everything from the backup, and you get added security aggainst file-corrption when the cache has battery-backup (and also, the preformance is good, but that is not so important, only nice :))

  • Gholam - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link

    16-port hardware controllers are nice, but I can't justify sinking $800+ into one, not on my budget.
  • n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    hm ...
    raid 5 corrupted ?
    search google for "raid 5 corruption".
    the only thing that real threat is 2 or more dead disks simultaneously.
    WHS redundancy duplicate files over several disks, which mean that you waste as much space as in mirror.
    advantages - different disk sizes.
    disadvantages - performance.
    hard to believe that some one will think to mix IDE SATA and SCSI disks for file server (actually i do mix as i have 2 mirrored 36GB SCSI drives @ 15k rpm for system 2 mirrored 500GB SATA drives for sensitive (in terms of redundancy) data and 250GB SATA drive for temp files, incoming, and other things that i don't care about).
    Once i used raid 5 of 4 74GB SCSI for about 3 years 24/7/365 with almost constant load, then it was replaced with bigger SATA drives when one of them died without loosing 1 bit of my data.
    more probably you'll put 2-6 really big (250-750GB) disks for such purpose. smaller will go to the boxes.
    you wont run dedicated box for less then 3 clients.
    so for the same space price you can set up hardware raid 1, probably get more performance (controller dependent), 0.0004% failure rate.
    depends on where you live, WHS price save (~180 USD) will give you about 2x250GB or 1x 500GB SATA drives + SATA to PCI card with RAID support.
  • archer75 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    Performance isn't a disadvantage here. All of your data is copied to a single drive at first. Think of it as a holding area. Data is then analyzed and moved off of that to where it needs to be. So as far as you are concerned you are only transfering to one single disk.
    The performance is good enough for me to stream a HD movie off of it. So it's good enough.

    If you are running a RAID array with constant usage for years then it seems WHS is not marketed for you.
  • n0nsense - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link

    it's right, but even at my home with only 2 users, i can see much more load on disk performance.
    restoring something, can be done @ 30MBps or @90.
  • tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    > the only thing that real threat is 2 or more dead disks simultaneously.

    you're naive

    power outages (either from power company or blown power supply, controller errors, driver errors, there are a ton of things that can mess up RAID5. RAID5 is very fragile in the sense that if you mess up just a bit of it's structure, the entire thing is shot.

    > 0.0004% failure rate

    did you read that article i posted? try closer to 20-30% in the real world (now that doesn't necessarily mean data loss, but problems nonetheless)

    > disadvantages - performance.

    for backup this isn't really an issue
    plus when copying between computers you're going to be limited by your own harddrive

    i need to backup a bunch of laptops (which don't contain raid obviously) daily so WHS is definitely NOT going to be a bottleneck
  • tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    here's what i pulled from ONE thread

    http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/image-vp511756.htm...">http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/image-vp511756.htm...

    khayman80
    "I have had these drives configured as a RAID 1 array ever since I built the computer.

    I built this system 15 months ago, then 10 months ago I experienced a severe RAID failure (i.e. I lost all my data). "

    aragorn_246
    "I have exactly the same problem on my Asus K8N (NForce3) mobo."

    andy b
    "I also have the identical problem."

    mschoaf
    "I'm going through this exact problem right now"

    "I don't think I have very good news for you all. Windows does SEEM to be running ok, but I have a bunch of little quirky problems. When I brought Outlook up for the first time, it said my mailbox was corrupted, so I pulled that from my backup. Word had a problem with the normal.dot. Norton said it's settings were corrupt and reset to the defaults. And who knows about the stuff I haven't seen yet.

    So, I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I need to reformat and re-install. I'm also thinking about pulling an old IDE drive from one of my spare parts computers to use as a backup drive and backing up my full system weekly and my data daily. The sad part is, that's why I bought a MB with RAID 1 capability, so I wouldn't HAVE to do this."

    SteelBlueXI
    "it happened to me for the third time this morning"

    "So frustrating to lose my computer for a couple hours every week or so to rebuild my friggin' hard drive (when it doesn't even really need it!!!)"

    "I've had this happen 3 times now with 2 different versions of the drivers."

    ratts
    "i saw this raid drive split thing once."

    Mile Hy
    "Guess what...Over the week end I got the infamous red message about the Raid degrading."

    _MarcoM_
    "Same problem here, today"

    vsko
    "The same thing just happened to me"

    StedyONE
    "I also got blasted by this mysterious raid degraded bug last week for no apparent reason."

    Bloona
    "have the same issues on my machine with an ASUS K8N"

    mooredads
    "Had same problem flasing red degraded."

    bradwolf
    "I am getting the red flashing "degraded" message from NVidia at boot."

    walsterdoomit
    "now i have this problem also....degraded data"

    pc2099
    "Over the past few months I have had 4 instances of nvraid dropping 1 drive"

    "the first test trying to copy data from the raid to the external firewire drive resulted in not 1 but 2 drives dropping out."

    notice that last line, copying data to an external firewire drive caused TWO drives to drop out. If he had had that in RAID5 that would have been disastrous.
  • n0nsense - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link

