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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 2:54 am 
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First let me waffle on an introduce my self and where I am at. I am new to the home server multimedia scene. I am tech savvy but I am by no means proficient in the area and have probably wasted too much time allready thinking and searching for answers and getting no where.

I started to build a server for the home a year or two ago (unknowing of WHS), which used a trail version of Windows Server 2003 enterprise... or maybe 2008 (but was not able to continue using it as was only a trial.
It consisted of various hdd and a intel s3210shxl motherboard with a core 2 duo and 750W PSU. For the short time it was on trail it was awesome and fairly easy to use and set up for file sharing/utorrent and it rebooted if there was a problem, waked on lan with out me setting up anything, asked why it was being shut down and gave full log of server system (fans, temps, shut downs, maintenance etc etc) also plug and play of hdd always worked flawlessly while system was on and running.

Come 2011 and I found WHS v1 so I quickly brought to get the thing up and running again.... thinking the price of $170 was much better then another win 7 licence and a bunch of hacks to make it a server. Then after having to leave the country to visit family in law for a few months I come back and find I brought some old OS and the new one sounded much nicer and was out only a week or so after I brought it, so I went off and brought WHS 2011 for $110. I also have a home security system consisting of 4 CCTV cameras that I tried hooking up to the server with some success with a cheap ebay card for $20, but decided against as it was just too dodgy, will probably go a network attached system now and keep it off the server.

With the upgrade I feel the motherboard and CPU combo I have is a bit dated (Contradict me if I am wrong please), and am desperate to find some info from the experienced enthusiasts as to what motherboard CPU combo (including intel and AMD) would work best for a WHS 2011 given my tasks will be- stream media including Live Digital TV and Satellite to multiple computers in the house and overseas (over internet) and or record it for later viewing, File sharing including working at home on some CAD projects, File sharing over the internet and Utorrent (Thinking of the Hauppauge HVR-4400 or HVR-2250 or HVR-2210 for the TV and satellite set up, and Adaptech card for raid)

I also have a Core 2 Quad in my other computer I could port over to this ones motherboard if it would help.

Basically I am looking for best options available for my situation so I dont need to re-buy stuff later like I have been doing with the OS's.

Basically the priority is -
1. Stability (dont want to be overseas and something goes down and needs me to manually play with the machine)
2. Scalability (dont want hardware to be redundant until I see whats available in 2014 earliest, ... Dont want to run out of room etc and have to throw newly brought (2 years) parts out).... Set and forget is great.
3. Ease to set up...... equal to Efficiency in power rating
4. Quite
5. Cost (but this looks negligible with recent hardware I have been looking at... AM3+)

Sorry for such a long post, I really hope someone can help, I have been trolling the net for a week and dont feel ready to jump in any direction ....
Cheers


Last edited by AussieMatt on Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 3:08 am 
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Would like to add, I am kindda fed up with Asus after owning nearly all Asus components and laptops over the years, reasons why is they never seem to support their hardware well, after you buy the hardware, any upgrades seem a pain to find and even worse to try and download and just a royal pain in the butt to deal with.

If something has changed in their update systems that would be great otherwise I want to stay clear of them (although they look like they got some sweet feutre sets on their boards now), I was thinking gigabyte was looking and sounding good.

Prefere Onboard Video (but I do own a fan less 500mb Radeon card if worse comes to worse)

Was thinking FX990 boards were nice if I give up on the on board video, plenty of PCI slots for TV cards and ... maybe raid cards (Raid card will be in the future, when needing more storage)
Wouldn't have a clue which way to go with Intel boards, seen a few WHS builders that have the P8P67 (asus) board.... which I hear many complaints about NIC not working.... which brings me to next point I currently have Dual Gb LAN why do no new boards support this????
Currently I have a PCI-X slot on my old server board which I believe is what most current good HW raid cards use, will there be or are there decent HW raid cards using PCIe yet?
As getting a Raid card or two eventually, Sata slots dont concern me.

How do the i5, i7 and AM3 go with idel power, and how will AM3+ go on current motherboards.. I really cant find much good info on this in relation to a WHS 2011 media workhorse....

