Whats next for WHS?

[bsobel]

Agreed. Moving to the server 08 core will be a first step, with I/O priority. I'm not convinced I/O priority works as well as it should though.

It works well, but there are alot of broken storage drivers that don't implement it well (IMHO). This is been changing and improving so hopefully it will be less of an issue moving forward.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: loup garou
WHS works fine with RAID. Setup your array, create a logical drive, install WHS to said drive, away you go with the same RAID features you'd have with any other OS. Since it's a single drive, you don't have to worry about the "simple-minded" DE doing it's thing.

I don't think that is true.
If I remember correctly WHS intentionally does NOT support RAID and you need to use some trick to install it on a RAID system.
At the same time WHS supports its own proprietary data duplication across multiple disks.

That isn't the case at all. The only drawbacks to using RAID in WHS is that you can't update your RAID arrays like you normally do. If you add a drive to a RAID 5 array, for example, you have to redo the WHS configuration, as WHS will think it lost that disk (array). If you keep the same sizes, then it's fine. And it has no problem with drivers or RAID cards or anything--my Areca 1220 works perfectly fine in WHS. Although I'd pull it out of there if I could, as it is just serving up drives, but it works.

 

[Seeruk]

I love WHS - Have done since beta. How many Windows OS's can you say have 'just worked' and 'worked perfectly' since early betas!

My only beef was with having a machine switched almost 24/7 but then I discovered this
http://tf.erzz.com/2009/02/18/...e-windows-home-server/

My electricity bill has dropped by about $30 per month meaning it will have paid for itself within a couple of years. Admittedly my old Frankenstein machine that ran it was full of hard drives and power management didnt really work

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo
I'd be happy with a way to backup the system partition built into the OS, not relying on 3rd party software.

And more add-ons. Seems like there hasn't been any progress on this really. But WHs never really got that popular either, it seems.

Yes. That should be built into the OS.

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: loup garou
WHS works fine with RAID. Setup your array, create a logical drive, install WHS to said drive, away you go with the same RAID features you'd have with any other OS. Since it's a single drive, you don't have to worry about the "simple-minded" DE doing it's thing.

I don't think that is true.
If I remember correctly WHS intentionally does NOT support RAID and you need to use some trick to install it on a RAID system.
At the same time WHS supports its own proprietary data duplication across multiple disks.

That isn't the case at all. The only drawbacks to using RAID in WHS is that you can't update your RAID arrays like you normally do. If you add a drive to a RAID 5 array, for example, you have to redo the WHS configuration, as WHS will think it lost that disk (array). If you keep the same sizes, then it's fine. And it has no problem with drivers or RAID cards or anything--my Areca 1220 works perfectly fine in WHS. Although I'd pull it out of there if I could, as it is just serving up drives, but it works.

Yes that is the case. Do a google search or re-read the thread where I posted a link to a guide how to install WHS with RAID. It bluescreens during installation because the RAID driver is not passed on from one part of the installation process to the next.

 

[bsobel]

Yes that is the case. Do a google search or re-read the thread where I posted a link to a guide how to install WHS with RAID. It bluescreens during installation because the RAID driver is not passed on from one part of the installation process to the next.

Its a non-issue, you simply have to be at the machine during text mode setup to hit f6. If you miss it you simply reboot and text mode setup restarts and then you hit f6. I'm running my WHS box on a 12 drive NAS server and had to do this exact thing.

And the issue isn't a raid issue, it is an issue with any non-standard storage driver. Since WHS was designed to be run on a limited set of hardware its a non-issue, any technical user doing an install onto custom hardware can hit f6 to provide the storage driver. This is no different from what needs to be done when installing 2003 or 2008 server with a nonstandard storage driver.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: bsobel
And the issue isn't a raid issue, it is an issue with any non-standard storage driver. Since WHS was designed to be run on a limited set of hardware its a non-issue, any technical user doing an install onto custom hardware can hit f6 to provide the storage driver. This is no different from what needs to be done when installing 2003 or 2008 server with a nonstandard storage driver.