    funny, but we are arguing about almost everything.
    of course there is a lot of problems and failures.
    the 0.0004% about raid1. power outage is not on option when we talking about some kind of server.
    don't tell me, that UPS is something you don't use.
    hardware problems will do the same to your system and its really does not matter what you running inside.
    of course i can give you examples of corporate Data Centers with 0 data loss, but we are talking about home.
    and you can build cost effective system that will do the same.
    let's organize it from worth to best.
    no raid
    soft raid
    raid 1
    raid 1+0 or 0+1.
    about forums. you will not find many happy user of raid there. Simply because they don't need until they have a problem.
    My SATA raid build on build-in controller which is part of Asus P5N32-E SLI, based on Nvidia 680i chipset.
    Indigo (part of HP) with about 1000 press machines monthly out, using integrated intel's matrix storage controllers for raid (1 and 0) (they use standard HP wx4000). This press machines working at full load non stop 24/7/365. Year @ IT department, no problems with raid.
    the big problem is moving raid array to another type of controller (new MoBo for example).here soft raids have big advantage.
    again the main question is "Shall you or shall not pay 180 USD for WHS"
    for not very advanced user i will recommend Debian box with Bacula to manage backups, syncing, share etc.
    You will have fully functional machine where file/backup server can be the only task, or it can be only one of other features like gaming machine, workstation, mail server, ftp server(not fake server ), DNS, DB server (yes, there is a use for it at home. for example media library of Amarok can use it ), media server and media center, web server, and stream server. You will not limited by MS greediness, but by your need and will.
    all of it or even more can run on single box when we talking about home. it was time that i had 7 computers at home for only 2 people, now it's only 2.5 (can't call P II 400MHz 186MB ram laptop computer, but it perfectly extends media and internet to balcony for nice Saturday breakfast with sea view).
    i do like some MS products like Office, but when it come to OS, DB, servers, use real one.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Cheap motherboard-integrated controllers corrupt and outright lose RAID arrays all the time due to driver bugs, and performance is atrocious. I won't trust a RAID5 array to anything that costs less that $500, and for that price, you can just stick a few extra drives for duplication.
  • n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    I did with LSI MegaRaid 500 with 128MB cache (originaly come with 32).
    I found it in second hand store for 50$ :)
    actually you can buy new one scsi320 for ~300$
    as for sata, there is IBM ServerRAID 7t, HP, adaptec and other controllers for ~300$
    starting price of 150$ for 4 port SATA II controllers.
    Personally, i prefer raid 10, but the problem is were to put the disks.
    i already have 5 and only 1 empty slot left. (3x5.25 reserved for future water cooling)
  • n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    I did with LSI MegaRaid 500 with 128MB cache (originaly come with 32).
    I found it in second hand store for 50$ :)
    actually you can buy new one scsi320 for ~300$
    as for sata, there is IBM ServerRAID 7t, HP, adaptec and other controllers for ~300$
    starting price of 150$ for 4 port SATA II controllers.
    Personally, i prefer raid 10, but the problem is were to put the disks.
    i already have 5 and only 1 empty slot left. (3x5.25 reserved for future water cooling)
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    A 5 year old controller that you pick up at a second hand store is not something that I - or an OEM - can base a line of products on. A new RAID5 controller which is not built by Promise or Silicon Image will run you $500+ - the ~$300 solutions are ZCR cards that are basically addons to $500+ motherboards. ServeRAID 8s costs around $700, HP P400/256 nearly $600, well over $800 for P400/512. A bigger case to store extra drives - or a few external USB/Firewire/eSATA enclosures - will run you much less.
  • tynopik - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link

    > power outage is not on option when we talking about some kind of server.
    don't tell me, that UPS is something you don't use.

    1. ups is not something most home users will use, you have to design assuming it won't be there
    2. even if you do have ups, what happens when the batteries die? often the only warning you will get is one day the power flickers and the system shuts off. do you replace all batteries every 2 years whether they need it or not?
    3. even if you meticulously maintain your ups, the internal power supply can still go bad

    > hardware problems will do the same to your system and its really does not matter what you running inside.

    NOT TRUE

    ntfs by itself is fairly fault tolerant. you yank the power you might lose a file, but everything else is fine

    raid5, you yank the power you might lose EVERYTHING

    that is why WHS file duplication is far safer and better

    > of course i can give you examples of corporate Data Centers with 0 data loss, but we are talking about home.

    of course i said it works if you're using ENTERPRISE LEVEL HARDWARE everywhere. Good raid cards start at $300. A $150 motherboard with onboard raid doesn't even begin to cut it.

    > let's organize it from worth to best.
    > no raid
    > soft raid
    > raid 1
    > raid 1+0 or 0+1.

    there is no such thing as 'best'
    there is 'best for a particular set of requirements'

    maybe your requirements are such that your best looks like that

    my best would like
    soft raid
    raid 1
    no raid
    raid 1+0 or 0+1

    (that's right, i would rather have no raid than 1+0 or 0+1)

    > This press machines working at full load non stop 24/7/365. Year @ IT department, no problems with raid.

    congratulations, you are one of the 70% who didn't have problems with their raid last year. Are you confident you won't be one of the 30% next year?

    > for not very advanced user i will recommend Debian box with Bacula to manage backups, syncing, share etc.

    not very advanced users aren't going to have a clue about Debian
    not very advanced users are going to be setup up raid properly
  • n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Any UPS have connection to computer and will shut it down properly when configured to do so.

    As for controllers. I was surprised to find that almost all integrated raid controllers (including my), actually software and not hardware. So need to admit you were right about it. (I spent few hours to transfer my disks to Promise ST150 TX4 and rebuild the raid).

    NTFS is the best in Microsoft's world. but since we can't run Windows on ext3 or reiserfs, or Linux on NTFS, we can't actually compare them in real world benchmark. Theoretically, NTFS is inferior. Actually any modern FS of all desktop systems is good enough.

    So we still at the same point.
    I agree with you that WHS is good for redundancy (if you enable this option) where you don't want to use real raid controller with "small" price tag.

    But I just can't see justification to use it. Compared to alternatives it does not have something spacial enough to pay extra 180 USD. Yes I know that for most of users, Linux is something horrifying. But we are not talking about them, but about the WHS and alternatives. in this case about raid.

    by the way, i'm very curious. what raid 1+0 or 0+1 did to you ? :)
    that remind me to answer. shut down will cause you to lose open/unsaved files in any scenario. but it can also damage you entire HD. raid 5 will give you better redundancy then SINGLE disk(single data instance). but when duplicating, raid 1 is the best.
  • n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    nForce (i'm not sure, but i think there is intel's chipset based MoBos with raid 5) raid still better in terms of stability, redundancy and performance then any soft raid.
    think what will happen if your WHS will crush unrecoverably.
    how will you restore your data ?
  • n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    Hello, if you have important things that you don't want to get lost or corrupted by some virus or anything else, do your self a favor and check
    http://www.debian.org">http://www.debian.org
    http://www.ubuntu.com">http://www.ubuntu.com
    or any other user friendly distro.
    you will find a way better solutions for home (and not only) server.
    more exactly you'll find OS capable to be everything with more then proven stability and security.
    and yes, it will work inside your MS environment. as for file server (and this is main purpose of home server), you will find much better performance.
    You may want to extend it to be your media server. means really distributed one. server with tv card and clients on other boxes.
  • tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    > as for file server (and this is main purpose of home server)

    no, the main purpose of WHS is backup

    if your main purpose is just a simple file server then yes, WHS probably isn't for you
  • mindless1 - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link

    Absolutely not. A server is not backup, it would be a very foolish thing to keep your back as an online windows box.
  • archer75 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    Actually the main purpose of WHS is not only backup but it's also as a file server. It's meant to store all of your data on it and have it protected so all in your home can access it.
    I am using it as a file server exclusively and I don't have it set to do any backups and it works great.
  • n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    Sorry, i will explain my self.
    I can't imagine file server without raid.
    1. Mirror if you have enough money and need best performance.
    2. raid 5 will give you same performance as normal disk.
    3. soft raid.
    when you store your data on server with redundancy, what backup do you need ?
  • shabazkilla - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    quote:

    It makes sense to offer RDP access to the server itself for management of the server and the network, but we don't immediately see the utility of being able to RDP into everything else. Certainly it's a nifty feature and we'll keep it, but we don't see it being very useful to all but a handful of users. How many people actually run a version of Windows that's RDP-server capable, after all?


