Windows Home Server Install tips / advice

[elootos]

There have been a few users on this site, myself included, who've been setting up / installing their own Home Servers recently and given the amount of frustration it can bring I thought a sticky with some tips would be helpful to any others thinking of trying the software.

(this will get updated as need be)

• Don't waste money on a superfast PC (unless you want to of course). WHS doesn't require a superfast or even modern (<2yr) PC. The biggest suggestion would be to utilise a computer, either existing or new if need be, with plenty of HDD (SATA) ports and the potential of being fairly 'green' with power (as it'll likely be on a lot of the time).
• Keep BIOS settings basic. Avoid the temptation with any modern drives settings or BIOS settings (AHCI and the like), the best thing is to to keep the BIOS as default as possible and rely on traditional drive connections; IDE, SATA, USB.
• Update BIOS first. Make sure the BIOS version on your PC is most modern/stable version before installing WHS. Any BIOS changes after software install and with your drives attached and included in the WHS console could mess things up if updating the BIOS afterwards. NOTE: It would also be advisable to change the CMOS battery for a new one to stop the BIOS from reseting should the old one die, they are only about 70p anyway.
• Using external drives. If utilising an existing PC with only a few SATA ports then external drives can also be of good use, but always remember to take note of what USB port they are in if you ever need to unplug and physically move the drive. N.B. External drives at the cheaper end of the spectrum don't tend to have auto-sleep functionality, so if having the drives spin down after 20 minutes of inactivity is important, go for a decent branded make like a Western Digital MyBook. And also avoid any that may not auto spin up on the PC waking, some LaCie drives for example need their power button pushing to start them up which is no good for WHS as it'll miss the data on the drive.
• Drag files across the network to the WHS. Try and avoid attaching external drives to the server to copy data across onto it's shared network folder. If you have some USB drives with media on and want it to be on the WHS, attach the drive to another PC in the network and drag the files across the network. - this is just my opinion from personal experience.
• SATA expansion cards. If wanting internal drives and you've run out of SATA ports, then a PCI expansion card with more SATA ports can be added, but these have a few shortcomings such as no SMART detection (how WHS monitors the health of the drive), and drivers may not be automatically installed, so if having to reinstall WHS it won't see the drives attached to the PCI card unless you install the drivers again.
• C:/ partition. The primary drive that you install WHS on will automatically be partitioned with a 20Gb section upon install for C:/ drive. This cannot be avoided. NOTE: It is also advisable to use your largest and fastest drive available for this, reason being that it will be the only drive not upgradeable and it will be the most efficient way of using your PC resources if it has the most space. Plus a fast drive is quite handy for a nippy WHS console.
• Network speed. Gigabit ethernet is a must for any Home Server but unless the PC you're installing it on is very old or obscure, then the on-board LAN port will already support it. If not then you'll need a PCI ethernet expansion card.
• The trial software (cause of many a headache!). By all means do try the trial available from Microsoft, however don't get too carried away with it, my advise would be to install it using only one hard drive in the system making sure it does what you want it to and your PC is stable, then get an OEM copy and build your system from scratch again. Do not get carried away and start using it to build a server with data on, leave that for the OEM install copy.
• Installing a licensed version. A licensed WHS disc can be installed over the trial version and it will keep the data on your drives already in the system, however this can't be guaranteed so it's always best to start from scratch and have it format your drives.
• WHS drive condition. The data on the drives is readable if connected to any other computer, although you won't know what WHS has stored on it until you hook it up. This would only be an issue if everything went tragically wrong with the C: drive of the server and you had no option but to connect the other drives up to rescue the content.
• Install. Do not eject the DVD during any part of the WHS install, even if appears to not be using it any more. The system will reboot countless times and each time it reboots if it doesn't see the DVD in the drive it will stop the install.
• Removing drives from the console. Once a drive is 'connected' to the Home Server console, it can literally take hours to 'disconnect' it again from the console, and during this time the server and its data is unavailable on the network.
• General stability: In my time of using WHS, I have been quite impressed with how robust it is with your drives and data. I have performed BIOS updates to the PC and removed drives to hook them up to other computers and all seems ok - WHS has carried on and not screwed anything up!
• Demigrator.exe If you have issues with a slow responding server or stuttering while it streams your media, it could be the demigrator.exe service running. Read this post for more info.
• Bottom line: WHS works very well when up and running, but it is based on Microsoft Server 2003. We're now in 2010 so its 7 years old and doesn't have the same ease-of-use and plug 'n play capabilities of Vista and Windows7. Best advise is to treat WHS like it's a copy of Windows95. As basic as hell
  

[northan]

Can I add: if you are using an old motherboard make sure you check the CMOS battery, because this small cheap item can really screw it up if it old.