Ideally I love driver support and not having to mess with this ... support from hardware vendor and Windows for WHS2011 (but as I understand it Microsoft hasn't done much to help :cry: )


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 6:46 am 
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First off welcome to the gang :mss:

My server has been up and running for almost two years now, and to date I have been very happy with. At the time I decided to go with an AMD build, Gigabyte ATX mobo with plenty of slots for expansion cards.

If I were to build a server now I would probably go with an Intel build. I actually just built a new desktop PC a few weeks ago around Intel and would probably use the same or similar build for a server:

GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz

For less power you could go with a core i3, but I see based on your post you may have some CPU intensive tasks running on your WHS. The only downside with the Gigabyte mobo is that it has a Realtek NIC. For my WHS I simply added on an Intel NIC.

The SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI Express x4 is a popular RAID card used

There are some other RAID cards I have come across but tend to be on the pricier side.

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Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 08, 2011 6:52 pm 
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Thanks dbone1026,

I just wrote a great summary of everything took me some time and the bloody thing timmed out and asked me to log in and I lost my work.

So in short, I went with a
Motherboard: AsRock Z68 Professional Fatal1ty
CPU: Core i5 2500K
RAM: Corsair Vengency 2x4GB C9 Latency
Host: ESXi 4.1
OS: WHS2011

HDD: working on it

TV Tunners: working on it but thinking BGT3600 is soundsing like the best bet, but Hauppauge HVR-2210 or 2250 I know will work, but I think the BG has extra tunners that would be usefull as long as it can also take my DiSEqC 2.1 and 1.0 signals....

RAID Card: Unsure if I will bother straight up (10 ports on board), but I need it eventually for ease of portability when upgrading int he future...... if I ever even need to.
Will re-write my essay of a reply for all to see and comment on later.........


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 08, 2011 8:46 pm 
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Hey AussieMatt welcome to the forums :mss:

I see you got the attention of dbone1026 and if anyone can help you with media streaming he is the one to goto. I run both WHS v1 and WHS2011 and I see you own copies of both. WHS v1 is more mature and has proven itself over time and is a very simple OS to operate. WHS2011 the new child on the block is pretty plain and uninteresting requiring abit more thought from the enduser in terms of figuring out hard drive redundancy although thats being worked on by a couple companies with their drive extender or DE Solutions.

The main purpose at this time I have for my WHS2011 is for media streaming and of all my servers its the only one that can stream my MKV Blu-Ray rips without studdering issues. Thanks to a write up dbone1026 wrote bring a program called Remote Potato to my attention I now have it running on all but one of my servers and its been well received by those who use my servers. It has a function in it where it utilizes a TV Tuner but I can't comment on it other then mentioning it exists because I do not have cable or satalite connected to the house anymore. I for the most part keep things simple and if it plays smoothly and the stream is of good quality I am very happy.

Soon I will sit down an do a write up on my build but there are already several write up's in the DIY Build Forum that I encourage you to take the time to look at. What is interesting there is you get to see most builds in progress, the builders thought process, the issues encountered and the success of a functional server so there is a great deal of detail there and lots of very interesting reading.

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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
AussieMatt
PostPosted: Mon Aug 08, 2011 11:14 pm 
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Cheers for the reply Comp1962,

I would like to re-write my big post I mentioned earilier to including where I brought parts, how much it was to get to Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and what my plans for the future are with this project.

First let me introduce the parts brought in order, as well as am thinking of buying.... and thinking of selling:
___________________________________________________________

Have- (In perfect working order, but will sell off some parts soon)

CASE: Antec P181 (Modifeid for better airflow)

MB: P5N-D

CPU: Q6600 Core 2 Quad

RAM: DDR2 800MHz 2x2GB Matched Pair Patriot C4
DDR2 800MHz 2x2GB Matched Pair Patriot C4 with larger heat spreader

PSU: OCZ StealthXStream 500W
Coursair TX 750W
Enermax Noisetaker 600W
Antec Truepower Tri 430W (I don’t know why I got so many… )