    Any Windows XP or Vista PC has RDP server capability. I don't have my Vista laptop powered up at the moment, but in XP right click on My Computer, click Properties. Select the Remote tab and check "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer."

    As for the RDP session being HTTPS encapsulated, there is a known security bug with RDP that makes it less than secure.

    http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/317244">Microsoft Terminal Services vulnerable to MITM-attacks

    If you need remote access to your network stick with VPN rather than opening up a Terminal Server to the internet.
  • tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    > Any Windows XP or Vista PC has RDP server capability.

    that is only XP Pro, Vista Business or Vista Ultimate

    XP Home, Vista Home Basic, and Vista Home Premium do NOT have RDP
  • archer75 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    I don't get the complaint with setting up WHS and Media Center. All you have to do is tell Media Center to watch the folder with your shows in it. You are going to do that anyways so it's not difficult at all. Just a normal part of Media Center's setup. I told it to watch a share which it found on it's own. Done. That's it.

    WHS is targeted at your average home users. As such they don't know anything about RAID or have the ability to set it up. And even for the experienced user it is simply not needed. Ditch RAID all together. Forget about it. It is not needed here in the slightest. WHS will duplicate what you set it to and you are protected against drive failure.

    The only other step I would take is using an online backup service to keep your data safe off site. There are at least two that will integrate with WHS console for easy management.

    I have personally built my own WHS and it currently has 6 hard drives in it with room for 6 more. It's been rock solid so far for a RC.
  • iwodo - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    It is nice this article prove a point. NAS ( or NAS like product.. in this case WHS ) does not necessary means slow.

    If we look at the graph at smallnetbuilder almost all NAS perform below 30/s MB per sec.
  • Verdant - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    well not a complete solution, the webguide add-in covers many of the features i would want for MCE, the main problem is still the multiple computers issue though.

    Whiist allows you to do a pretty good job of web hosting too,


    it just seems that some of these add-ins were ignored when this article was written!
  • n0nsense - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    This product can't be used by grandma because it is to complicated and she even don't aware of what it can do and for what she will need it.
    No enthusiast will use it since there is no reason to use product pretending something that it is not. It is not Server OS (hardly can call OS anything carrying Win logo with exception for WinCE which is truly interesting modular OS with micro kernel).
    From my experience, when you have 3 and more computers, you do want centralize storage for media and docs. and some to keep private. no way I'll trust MS to be responsible of such things. Not with NTFS which is far from being perfect.
    I'm sure MS will find the way to push it through OEM. But this is only thing they good at.

  • neogodless - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    If your grandma has three computers and an XBOX360, she might want this...

    Assuming she does...

    Option 1)
    Spend THREE DAYS setting up a Linux box with her spare old computer?!
    Spend extra money on hard drives because it does have SIS.
    When she adds hard drives... how does she tell Linux to spread out the files?

    Option 2)
    Spend 30 minutes setting up a pre-built WHS system or 90 minutes installing and setting up WHS on her old spare system. Maybe buy an extra hard drive here and there and spend 5 minutes adding it to the system.
  • leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    grandma lol

    but i agree good post (must make sub account so can rate users)
  • n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    I really impressed by you responses.
    You might be right about set up mess and definitely right about need to read few pages in order to try something not microsoft.
    It is a free world when you choose your platform, but far away of being free when you choose proprietary one.
    while you talking, most of you did not try any *nix in last years.
    If my parents, cousins and the rest of close persons were able to use it without calling me twice a week each, for some kind of support as they did in XP time and not to reinstall XP once a year for each box, then it's really indicates user friendliness and stability of non MS OSes.
    And by the way, you can by preinstalled and configured Linux box from Dell, HP or Lenovo (not to mention other smaller OEM's) and not to waste your time on installation.
    As for the growing take next example:
    Online defragmentation

    Although the extent based nature of XFS and the delayed allocation strategy it used significantly improves the file system's resistance to fragmentation problems, XFS provides a filesystem defragmentation utility (xfs_fsr, short for XFS filesystem reorganizer) that can defragment a mounted and active XFS filesystem. Note that xfs_fsr is usually part of xfsdump package, not xfsprogs.

    Online resizing

    XFS provides the xfs_growfs utility to perform online resizing of XFS file systems. XFS filesystems can be grown provided there is remaining unallocated space on the device holding the filesystem. This feature is typically used in conjunction with volume management, as otherwise the partition holding the filesystem will need enlarging separately.
    read this to understand more:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_systems">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_systems

    there is no such thing as perfect software (OS is one of this). but there is definitely better and worse .
    "Computers are like air conditioners. They stop working when you open Windows." (c)
  • imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    You are so wrong, it is geared towards everyone. The software it uses has been proven to be VERY reliable. As stated in the very article you are posting about. NTFS is also very reliable.

    Of coruse grandma won't care for it, but I already know many people who are getting it based on how easy it is to use. Even businesses are getting it i know of because of ease of backup it provides plus not having to hire outside help to set it up.