I've seen lots of blue screens with WHS with a RAID array after the initial installation. I'd chalk it up to the vendor's drivers if I also saw these problems with 2008 on the same hardware (and would typically expect less stable drivers for 2008), but I didn't, so that looks like a WHS-specific issue to me.

That installation was a royal pain for me, so it's possible that the system problems were "my fault" in some way, and wouldn't arise for other configurations, but at this point I've given up on WHS and don't care to diagnose it further.

 

[bsobel]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: bsobel
And the issue isn't a raid issue, it is an issue with any non-standard storage driver. Since WHS was designed to be run on a limited set of hardware its a non-issue, any technical user doing an install onto custom hardware can hit f6 to provide the storage driver. This is no different from what needs to be done when installing 2003 or 2008 server with a nonstandard storage driver.

I've seen lots of blue screens with WHS with a RAID array after the initial installation. I'd chalk it up to the vendor's drivers if I also saw these problems with 2008 on the same hardware (and would typically expect less stable drivers for 2008), but I didn't, so that looks like a WHS-specific issue to me.

That installation was a royal pain for me, so it's possible that the system problems were "my fault" in some way, and wouldn't arise for other configurations, but at this point I've given up on WHS and don't care to diagnose it further.

It should blue screen after the initial gui install, its by design. The blue screen is if the user didnt hit f6 and add the storage drivers. It does *not* indicate a problem, just that drivers weren't added.

Any drivers that work for 2003 should work for WHS.

Bill

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: bsobel
It should blue screen after the initial gui install, its by design. The blue screen is if the user didnt hit f6 and add the storage drivers. It does *not* indicate a problem, just that drivers weren't added.

This is not the case that I experienced. I understand that if the drivers aren't loaded that the OS will crash during boot-up. I had the drivers loaded, and WHS would work fine and be able to read and write to the array most of the time, but it would still sometimes blue screen.

The Server 2008 setup went smoother and faster and it never blue screened. So the hardware's fine and the Vista/2008 drivers are fine. I don't really know what went wrong with the WHS setup, but it's dead and wiped and it's too late to guess and diagnose it.

To be clear -- I'm just reporting a random issue. I'm not trying to generalize it further. I eliminated WHS for my own usage not because of this issue (which I might have been able to resolve if I re-installed things differently), but for other reasons, including performance.

 

[BD2003]

I was unable to install WHS in RADI/AHCI mode - it would give an error message during install about initializing the UI subsystem, and googling it shows it was a common problem. I could install any other OS with AHCI, but not WHS - its definitely bugged.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: bsobel
It should blue screen after the initial gui install, its by design. The blue screen is if the user didnt hit f6 and add the storage drivers. It does *not* indicate a problem, just that drivers weren't added.

Any drivers that work for 2003 should work for WHS.

It just so happens that I was building a new WHS box today. This was a six-year-old PC with a defective IDE hard drive that we decided to turn into a WHS for a small office. We added a 1 TB Hitachi SATA drive, a DVD drive, and a PCI SATA controller card.

The client made a mistake and purchased a VIA-based PCI SATA/IDE RAID controller card rather than a Silicon-Image-based SATA controller card that I'd specified, so I was in unexplored territory.

Every WHS server I've built in the past was using SATA drives in IDE Compatibility Mode, so I've never had to worry about drivers for the drive controller. This time, I definiitely needed drivers. The very first screen said there "are no compatible hard drives available".

The floppy drive, it turns out, was broken. But I was able to get WHS to format the drive by feeding it the driver CD (rather than the driver floppy disk) that came with the VIA RAID card. But right before rebooting for the first time, it warned that the TXTSETUP.OEM file was missing and there'd be a problem.

WHS then goes into what looks exactly like an XP/2003 setup screen and gives the opportunity to "Hit F6 to load drivers". I wasn't sure if I needed to do that, and I didn't have a functional floppy drive anyway, so I skipped it. Mistake. I got a bluescreen on the next boot, showing me that Windows couldn't find the hard drive.

I replaced the floppy drive with a new one and created a floppy disk with the VIA RAID drivers and started all over again.