HDD: OCZ Core Series 120GB SSD
Hitachi 5k320-320 (Laptop 5200k 320GB SataII)
Toshiba MK1255GSX (PS3 120GB SataII)
1x Samsung HD204UI 2TB SataII
2x Samsung HD154UI 1.5TB SataII
ADDINS:
1x Gigabite NIC for PCI slot (Want to throw it)
1x Dlink Wifi (52MB/s) (Also want to throw it)
1x Promise Sata 150 TX4 PCIe (4 Ports SataI)
___________________________________________________________

Recently Brought-

Case: Zalman MS100 ($179)
http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/info/AL-MS1000-HS2-B/

HDD Hotswap:
Zalman HDR1 3x 3” into 3X 5” bay ($89)
http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/info/AL-ZM-HDR1/
Welland EZStor 2x 2.5” into 5” bay ($24)
http://www.computeralliance.com.au/part ... Part=11222

CPU: Core i5 2500K ($215)
https://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?ma ... s_id=16531

MB: AsRock Z68 Fatal1ty Professional Gen3 ($299)
https://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?ma ... s_id=17937

RAM: Corsair Vengence 2x 4GB C9 ($89)
https://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?ma ... s_id=16437

CPU Heatsink: Antex Kohler H20 620 ($99)
https://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?ma ... s_id=16986
___________________________________________________________

STORAGE SETUP-

OS HDD: Mirror Raid 2 laptop drives for failover protection while I am away>
Seagate Momentous XT 500GB (Hybrid SSD) (2x $119) or
WD Scorpio Black 500GB (2x $79) or
Just try and find a second Hitachi…. If you think the speed of the OS HDD is not a concern?

NOTE: what to do with the remaining space… typical windows hogging more than it needs!
Cache HDD: currently owned OCZ Core Series 120GB… What do you think, and is this doable with my MB and SSD, and does RAID of any kind have an affect of this SSD becoming the CACHE???

DATA RAID DRIVES: 2TB Sata 6GB/s unsure what brand yet… any ideas?

RAID CARD: Talk about that later…..

Internal backup: 2TB Samsung (Owned), will probably sell the 2x 1.5TB Samsung’s I have.

External Backup: 3TB Seagate GoFLex USB 3.0 (Owned) will buy more when needed…
___________________________________________________________

VIDEO SETUP:
Can’t decide between the known to work well, dual tuner “Hauppauge HVR-2210 or 2250”, and the very new quad tuner “BGT3600 (New release with 4 tuners… I think including Satellite see links below:

BGT3600 ($220AUD)
http://shop.blackgold.tv/BGT3600

HVR-2210 ($180AUD)
http://www.auspcmarket.com.au/info/AL-HVR2210MCE/1028/

NOTE: Will need remote, and I heard the Hauppauge ones are good.
I want this for Digital TV and also our satellite.
Our Satellite is a motorised Dish that hooks into a SuperJack thingy which supports DiSEqC 1.2 and 1.0 the thingy hooks into a Sony Sky 3000 box which we can change the channels with the remote.

FUTHER NOTE: when changing channels which requires the dish to move to another satellite the dish would automatically move to it on channel change, but now it is not doing this and needs to be asked to move to new position via the remote….. Anyone know much about this, and how I can fix it, or what I did wrong???

I think that’s about enough from me today (Will talk about the RAID and backup plans later, but it will be RAID 6, with local External and Internal backup and online backup)

Cheers again.


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 7:38 pm 
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UPDATE: Core i5 2500K doesn't have Vt-d (Silly me)

Some troubles with the AsRock Z68 Professional Fatal1ty Gen3.0, Troubles included Automatic reboot when installing any OS (WHS2011, Windows 7, Ubuntu, Ubuntu recover CD, Norton Ghost), the reboot would happen right after it loaded and was about to go into the respective GUI's (well Ubuntu would get to initial GUI that didn't need a mouse, but failed after the initial selection screen).

After Hours working on it for two days (not continuous of course) and stressing that I would mail it back to the dealer and they find no problem with it, I found a scrappy bit of paper explaining that the board had and issue (more like a BUG) that stopped dual monitor support or something like that when installing such OS's, simple change of that in the bios and was off and running.