    The fact that you completely don't understand the HOME part of the server is mind boggling.
  • n0nsense - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    I understand one thing.
    Can not find justification to pay for license when it can be done completely without cost.
    NTFS compared to journalized file systems is bad in term of data reliability, performance etc.
    Can not find reason to pay for new computer while very old one can do the job perfectly.
    (P 4, 1.5GHz, 1GB RDRAM, ~1.3TB storage perfectly doing the job of File, Backup, Mail, DNS, FTP, Net Boot server all in one with uptime of 6 month (every 6 month i clean the dust inside my computers) where the HD and SATA PCI cards are only things that i needed to buy. Just for the price of license, you can add at least 500 GB of additional storage.
    All you need is RTFM how to set up linux box. Easy way, binary distribution will take 2-5 hours to set up all this. Advanced way, source distribution (such as Gentoo) can take few days to compile (all done automatically and your attention needed not more then in ordinary installation) . took me 3 days to complete it on p2 400MHz laptop with 186 MB ram. which is now able to a nice balcony terminal with internet access and ability to view movies (that was impossible under very cut and optimized XP, maximum 6-10 fps for movies, and very close to impossible in binary linux. )etc.
    I don't tell to replace your desktop (since i have dual boot on main computer to be able play some very new games that not yet supported in linux), but if you want stable server, working without your attention, and you don't need to wonder what to do with slow downs, dirty regestry etc after year (not to mention viruses etc). Not to mention the easiness of move the system to new hardware (when you want it), transfer the disks and power up.
    I can continue and explain another 100 reasons why this WHS is useless, but the buttom line will be the Subject. This is another MS way to squeeze few mor bucks from you, and may be to grant need for MCSE and MCSA guys that will extra cost for your small business friends.
    As for the HOME part -- i spent 2 years of my life working at tech support of ADSL provider. I know exactly what is average HOME users with a lot of computers. They will call some technician to do the setup and to fix their problems. exactly what they doing when they need to reinstall OS or clean up the mess. For advanced users (like you if you spending your time on this site) will be much more cost, time, and performance effective not to use it.
  • imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
  • neogodless - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    What makes me sad is that I did actually read it all the way through.

    Also... I don't understand why people argue so violently against some things.

    I was able to try out the RC, others can download a 120 trial when it is available... you can find out for yourself. And you can also download Linux and try it. See which one is easier to set up.

    Personally, I consider myself pretty advanced, and I tried Ubuntu 7.04 and still felt pretty lost when I wanted to do things. Yes, I'm sure I could learn it but time is valuable... I can spend half an hour setting up WHS... like I did, and just forget about it... nothing to learn, no need to tear my hair out!
  • leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    i agree that was an big rant i my self fix pcs all day and it takes me more then an hr ot day to do things on linux that should only take 6 clicks or some command line tool to do it as well

    linux software makers do not think to much about useablty for any one who is not an linux guru

    try and play an Mp3 or an stream, tell me how long that takes you to play it (i hate to try and play an xvid file)

    i tryed to use it lots of times my self just get stuck at simple things that should be simple that it i should not have to type {chmod 2883 -d -w -u \file\sfd} (made up as i cant find any help for setting the securty of files for that command any more)
  • n0nsense - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    I understand one thing.
    Can not find justification to pay for license when it can be done completely without cost.
    NTFS compared to journalized file systems is bad in term of data reliability, performance etc.
    Can not find reason to pay for new computer while very old one can do the job perfectly.
    (P 4, 1.5GHz, 1GB RDRAM, ~1.3TB storage perfectly doing the job of File, Backup, Mail, DNS, FTP, Net Boot server all in one with uptime of 6 month (every 6 month i clean the dust inside my computers) where the HD and SATA PCI cards are only things that i needed to buy. Just for the price of license, you can add at least 500 GB of additional storage.
    All you need is RTFM how to set up linux box. Easy way, binary distribution will take 2-5 hours to set up all this. Advanced way, source distribution (such as Gentoo) can take few days to compile (all done automatically and your attention needed not more then in ordinary installation) . took me 3 days to complete it on p2 400MHz laptop with 186 MB ram. which is now able to a nice balcony terminal with internet access and ability to view movies (that was impossible under very cut and optimized XP, maximum 6-10 fps for movies, and very close to impossible in binary linux. )etc.
    I don't tell to replace your desktop (since i have dual boot on main computer to be able play some very new games that not yet supported in linux), but if you want stable server, working without your attention, and you don't need to wonder what to do with slow downs, dirty regestry etc after year (not to mention viruses etc). Not to mention the easiness of move the system to new hardware (when you want it), transfer the disks and power up.
    I can continue and explain another 100 reasons why this WHS is useless, but the buttom line will be the Subject. This is another MS way to squeeze few mor bucks from you, and may be to grant need for MCSE and MCSA guys that will extra cost for your small business friends.
    As for the HOME part -- i spent 2 years of my life working at tech support of ADSL provider. I know exactly what is average HOME users with a lot of computers. They will call some technician to do the setup and to fix their problems. exactly what they doing when they need to reinstall OS or clean up the mess. For advanced users (like you if you spending your time on this site) will be much more cost, time, and performance effective not to use it.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    How long does it take to set up a "without cost" system? Now multiply that by $50/hour which I bill. And you still won't have single instance storage.
  • tynopik - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    > Can not find justification to pay for license when it can be done completely without cost.

    oh really?

    please tell me where i can find a backup system as flexible and powerful as this at no cost

    - autocombine all physical disks into 1 volume
    - disks can be any size
    - disks can be added or removed at will
    - yet still have physical redundancy of files on different drives
    - automatically save single instance of identical files/blocks to reduce space wastage
    - automatically preserve previous versions
    - do live imaging of windows systems that can then be restored from bare metal with just a boot cd and a network connection

    sure parts of it can be duplicated for free, but do tell how you would setup something that does ALL that
  • wrong - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    WHS lacks the drivers to run tuner cards and other media center paraphernalia, so it can't act as a media center. However, its hardware requirements are quite standard - disk and
    network card - so it should be feasible to run it under virtualization on your MCE box.

    Ideally, you'd want to give it its own disks, rather than having the virtual machine's disks map to files on the host machine, but that wouldn't be mandatory.
  • n0nsense - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    Server does not need to be Media Center.
    If you want All-in-One OS, use Linux.
    Your box will be exactly what you want it to be.
  • yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    I kind of view WHS as the latest WinME, but perhaps without all the software flaws that ME had. Meaning I think it *may* have been a good concept in theory, but fell short of being a true server OS. I was on the early beta program for this OS, and could not help but think this was a product for the less than technically inclined(IE Servers for dumbies).

    Right now, I do not think I would even consider WHS seriously, unless they made some radical changes. I mean why even bother, you have Linux(prefferably Debian in my case), or even WinXP which seems to be more technologically advanced by comparrison(in those areas that matter to me anyhow). Sure, the duplication of files for 'redundancy' on multiple drives may seem nice to those less than experienced users, but those of us who would likely use this product are already aware of rsync based *free* Windows appplications that do such a task already.