I hit F6 at the "XP/2003" boot screen. Then I fed it the floppy disk with the VIA RAID controller drivers. Other than having problems getting WHS to find the correct files, WHS was finally happy. It rebooted again and went into a Windows GUI install screen, now coming from the hard drive rather than the Install DVD.

WHS performs more reboots during the install process than XP or 2003 or 2008. There must be twenty reboots in all. It bounces between a graphical Vista/2008 install routine, on to a text-mode XP/2003 install routine, onto an SBS 2003 install screen, and, finally, onto a graphical screen coming from the partially-installed hard drive system.

As Bill notes, as long as you feed it the correct drivers at the correct time and use a floppy disk at the second (F6) step, you should be able to get it to recognize both non-standard drive controller cards and RAID controllers.

 

[Madwand1]

WHS forces a wipe of all drives during the installation, which gets in the way of many people even trying it. This "feature" would only get worse with V2 unless it's changed as people would have accumulated WHS V1 data on their drives and wish to upgrade it in place without a lot of drive disconnection and reconnection.

I hope that this, and the attitude it implies, will be gone by V2, not just for WHS upgrades, but all systems.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
WHS forces a wipe of all drives during the installation, which gets in the way of many people even trying it. This "feature" would only get worse with V2 unless it's changed as people would have accumulated WHS V1 data on their drives and wish to upgrade it in place without a lot of drive disconnection and reconnection.

I've re-installed WHS on top of an existing WHS server (with all data drives attached) several times with zero loss of shared data or backups. It does require you re-install any custom web sites you've built or add-ins you've installed, but even the web sites aren't that hard to redo if you've backed them up. I imagine an upgrade from V1 to V2 would be the same.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
I've re-installed WHS on top of an existing WHS server (with all data drives attached) several times with zero loss of shared data or backups.

Why did you reinstall WHS over WHS, and did you not have to click OK on the "warning we're going to wipe all your drives"?

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
Why did you reinstall WHS over WHS, and did you not have to click OK on the "warning we're going to wipe all your drives"?

If you let your WHS trial period expire, you have to re-install another version (Trial or Full) on top of it. And when you convert from Trial to Full versions, you have to do the re-install, too.

If the WHS installer (either Trial or Full) recognizes an existing WHS installation, it gives the option to "Re-install" WHS and doesn't wipe existing data partitions. Once the re-install is done, you have to re-do any Windows Updates, Power Packs, or Service Packs.

One thing to watch out for, though, is making sure that your original WHS system disk is the first hard drive in the list of boot devices in your BIOS. Having a different first hard drive won't normally cause a problem when booting. The BIOS will go down the list until it finds a bootable drive. But the WHS Install DVD only looks at the first hard drive in the boot list. If it doesn't see a WHS system disk there, it'll only offer a fresh install, which will want to wipe all your hard drives.

 

[Madwand1]

Thanks for the clarification -- it's better than I thought it was.

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

4) WHS and Windows Media Center need to become one. A box loaded with hard drives is begging to have tuners added to it, so that you can just deploy thin clients at your TVs.

This is what I want most for WHS V2. Integration with Vista/XP Media Center. Have it be a full-on media server that Vista/XP MC and extenders can access directly from within the GUI without having to map drives, browse the network, setup user accounts and permissions and all that jazz.

Simply go to "add media" and select "media server".

Originally posted by: BD2003
Granted, this would take an entire rethinking of the home computing environment, but that would be what I'd call added value. I'd like to be able to order a network from HP, complete with server, desktop thin client and netbook, all made to work perfectly with each other out of the box. That would be badass.

This is an AWESOME concept. I'd love for this to exist, it would be great for less technologically-minded people, such as my aunt and her family. Of course, it would have to have software to seamlessly integrate existing computers and non-branded computers, as well.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Raduque

Originally posted by: BD2003
Granted, this would take an entire rethinking of the home computing environment, but that would be what I'd call added value. I'd like to be able to order a network from HP, complete with server, desktop thin client and netbook, all made to work perfectly with each other out of the box. That would be badass.

This is an AWESOME concept. I'd love for this to exist, it would be great for less technologically-minded people, such as my aunt and her family. Of course, it would have to have software to seamlessly integrate existing computers and non-branded computers, as well.

