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PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2013 6:20 am 
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Thanks to the help I received on this site, I saved my old EX470. It's about 90% of where I want it to be so now I am off to a new project.

While looking through the closet I found another old computer. I have an old HP s7700n slimline computer sitting in the closet and I am considering turning it into a server (Because right now it’s just taking up space and I need a project to tinker with). Currently it is running an Athlon 3800+, with 512 ram (I will be upgrading to 2gigs). Also, I am going to trash the 250gig HDD for a 2TB Cavier Black. I'm also considering updating the processor or is that a bridge too far?

So my questions are:
(1) Is this a good platform to install WHS2011,
(2) If I keep the internal DVD drive can rip movies straight to the server,
(3) should I keep the internal optical drive or replace it with an additional HDD and
(4) what am I missing/pitfalls?


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2013 11:51 am 
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Those Small Form Factor enclosures may not be the best thing for running a server but it comes down to how much data you need to store.

If you have an external DVD Drive then you do not need to have one installed in the enclosure and getting rid of it to provide a hard drive spot will make a big difference.

Check the motherboard out it may only have 2 SATA Ports and if so your limited to hard drives and the motherboard maybe an mITX or mDTX. A mITX will only have 1 expansion slot where an mDTX will have 2 expansion slots. Not sure if they are populated or not.

Check the motherboard specs to see if the NIC is 10/100 or 10/100/1000 if its only 10/100 you will not want to use this as it will slow things down on your network if your running Gigabit Devices but if everything on your network is 10/100 then it will not matter.

As for the Processor well that will come down to what the BIOS and Motherboard will support and then how much wattage can the motherboard support as well. The 3800+ is a dual core processor but you may want a Quad Core Processor to get good performance out of the server. You will need to check with HP to see what processors can be used with that computer and take it from there. Also check how much RAM can be used because you will really want 4GB of RAM to run WHS2011 well of which it will use like 2.2GB or ram when operating.

As for the system drive in WHS2011 I would not use a 2TB Drive, I would install a smaller drive for the OS and use the 2TB exclusively for data. Also WHS2011 has an option to create backups of the system drive so you should have a dedicated drive for that since its the backup drive or an external backup image of the OS drive that WHS2011 uses to perform a server recovery with otherwise you will need to perform a new OS install which makes for a really bad day. You could install 2 drives in RAID 1 Mirror for the System Drive something I have done in an EX485 but I used an ICY DOCK device which takes up one SATA Port and hard drive bay but holds 2 2.5" Drives be it Mechanical Drives or SSD. I also for additional redundancy did setup a dedicated drive to OS Backups.

You could consider expanding storage capacity outside the box. If its USB2 you will not get the speed you might desire out of the drives if its eSATA and it can support a port multiplier you might want to go that way but for me the best way to go is to have all the drives inside the enclosure when possible and only expand outside the enclosure only if you have to but do it as a last resort.

Last thing to look at is the PSU which HP installed to see if its proprietary or not. If you can add additional drives you will want to make sure the PSU can support the added drives and in a small form factor unit the PSU can be very small 150-250W. Thing is if you start adding things which put a demand on the PSU it may not be big enough to support those additional devices. If its proprietary then you may not want to even deal with the unit and its as standard PSU then you may want to install something with more wattage depending on what you do with the unit.

One thing to think about is that if your WHS2011 is as I believe an OEM version then your license is only good for the equipment you install it on and if you opt to install it on another system it may or may not install so for this reason you will have to be really committed to the equipment you install WHS2011 on.

Review what I wrote and if you have any additional questions or concerns let me know and I will be more then happy to help you out.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8


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The following user would like to thank Comp1962 for this post
va_connoisseur
PostPosted: Mon Sep 23, 2013 9:22 am 
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Comp1962 wrote:
Those Small Form Factor enclosures may not be the best thing for running a server but it comes down to how much data you need to store.

If you have an external DVD Drive then you do not need to have one installed in the enclosure and getting rid of it to provide a hard drive spot will make a big difference.

Check the motherboard out it may only have 2 SATA Ports and if so your limited to hard drives and the motherboard maybe an mITX or mDTX. A mITX will only have 1 expansion slot where an mDTX will have 2 expansion slots. Not sure if they are populated or not.