    Just the next 'red headed step child' in OSes as far as I am concerned.
  • imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    You are completely wrong in every aspect. esp the winME part, that was completely wrong and in no way close.

    WHS appeals to everyone, including technically inclined, could care less about super advanced features. WHS has what everyone has been asking for in a server for a long time, simplicity and ease of use. The stuff you described is a SMALL fraction of people, even then those people see the appeal of WHS.
  • imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    You should of noted that the network throttling bug only effects certain users of vista. Lots of people, myself included, have not encountered such bug. Even then, its not worth saying "vista users should definitely want to hold off on doing so." since its not a drastic decline that would prevent such transfers. Especially since everyone is going to do these big backups when not at computer.

    That whole paragraph is misleading.
  • Jeff7181 - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    If the prebuilt boxes are reasonably priced or the OEM licenses are reasonably priced I'm going to be buying one.

    I'm using the beta version of it right now, and in the past I have restored single files/directories with the backup utility and I actually just now got done doing a full restore of an NT volume because a family member filled the computer with viruses so I figured it would be the perfect time to try it out. I wiped out the partition, then put the Client Restore CD in the drive and a few clicks of the mouse later it was restoring all 25 GB of my primary partition over my LAN. Finished in under 2 hours... had to run scandisk to fix some orphaned files and whatnot, but it's working as if nothing happened now. And an unintended side effect is that it appears the MFT was completely rewritten and consolidated into a couple contiguous chunks on the hard drive if I Analyze the drive in Disk Defragmenter.
  • imaheadcase - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    They won't be reasonably priced if HP media center version is around the same as others are priced. They are around $500-700 with about 2x300gig hardrives (or 350gig i forget).

    The article mentioned they are going to offer better hardware that what is needed, so im sure that is going to make them more expensive than if you put something together on the cheap. Long as you can get the hardware for a cheap server off the internet that is required for the OS you are good.
  • AlexWade - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    Have you tried file sharing in XP Pro or Vista Ultimate? It is less painful and a lot easier to give yourself a root canal. I've followed Microsoft's instructions step-by-step with no success. Then, come to find out, you have to modify a registry key to get it to work. But that only works on half the computers out there. Even if you turn the firewall off and every single service on, it still won't file share.

    Why is it so hard for Windows to get file sharing right? It worked flawlessly in 2000 and in XP Home? It is part of XP Pro's and Vista Ultimate extra security. Needless to say, if Microsoft would get it right the first time, a cheap computer would work just as well as Home Server.

    Microsoft makes a broken product to sell you another product.
  • leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    found windows 2000 best os for it as it has no 10 connection user limits
  • mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    IIRC, Win2k Pro does have a 10 concurrent inbound connection limit which 2K Server raises.
  • leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    win2k has no limits
  • mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    See "Cause" on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/122920">this MS KB page.
  • leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    i got an windows 2000 pc setup as an server (think its win2k pro) when we had windows XP installed the 10 connection limit was an problem so we just put the old one back in and set up the file shareing on that one (+ 15 computers)

    only XP and vista has this limit and probly windows server when setup in Per license mode win2k and less have no 10 connection limit even thught that KB says so
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    The 10 simultaneous connections limit goes back as far as NT4 workstation.
  • BigLan - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    Strange, I've never had a problem sharing files in XP. True, I turn off simple file sharing (in windows Explorer - tools - folder options - view tab, bottom of advanced settings) but that's all. I've even added machines with a different workgroup name and been able to share files using \\machine name\c$.

    Also, you'd have thought that at least a couple of businesses would have complained by now if you couldn't browse network shares.
  • yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    Yeah, I share media from WinXP to WinXP, Win2000, Win2003, and Linux dailey, It is not exactly rocket science . . . I suppose if you think it should be confiured straight out of the box working perfectly then . . . whatever(heh).
  • leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    WHS is little more then just an XP computer thats file shareing
    as it has auto mirroring of files (if more then 2 disks are used)
    not tested it but it supports M$ MCE stuff (poorly from what been revewed) it allso supports none windows based media extenders

    i like to find out how this WHS works when running p2p apps on it as well as it dislikes you wanting to loging onto it
  • BigLan - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    There's already a torrent plug-in for it, and you could use any p2p app that has a web server interface. I hear it works very well.
  • sc3252 - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    Its called debian, not server's for idiots.
  • Sunbird - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    What if you want to have 2 WHSs on the same network. Say one would be the file server and the second one (with even more HDD space) would be used to backup the file server and all the home PCs. Would it be possible?
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    I haven't tested this, so I can't be sure. The only problem I could see is the backup client, it automatically searches out the network for the WHS. 2 servers may work, but I'd be a bit surprised if they did.
  • mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    Surely the backup client can be disabled (On one of the two)? I would be very surprised if 2 WHS systems can't coexist given a configuration change if you just wanted to avoid the wasted redundancy of having both make backups. That is, unless MS had deliberately chosen to prevent the two from getting along.
  • ATWindsor - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    Does it souppert proper raid, like raid 5 for instance? That fits my use a bit better than this duplication of files. WHS looks interesting, but seemingly a bit to primitive to be honest, seems to be missing quite a few more or less nescessary features.
  • Rolphus - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    The choice of OS should be entirely separate to RAID considerations. Software RAID5 is a bit of a waste of time, seeing as any performance advantage over just mirroring the data would be more than offset by software parity calculations. I don't see any reason why a BIOS-level RAID system (as supplied by many high-end and server motherboards and add-in cards) wouldn't be supported by WHS; Windows 2003 Server supports any RAID level you care to throw at it.
  • mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    Most people won't care about parity calculation overhead, it's not as though the system is being used like a PC or workstation, that's practically ALL the system would be doing besides sitting idle, particularly given the rough spec of a 1GHz or more processor which is not at all needed just to serve files. Maybe with GbE, you might want a 300-400MHz processor to keep networking performance good but on a system that old you'd probably be bottlenecked by the PCI bus before anything else.
  • yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    What is wrong with software RAID, if that is all the system does(server storage) ? In my book, implementing *any* so called server OS *needs* to have at least RAID1, and should have RAID5 in software. If not, there is not realy reason to stop using WinXP Pro, with a few registry hacks tp bypass the RAID5 limitation.

    Anyhow, why pay for something that is lacking when you can get an OS that does it for free, or another earlier version of windows that will do it with a few hacks, and yu're already familiar with.