I installed WHS2011 just to compare how it ran to my old Core 2 Duo, and noticed some improvement after installing proper drivers.
I then went to do a ESXi 4.1 install and it kept failing, I read that VT-d is important for Virtualisation (unsure if its needed or my crashes are from something else, will be checking that next), but did find out that my "k" series CPU dose not have this VT-d (which is for direct pass-through of devices to your Virtualised OS (faster better results). So depending if I can actaully run ESXi with a "k" CPU is what I am hoping to find out today....

Also will purchase a RAID card soon, thinking of the Adaptec 6805 for its NAND flash feature, any ideas what HDD work best with it, or if there is any other NAND HW raid cards on market? (EDIT:I think the NAND is yet again an add on like the BBU, how anyoing)

UPDATE: Also really thinking I will go the BGT3600 over the hauppauges as quad tunner frees up PCIe slots I might need for later (plus I dont think the Hauppauge HVR-2210 or 2250 has the satellite support I need...)


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2011 10:07 pm 
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After much mucking around on my behalf, I have decided to cancel my ad for my 2500K, use it and send back the 2500 in box to shop for store credit, as ESXi4.1 is looking a little painful (will quickly have no space for an added NIC) to work with at this current stage, hope ESXi5.0 is better and I will reassess the situation then, possibly with newer and or cheaper CPUs at the time.

For now I am better off just learning what I can do with WHS2011 and working my way around that.

I have brought the Hauppauge HVR-2210 card and am waiting on it. I decided against the 4 tuner BGT3600 as although the brand might be great, it didn’t seem highly support in Australia (only UK). Maybe use the bgt3600 as a future update if my HVR-2210 gets over used (which I doubt it). Currently I have given the media room/ only TV in the house to my in-laws consisting of Mother, Uncle and Aunty in-laws so they can watch the Chinese Satellite (but hope if this card does support the satellite I might be able to regain the TV sometimes and give them the big screen computers to watch off our network from the HVR-2210 \:D/

As for the RAID card (bloody expensive things), I know I can go get a cheaper one, but already I want more speed out of this, so an Adaptec 6805 is looking great for stability speed and future proofing. Bit pissed they made the AFM-600 on-board NAND an add-in component for $200AUD but hey once reading about it, I couldn’t get a SW or HW with BBU solution to feel safe in my mind. Luckily I got a big fat TAX back so happily spending it on this particular set of parts.

Still not decided on brand/types of HDD for the RAID, but have a good idea on setup I want.
All drives SATAIII 6GB/s sounds good to me. Also it could just consist of the ones I have which consist of Samsung’s - 1x HD204UI & 2x HD154UI.

OS: Option a) 2x 2.5" HDD in On-board RAID0 (Mirror)
Option b) 1x SSD hooked into on-board controller (I feel this to be safe and faster... note can I use Intel’s SSD caching on this drive with separate partition?)

Server Backup: 2.5" HDD from laptop installed in server (can’t I use it for the Host and Clients, why a single for server - only want to back up Server Drive//OS and boot)

Main Storage Pool: 6x 2TB HDD in Adaptec’s RAID6 or RAID5EE (Unsure if I can use alternative SSD for Adaptec’s SSD+HDD Caching, seems they want you to buy an overpriced Intel crap)

Internal simple (NTFS) backup IMPORTANT DATA: 2TB Samsung Internally (will move this to another 1.5-3TB Seagate Goflex USB3.0 later)

External simple (NTFS) backup of MEDIA: 3TB Seagate Goflex USB3.0

Basically I got all my files on one 2TB drive now (MEDIA, SETUP FILES, DOCUMENTS, PICTURES), will split this to PICTURES, DOCUMENTS, DATA on one drive and MEDIA and SETUP to allow for growth in both (also I am a designer so my DATA can grow real big sometimes, video editing, CAD rending etc)

Unsure what I want to do with my client backups (might back them up off the RAID, bit pissed I can’t back them up to same place as SERVER BACKUP DRIVE), just want them on the same physical drive.

Any feedback is welcome, especially on 2TB 6GB/s drives that are relatively cheap and work with Adaptec 6805 controller.

Also what is best way to back up a MAC that has a windows running as a VM under it, do I backup both or once the MAC is backed up does that include the VM windows - I think both as allows for best versatility in recovery, but also the way the MAC and VM windows work it seems they share all the same documents and even desktop… so I just don’t know?


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