Also quick question, why is it better to move data over through the network rather than using an external USB hard drive. I got over 2 tb to move and it sounds daunting to move all that over by network.

[andyrite]

You can connect a usb drive and copy the files over but you have to copy the files to the servers share and not direct to the drive. if you don't it breaks the Drive Extender logic and the sizes are reported wrong.

[elootos]

(01-18-2010 11:55 AM)northan Wrote:  Can I add: if you are using an old motherboard make sure you check the CMOS battery, because this small cheap item can really screw it up if it old.

Also quick question, why is it better to move data over through the network rather than using an external USB hard drive. I got over 2 tb to move and it sounds daunting to move all that over by network.

Added!

(01-18-2010 01:13 PM)andyrite Wrote:  You can connect a usb drive and copy the files over but you have to copy the files to the servers share and not direct to the drive. if you don't it breaks the Drive Extender logic and the sizes are reported wrong.

The 'drag media across the network' was borne out of my experience with trying to copy files off a couple of USB drives attached directly to the server. First, WHS doesn't handle drive errors well, so should the USB drive have an unreadbale sector, it'll just hang the server rather than the friendly method in Vista, Win7 etc of telling you the drive is unreadable and stopping the transfer.

Second, as like the experience above, WHS seems a dog when handling USB drives. One of mine kept showing up blank in WHS no matter how often I rebooted or moved USB ports. Connecting the drive to another (Win7) PC showed the files to still be on there. Weird

I think WHS just has some weird and archaic drive handling processes that aren't as 'user' friendly as Win7 etc. And with a gigabit network, the file transfer should take no longer anyway.

[elootos]

Added/amended:

(01-18-2010 10:30 AM)elootos Wrote:  

• C:/ partition. ...NOTE: It is also advisable to use your largest and fastest drive available for this, reason being that it will be the only drive not upgradeable and it will be the most efficient way of using your PC resources if it has the most space. Plus a fast drive is quite handy for a nippy WHS console.
• WHS drive condition. The data on the drives is readable if connected to any other computer, although you won't know what WHS has stored on it until you hook it up. This would only be an issue if everything went tragically wrong with the C: drive of the server and you had no option but to connect the other drives up to rescue the content.
• The trial software (cause of many a headache!). ...Do not get carried away and start using it to build a server with data on, leave that for the OEM install copy.
• General stability: In my time of using WHS, I have been quite impressed with how robust it is with your drives and data. I have performed BIOS updates to the PC and removed drives to hook them up to other computers and all seems ok - WHS has carried on and not screwed anything up!
  

[elootos]

If you have any issues with your server being not responsive or your media stuttering while streaming, it could well be that the demigrator.exe has kicked in on your server.

This is a load balancing program designed to spread the files evenly across your drives and apart from running every now and then for a few minutes, is most prevalent when adding a drive to the 'pool' in the console. Demigrator.exe will kick in at this point and start filling the new drive up with files to even the drives out. This has the effect (especially if it works on the OS drive), of bringing the server to an almost standstill. If left alone then it will eventually finish and your server will be back to normal speeds again.

I experienced this slowdown this weekend after adding a new drive and the process should be designed to cut out if server activity occurs, but it seems it does not. On my Sempron 140 I see a constant 18%-25% CPU load while it works away, but it's the drive hammering that creates the bottleneck and subsequent slowdown. There are reports of it on the Microsoft Connect site, and one user has posted this workaround if it becomes an issue for you (and ONLY if becomes an ongoing issue!!). Note: It doesn't seem to matter whether you have folder duplication on or not.

1. Determine your daily streaming/movie watching schedule. e.g. I only really watch movies between 7pm and 2am.
2. Decide if having disk duplication redundancy disabled for this window is a big deal. e.g. I decided I could live with no data duplication occurring between 7pm and 2am. I am ok with the fact that if I add some photo's to my duplication enabled photo share on WHS at 8pm it will not actually get duplicated until after 2am.
3. Implement a scheduled task on WHS to disable the Drive Extender Migrator service prior to your watching window. I disable the service at 6:01pm so that it is disabled for the 7pm hourly start. The task to run is C:\WINDOWS\system32\sc.exe \\localhost config DriveExtenderMigrator start= disabled
4. Implement a scheduled task on WHS to re-enable the Drive Extender Migrator service after your watching window. I reset the service back to manual at 1:01am so that it will kick off on the 2am hourly start. The task to run is C:\WINDOWS\system32\sc.exe \\localhost config DriveExtenderMigrator start= demand
   

Hopefully it won't be an issue to most, but if you find it really annoying then use the schedule task advise above.