    As I said in an earlier post, I used WHS for a few days several months ago(early beta program), and did not like what I saw. So . . .
  • ATWindsor - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    Software raid5 can have very good performance, modern computers are fast, besides the main consideration is not wasting so much space, if you want to have som security for your files, you get by on loosing 1/4 insted of 1/2 of the space.

    The main advantage off WHS is the whole storage-pool-setup, I hope they implment somethin similar in w2k3.

  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    I tested software RAID5 on an nForce4 SLI motherboard (DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR) with Silicon Image 3114 chip and 4x WD 500GB drives. Reads were in 11-14MB/s range, writes sub-10MB/s, and CPU load was near full, on an Athlon 64 4000+.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Try to test a proper software-raid, instead of the inbuilt nforce-crap, just because you tested a poor solution doesn't make all solutions bad.

  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    It's not nForce, it's SiI3114, nearly ubiquitous on higher-end motherboards of that era, as well as present on many lower-end PCI cards. Building RAID5 on an "affordable" solution from Silicon Image, Promise and such will give you exactly that kind of performance, as well as guarantee a high probability of data loss due to driver/firmware bug. In order to run RAID5 you need a proper controller from Adaptec/LSI Logic/3Ware, and that costs big bucks.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    It only supports proper RAID if you can configure it all in the BIOS. Any kind of softRAID that needs Windows' help isn't supported. Basically it needs to appear as 1 disk to Windows.
  • mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    Ok, but want kind of soft-raid "needs" windows? I've dealt with several different soft raid controllers and windows official "support" is not needed, except for a management utility application if desired, to show the state of the arrays. While the management utility could be used to rebuild arrays, assign spares, etc, (in some cases), this is only supplimental to what functionality is provided in any typical soft-raid bios.

    Remember, windows can be installed onto a soft-raided volume. Soft raid doesn't depend on windows. There might be something about WHS that I haven't considered yet that would be a limitation but in general I find the article's conclusion that "not supported" means "won't work" to be odd. I think it more like when a cable ISP tells you that your router isn't "supported" meaning you're just on your own if you do it, they make no guarantee your unique configuration will or won't work.

    Let me put it another way, I am wondering if anyone has any example of a soft raid controller that can't be set up prior to OS installation, it's a pretty manditory feature if you want that OS on the RAIDed volume. What remains is a driver support for the controller in windows but any product with a Win2k3 driver should work unless MS has gone and deliberately castrated WHS. Likewise with a soft raid management utility, unless it's using a fancy installer which refuses to install due to not identifying the WHS OS.

    What I suspect is that MS simply disabled the OS integral raid functionality which would be used with drives NOT in any kind of raid controller (soft or hardware), raid configuration. If this is the case, someone will probably hack it to regain that functionality, and it might not even be anything more than a registry change needed.
  • leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    the idea if WHS is to be easy to use
  • ATWindsor - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    And? The simple functions can be easy to use, while at the same time having more advance features available if one turns them on.

  • leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    i assume thats what the add-ons are for later on when thay get made

    if an hdd failes or is about to on WHS it auto start balancing to an other disk thats Online and ok there is allways two copys if its turnd on (duplication)
    not not sure how to degrade an disk but i assume it try and move the data off it i know it will if you remove the problem disk Useing WHS connector as its part of the wizard when removeing disks

    the idea of WHS is for users who have limited lerning curves (Plug in expect it to work basicly)

    nothing stopping you from making RAID 5 on WHS but it not work correctly in WHS connector
  • mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    The problem is that it is not real-time mirroring, since it waits until later to make the second copy, odds are you would end up losing something if a drive fails.

    I don't understand when people claim the idea here is "easy". What's so hard about plugging in two hard drives, entering a bios menu and assigning the two to an array? That's an order of magnitude easier than becoming accustomed to a new OS, setting it up. If the idea is just plug it in and expect it to work, then you will NOT HAVE that redundant second copy of the data you're implying is sufficient. These are fairly important features on a fileserver, and then if you want dynamic virtualized volumes that would be yet another feature so you can pick what you want to do, just like it is now with other windows versions where it is easy if you just accept the defaults, most basic config., but you don't have to accept the defaults.
  • leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    if

    as windows home server its an little lame that you cant use the Boot drive on hardware RAID 1 (boot disk for some resone Cant be SCSI drivers){Sata in raid or IDE RAID} as if the boot disk fails thats an big problem as there is no redundancy for it

    it more likey work after windows has been installed but its gettings WHS to Boot off an raid array after its been ghosted over all i can see is getting the driver to load up

    quote:

    To lose data 3 conditions would have to be met:
    1. Have to lose primary drive in WHS

    nope its stored on other disk that has been duplication as long as it has all ready been done if not you lose any new data thats just been put on (it have to be with in last 10secs to 1 min if it was an small file) unlakey that happen

    you can take the disks out and mount them as each disk uses norm NTFS file system just needs an drive letter putting on
  • tynopik - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    > as windows home server its an little lame that you cant use the Boot drive on hardware RAID 1 (boot disk for some resone Cant be SCSI drivers){Sata in raid or IDE RAID} as if the boot disk fails thats an big problem as there is no redundancy for it

    that is an annoyance for recovering the WHS, BUT if you were duplicating data, your data is still safe on another drive

    > nope its stored on other disk that has been duplication as long as it has all ready been done if not you lose any new data thats just been put on (it have to be with in last 10secs to 1 min if it was an small file) unlakey that happen

    it was very difficult to follow what what you're saying, but i think we both have the same understanding of how it works

    note i said ALL 3 conditions have to be met
    i agree losing primary drive alone will not mess up duplication, UNLESS condition 2 is ALSO met
    condition 2 is what you said, it fails before it had a chance to copy to the secondary drive, which i agree is very unlikely
  • tynopik - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    > The problem is that it is not real-time mirroring, since it waits until later to make the second copy, odds are you would end up losing something if a drive fails.

    1. it doesn't wait that long, you wouldn't lose much
    2. odds are you won't lose anything

    don't forget this is the BACKUP system, even if the BACKUP fails, your primary should still be ok.

    To lose data 3 conditions would have to be met:
    1. Have to lose primary drive in WHS
    2. (1) would have to occur in the narrow window between when it being copied to WHS and a duplicate is made onto another HD
    3. Have to lose ANOTHER drive in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT system (the one the file was originally on)

    personally i would be more worried about the time between when a file is created/modified on your system and it is copied to WHS in the first place.

