WHS hardware advice for a newb

68 lost souls

Hey,

I am looking at buildling a WHS system or similar mainly to backup my desktop (XP MCE), laptop (windows 7 home premium) and other laptops on the household and so that I can access all the files when I am away.

I was hoping to have it set up so with mirrored hard drives in case of failure as well. Im guessing I would be looking at 2TB of space so thats either 4x1TB or 2x2TB to allow the mirror. I dont fully understand RAID but I want to learn from this build as well. I have had a few close calls with failing drives and that I really dont want to lose my files. I also have been using variuos methods of backup so I have a lot of multiple copies of files want to cut down on that because I can never remember which one is the latest and that kind of thing.

I would also like to use it fro media streaming but I hav eno hardware around the house yet for that. (Not sure still what I need for that.)

First question is wether or not WHS is the way to go? EDIT: Should I wait for VAIL to be released?

Second question is what hardware do I need?

Third what other advantages doe sWHS offer me?

Forth, if I am away can I backup my laptop from abroad or do I have to be on the home network to do that?
Sorry fo rall the questions.

johnmacward

Well, I can offer some broad advice.

Straight off I don't know of any specifically recommended WHS machines, this is more of a DIY approach.

Firstly do you have a spare old machine hanging around? You can throw XP on it and test. It would make a decent enough fileserver which is basically a home server. It would stream videos and music. It would give you practice with RAID arrays and setting up SMB and Backup.

For handiness, go with 2 X 2TB - it reduces complexity of the RAID array.

You have two options for RAID - Hardware RAID, built into the board or provided -OR- Windows Software RAID, software based. Hardware is much more robust and performance can be better, Software RAID will save you money and complexity and works fine.

Theoretically it's possible to backup your laptop from abroad but it's cumbersome and maybe you should get the server bit out of the way before your worry about remote backup. Best to backup before you go and as soon as you get back. I know little about WHS but even I'm pretty sure it wont offer an easy way to create a remote backup system.

What is VAIL by the way?

68 lost souls

Thanks for getting back to me. I have an old case from a P4 computer but Im pretty sure the Mobo and/or processor is fried on it. Might get it out of the attic and play about with it/ see what I can do with it.

I dont think many people, especially in Ireland seem to have used WHS to much. Hard to find some good guides on it, even on the microsoft site, could really do with a seminar or something on it like with windows 7 when it came out.

VAIL is the next genereation of WHS. It will run on different hardware specs to the current offering of WHS, it will allow the use of more drives and different methods of streaming data. It will probably need more resources then the current WHS but should be better in the long run.

Going to be doing a good bit of reading up on it the next little while and see what I can come up with.

johnmacward

To be honest I've heard so little about it that I doubt it ever really took off anywhere, or the emphasis is mainly in the US maybe. Microsoft are doing NO marketing of it which is saying a lot. For that reason I'd give it a wide berth for the moment. Nothing worse than buying it and finding it unsupported within months because they lost interest.

As far as I've gleaned it's a Windows 2003 server with a more homely feel.

At then end of the day what you ultimately need for a decent streaming machine is a 3 year old basic machine with a Gigabit ethernet port going to a gigabit switch (both really cheap nowadays) and switch "on" File sharing to specific folders that contain your music and video etc. That's my hobbiest way of doing it. Costs next to nothing and it's a nice, simple project.

jbloggs

I use WHS (which is based on Windows Server 2003, Vial is based on Server 2008) and use the following hardware:

Asus P5Q EM
Intel Celeron E3300
2 GB OCZ PC2-6400
Corsair CX 400w PSU
CoolMaster Elite 335
1 x 750GB Seagate 7200.10 (as system HDD)
3 x 1.5TB Samsung EcoGreen F2s
1 x 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 EcoGreen

However, you can run it on odd bits of hardware lying around, as long as it meets minimum specs requirement, see Here

You might also want to look at Here, Here, Here, Here, Here etc

WHS is also very versatile because of the available Add-ins