It's certainly technologically possible even today, but it's really on the impetus of microsoft to create the product and then for PC manufacturers to run with it. And I'm personally not sure that HP wants to give you the option of using thin clients when they'll sell less PCs, but with the way the Atom is catching on, you never know.

I've actually been quite amazed with windows remote desktop - it actually displays full motion video impressively well, although it requires some serious bandwidth, and I doubt it would be reliable over wireless. And I just can't see the concept working too well unless wireless is a prerequisite.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: BD2003
1) Obviously it should be updated to the server 08 core, with the better security, I/O priority, etc.

2) It should integrate with skydrive for online backup. Obviously not for movies measured in gigabytes, but I'd like to easily have my photos and documents synced off site.

3) The "server backup" idea they added in PP1 was interesting, but who the hell came up with the idea that it should be a manual process, and that it should leave out the system partition? It should be automatic, and be able to directly restore the server.

Yes, that's what it needs. The server restore process is way too convoluted. I think vendors like HP and MS need to co-operate on implementing a flash based restore environment that allows one to restore a server easily from backups on the server storage itself or from an external backup. I think this must be done to make the whole setup bullet proof (well not literally, I that's what off site is for).

Alternatively, I'll take the OS installed on a 1.8" 32GB SSD that allows me 4 full drive bays. The OS or OEM custom version should come with a tool to just reinstall the OS onto the SSD attached externally via USB or ESata and just slip the drive into the server appliance. I don't like that the OS sits on one of my storage drives.

All PC backups need to be preserved with restores. This shadow copy business scares me in that I can't ever see where on the drive the backups are. Are they on my system drive? What happens if that drive fails? I use WDBB but I'm still very worried about the restore process if I ever have to use it.

Some of the comments apply specifically to the HP MSS.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: Raduque

Originally posted by: BD2003
Granted, this would take an entire rethinking of the home computing environment, but that would be what I'd call added value. I'd like to be able to order a network from HP, complete with server, desktop thin client and netbook, all made to work perfectly with each other out of the box. That would be badass.

This is an AWESOME concept. I'd love for this to exist, it would be great for less technologically-minded people, such as my aunt and her family. Of course, it would have to have software to seamlessly integrate existing computers and non-branded computers, as well.

It's certainly technologically possible even today, but it's really on the impetus of microsoft to create the product and then for PC manufacturers to run with it. And I'm personally not sure that HP wants to give you the option of using thin clients when they'll sell less PCs, but with the way the Atom is catching on, you never know.

I've actually been quite amazed with windows remote desktop - it actually displays full motion video impressively well, although it requires some serious bandwidth, and I doubt it would be reliable over wireless. And I just can't see the concept working too well unless wireless is a prerequisite.

I think it works. Because one thing people do when they buy stuff on credit is they buy too much. How do auto manufacturers get away with $1200 premium stereo upgrades or $500 automobile router or $200 iPod docks? Because it only increases the monthly payment by a few dollars.

The same with homes. When people are buying a home or remodeling a home or constructing a home they will want the "package deal" a slim client each for the bedrooms, a touchsmart in the bathroom and kitchen maybe a killer desktop in the office and few netbooks to throw around the house and a home server to throw it all together maybe 6 bays this time. They will be loving the extra revenue. Well, at least when the economy bounces back.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: Seeruk
I love WHS - Have done since beta. How many Windows OS's can you say have 'just worked' and 'worked perfectly' since early betas!

My only beef was with having a machine switched almost 24/7 but then I discovered this
http://tf.erzz.com/2009/02/18/...e-windows-home-server/

My electricity bill has dropped by about $30 per month meaning it will have paid for itself within a couple of years. Admittedly my old Frankenstein machine that ran it was full of hard drives and power management didnt really work

Yeah power management definitely needs to be more intelligent. In fact I would prefer having a 10 drive array of 500GB 2.5" drives instead of the 4 3.5" bays, I know it costs more but it would be quieter and more power efficient. The hardware to run 10 drives in a small probably does not exist. Maybe they can put two SATA chips on a tiny motherboard.

The day when those 2.5" drives are affordable 1TB SSDs will be a good one.