    Assuming backup runs at night and you create a file in the morning, that's almost a whole working day of exposure when the file is in ONLY one place

    > What's so hard about plugging in two hard drives, entering a bios menu and assigning the two to an array?

    having to limit yourself to the lowest common denominator of your drives

    let's say you have a 200gb, a 200gb and a 400gb drive and you put it in a raid, you're wasting half the capacity of the 400gb. With WHS you could store a full 400gb with duplication.
  • mindless1 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    Are you joking? I don't know what you think passes for reliable redundancy, but the idea that you're playing "odds" and then relying on a client not failing to keep your fileserver stores intact is crazy.

    This isn't a "backup", this is a "server", which for many people will be more important than their clients.

    Let's say you don't put a 200GB, 300GB and 400GB in a Raid, since you seem to be trying hard to cause a problem then thinking WHS would bail you out of ineptitude. The only thing hard about a server is when people make excuses not to use the time tested proven reliable strategies then try to excuse it with examples of bad choices. It is a very trivial thing to set up a home file server, far far quicker and easier than even a typical desktop WinXP system tweaked for a particular user's preferred environment. Trying to suggest there are problems is a sign you just don't understand this.

    For lower cost, any system can be made into a fully redundant fileserver that is more reliable, not in beta OS state, and has more storage until there is at least $360 more spent on drives. This 360 figure comes from 2x the initial $180 projected price of WHS.

    WHS will be a good option once 3 things are addressed:

    1) The price is too high for the small increase in functionality over what can be added as freeware or very low cost add-on to Win2k or XP.

    2) WHS matures more. I didn't run anything mission critical on any MS OS when it first came out, that would be foolish for an important fileshare. That it is derived from Win2K3 bodes well for it, but the very features being suggested as important by some, are the very features that are new enough to still have some beta-release related issues and need patched later.

    3) It is limiting in user choice of configuration. As OS is not supposed to tell you what to do, rather enabling you to do what you want to do.
  • tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    > This isn't a "backup", this is a "server", which for many people will be more important than their clients.

    if your only/main purpose in getting this is as a server, then yes, perhaps WHS isn't for you

    it's most powerful/compelling feature is it's backup system. sure it can do other things, but if you aren't using that then there's not a whole lot of reason to use it

    just because backup of clients isn't a big deal to you doesn't mean it isn't a big deal to others

    just because WHS doesn't meet YOUR needs doesn't mean it's stupid, it just means it's not for you

    for me backing up clients is very critical and WHS looks like a godsend

    oh really?

    please tell me where i can find a backup system as flexible and powerful as this at no cost

    > For lower cost, any system can be made into a fully redundant fileserver that is more reliable, not in beta OS state, and has more storage until there is at least $360 more spent on drives.

    tell me which free system provides ALL of the following features and i will gladly jump on board

    - autocombine all physical disks into 1 volume
    - disks can be any size
    - disks can be added or removed at will
    - yet still have physical redundancy of files on different drives
    - automatically save single instance of identical files/blocks to reduce space wastage
    - automatically preserve previous versions
    - do live imaging of windows systems that can then be restored from bare metal with just a boot cd and a network connection

    sure parts of it can be duplicated for free, but do tell how you would setup something that does ALL that

    (just as a quick aside, a basic server just sitting there is going to waste a TON of space backing up multiple windows systems from all the redundant files. Oops, there goes all your extra space)
  • leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    quote:

    let's say you have a 200gb, a 200gb and a 400gb drive and you put it in a raid, you're wasting half the capacity of the 400gb. With WHS you could store a full 400gb with duplication.


    i think you mean {with out duplication) as if you got 2x 200gb with it turnd on you only get 200gb any way

    i agree if raid fails it can be an problem some times getting the data off it
    With WHS just plug the disk into an other pc and goto disk manager and Give the disk an Letter or mount it as an drive folder and you see all the data on it
  • tynopik - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    > i think you mean {with out duplication) as if you got 2x 200gb with it turnd on you only get 200gb any way

    no, if you were duplicating EVERYTHING (which most people won't want to do) you will have 400gb*. 1st copy on the 400gb and half 2nd copy on one 200gb and other half 2nd copy on other 200gb
  • leexgx - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    darn miss read both posts i just read it like 200gb and 200gb a 400gb so assume last one was the 2 200gb put together to make 400gb

    ----other post
    i got you now on the 3 one if all 3 happend you lose data

  • tynopik - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    the other thing i forgot to mention is selective duplication

    what if you have 500gb of files but only have 5gb that need duplication?

    WHS is much, much more efficient in such a scenario. Only duplicating what needs to be duplicated and merging the remaining space

    i can't wait for MS to include this feature in regular windows, it's freaking fantastic
  • ATWindsor - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    What if I want to have added protection on all my stuff? With raid 5 I loose 25% of the space, with WHS-duplication I loose 50% (and the performance is worse). Even people who wants an easy setup has diffrent needs.
  • tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    > What if I want to have added protection on all my stuff? With raid 5 I loose 25% of the space, with WHS-duplication I loose 50% (and the performance is worse).

    that is only true if
    1. you have 4 drives
    2. they are all equal size

    consider a scenario that i mentioned elsewhere where you have (2) 200GB drives and a 400GB drive

    with raid5 you would only be able to use 200GB of the 400GB drive wasting half it's space right off the bat. So you are left with essentially 3 200GB drives. Then parity data takes up another drive leaving you with 400gb of space. Which is the exact same amount that WHS gives you.

    but i will tell you this, RAID sucks, especially RAID5

    you mess up one thing and you lose the entire volume

    even with raid 1 i had more problems than it was worth

    raid is just going to cause more difficulties and support calls, the exact opposite of what you want for a 'black-box' like this

    and i'm not the only one who feels this way

    http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29">http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29

    [quote]
    However, at the agreement of our support staff, I estimate that anywhere from 25% to 30% of our customers with RAID will call us at some point in the first year to report a degraded RAID array or problem directly resulting from their RAID configuration.[/quote]

    that sort of problem rate is simply unacceptable

    and what if suddenly you decide that there is a bunch of stuff you DON'T need to duplicate? there is no graceful way to handle that with raid

    WHS if simple, flexible, powerful and reliable (in the sense it's not likely to cause problems like raid systems do)
  • ATWindsor - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link

    There is many ways to mess up a whole lot of dta, raid or non-raid, I'm pretty sure i can make the datapool disappear pretty easy in whs also. (it can be recovered of course, but so can i raid5-volume).