Check the motherboard specs to see if the NIC is 10/100 or 10/100/1000 if its only 10/100 you will not want to use this as it will slow things down on your network if your running Gigabit Devices but if everything on your network is 10/100 then it will not matter.

As for the Processor well that will come down to what the BIOS and Motherboard will support and then how much wattage can the motherboard support as well. The 3800+ is a dual core processor but you may want a Quad Core Processor to get good performance out of the server. You will need to check with HP to see what processors can be used with that computer and take it from there. Also check how much RAM can be used because you will really want 4GB of RAM to run WHS2011 well of which it will use like 2.2GB or ram when operating.

As for the system drive in WHS2011 I would not use a 2TB Drive, I would install a smaller drive for the OS and use the 2TB exclusively for data. Also WHS2011 has an option to create backups of the system drive so you should have a dedicated drive for that since its the backup drive or an external backup image of the OS drive that WHS2011 uses to perform a server recovery with otherwise you will need to perform a new OS install which makes for a really bad day. You could install 2 drives in RAID 1 Mirror for the System Drive something I have done in an EX485 but I used an ICY DOCK device which takes up one SATA Port and hard drive bay but holds 2 2.5" Drives be it Mechanical Drives or SSD. I also for additional redundancy did setup a dedicated drive to OS Backups.

You could consider expanding storage capacity outside the box. If its USB2 you will not get the speed you might desire out of the drives if its eSATA and it can support a port multiplier you might want to go that way but for me the best way to go is to have all the drives inside the enclosure when possible and only expand outside the enclosure only if you have to but do it as a last resort.

Last thing to look at is the PSU which HP installed to see if its proprietary or not. If you can add additional drives you will want to make sure the PSU can support the added drives and in a small form factor unit the PSU can be very small 150-250W. Thing is if you start adding things which put a demand on the PSU it may not be big enough to support those additional devices. If its proprietary then you may not want to even deal with the unit and its as standard PSU then you may want to install something with more wattage depending on what you do with the unit.

One thing to think about is that if your WHS2011 is as I believe an OEM version then your license is only good for the equipment you install it on and if you opt to install it on another system it may or may not install so for this reason you will have to be really committed to the equipment you install WHS2011 on.

Review what I wrote and if you have any additional questions or concerns let me know and I will be more then happy to help you out.



Thanks for the response. I have been out of pocket for a while but here is my feedback.

1. I have an external drive so I can remove the internal one
2. Looks to be a mITX board with 2 SATA slots. Max processor is 35W
3. I'm on FIOS and I believe my network is a 10/100 but I will confirm
4. It only supports 2 GB, PC2 4200 DDR2
5. From what I could find online, it looks to be a 200W unit.
6. I was planning on purchasing an OEM copy of WHS2011

Based on what you suggested, this may not be the best use for this box.


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PostPosted: Sun Feb 22, 2015 8:12 pm 
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If you have it collecting dust, better put it into some use. You can certainly use it to test run the new WS2012E.

_________________
WHS 2011: Intel S3420GPLX/Intel SC5650UP/Xeon 3470/Hardware RAID 6-Bay Hot Swap/5x1TB RAID 5
WHS 2011: Intel DQ965GF/Core 2 Duo E7500/6GB RAM/5x500GB RAID 5
WHS v1: Asus NRL-LS/Pen 4 2.67 Prescott/2GB RAM/Adaptec SCSI


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 7:52 pm 
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RedSun wrote:
If you have it collecting dust, better put it into some use. You can certainly use it to test run the new WS2012E.


Are copies of WS2012E available?


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PostPosted: Mon Feb 23, 2015 8:24 pm 
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WS2012E is available free for 180 day trial. Google is your friend.

_________________
WHS 2011: Intel S3420GPLX/Intel SC5650UP/Xeon 3470/Hardware RAID 6-Bay Hot Swap/5x1TB RAID 5
WHS 2011: Intel DQ965GF/Core 2 Duo E7500/6GB RAM/5x500GB RAID 5
WHS v1: Asus NRL-LS/Pen 4 2.67 Prescott/2GB RAM/Adaptec SCSI


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