    If people use problem-prone onboard raid-options on mobos, I'm sure quite a few run in to trouble, that doesn't make raid5 a bad idea for everyone. Same with your example with diffrent-sized disks, i happen to have 4 diks of the same size. Thats the problem with lack of options, people with needs diffrent than the exactly the ones that happen to be included gets a worse product.

    AtW
  • ATWindsor - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link

    What if I want to have added protection on all my stuff? With raid 5 I loose 25% of the space, with WHS-duplication I loose 50% (and the performance is worse). Even people who wants an easy setup has diffrent needs.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Performance of consumer-grade RAID5 controllers is EXTREMELY low. Sub-10mb/s typically, with a high CPU load, as they don't have a dedicated XOR engine. Server-grade RAID5 controllers will give you good performance, but they cost in the $600-1000+ range, and when you're using consumer-grade 7200rpm SATA drives, you can buy half a dozen extra drives for the cost of the controller.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Software-raid has good read-performance if properly implmented, much better than a single drive. If you are going to have many drives, you must buy additional controllers anyway, so the price-difference isn't that big.
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Yeah... "if properly implemented". I've got to see that "proper" implementation at work though.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    Try a "pure" software-raid not connected to any of the onboard-solutions.

    AtW
  • Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    That ends up costing even more than a proper hardware solution - either in software licensing costs, or in time investment, or both.
  • ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link

    If it where implmented in WHS, you have already bought the software, setting it up in raid5 is IMHO very easy if its done in a similar way as in win2003 (or possibly even easier)

  • bespoke - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    MS had an open beta for WHS, so I signed up. I installed the server software on an old 2.4 Ghz P4 with just 512 megs of RAM and it works well. I've not had any issues in the 3 months or so I've used it - my primary PC has been backed up faultlessly the whole time. WHS keeps about 10 to 12 revisions (increments, really) of my PC around, so if there ever has a problem, I have a large amount of backup points to restore from.

    I can see this software (or a complete package - HP will be coming out with a line of small boxes with WHS preinstalled) as being a great thing for a geek to setup for non-techie family members. Seamless and invisible backups along with an easy to use file server shold make this a win.
  • leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    WHS mirroring of files is more then raid 1

    was reading it an little fast but have you tryed simply adding disks and removeing them its Very easy to do as it has an Wizard that makes it alot easyer

    allso each disk is in NTFS format (thay are mounted as Drive folders) so if the boot disk broke (as for some Very strage resone the fist disk is 20gb boot and the rest storage that make it Alot harder to fit an bigger disk on the boot drive)

    tested it in VMware with 4-7 disks what is Strage is the prerequest that the fist disk Must not be scsi only IDE or Native Sata mode (not Raid Sata mode) for the boot disk

    good review tho
  • leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    allso the backup is not so hot for adv users who do not want to do the whole pc as i could not find an option when i was testing it to Pick dir folders I want backing up as by default it selects all folders apart from temp ones and give you No option to goto Pick an folder mode all you can do is Pick what folders you want Not to back up
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    You can select folders for exclusion when configuring the backups.
  • leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    i all ready explaned that problem you can't pick all of them at once you have to add each root folder

    i want to be able to Pick an folder insted of haveing to go the longwinded way of haveing to exclued all the folders
  • BigLan - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    Nice preview of WHS. I'm intrigued by it and have the RC but didn't get around to installing it and playing around.

    For me, the mce issue is the biggest sticking point and hopefully WHS2 will include a recording engine which mce boxes can connect to. I hear the both sage and beyondTV can be run on WHS with the appropriate link software, but it's extra cost to people with vista home premium boxes, and doesn't work well with a 360. For existing sage or BTV users WHS could be worth it, in my case because I could move 3 hard drives out of the case in my living room and into a PC in a closet.

    The backup features sound great though, and are what I want most. It sounds very simple to use as well.

    I wonder if whs2 will include a roaming desktop feature so a user can log in to any machine and have everything ready and waiting for them. It sounds like their 'my docs' folder is being copied to the server, so hopefully MS will include this in the next release.
  • Aileur - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    Nice articule!
    First of all, a typo (im guessing)
    Page 7: Simply put, there is no integration between the two. By default WHS and MCE are completely //obvious// to each other.
    Im guessing that should be oblivious?

    And a question:
    On page 6 it is mentionned that there is a solution for non domained networks and all that. Fine, but what if i DO have a domain? Is there any way to integrate it without using that bypass method?
    Can it (whs) be my domain controller?

    Thanks!
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    Unfortunately WHS does not have domain controller support. I haven't seen a reason why, but it's a safe assumption this is so there's a greater difference between WHS and 2K3SBS.

    It also doesn't support joining a domain.
  • yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    Does not even have software RAID support, at least the last time I ran the beta . . .

    cannot believe you guys are just_now writting an article on it, but, I suppose maybe you guys had a NDA in effect ? Anyhow, I have a hard time embracing *any* OS that is supposed to be a server product and does not implement software RAID period, but I supose they think their backup scheme is better ? No reason to 'force' it onto others.

    The main reason I think it does not have a DC is that this is meant for home storage only. I.E. a very limited form of Windows 2003. I ran it on my secondary system for a few days, and decided I would probably rather run XP Pro, or Win2003 datacenter(or one of the other variants, maybe even Linux) at this capacity.
  • PrinceGaz - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    Just a wild guess from me here, but I think most home-users would be put off by the US$ 2,999 price-tag of Windows 2003 Datacenter edition.
  • mino - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    Good guess :)

    Anyway, Win2000 is pretty much enough for any home serving and 2nd-hand licences goes pretty cheap (especially when security support is likely to match even extend currently sold XP licences...).

    Just my 2 cents.
  • mino - Tuesday, September 11, 2007 - link

    Win2000 Server, of course.

    Also, as a sidefect of standard win200 kernel it usually does not have problems with TV tuners...
  • tynopik - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link

    > Anyhow, I have a hard time embracing *any* OS that is supposed to be a server product and does not implement software RAID period

    1. it's a HOME server, not a corporate server
    2. it is better than RAID (at least for it's intended audience)

    disks of any size can be added or removed at any time, yet files are still physically duplicated on different disks, that is very flexible and powerful

    i love this feature so much i wish they would include it in regular windows
  • leexgx - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link

    nothing stopping you seeing it on the network still

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