home server

[northan]

After alot of testing, come to the conclusion that using the xbox as an extender does not really do it for me. The quality of the videos is ok, but not great, menu system is a little slugish when transitioning between tittle with long menu delays and most importantly the other half complain's bitterly about the noise I get from the xbox when on.

Need to replace it with a new htpc, cheap quiet and small.

In the mean time, its got me wondering, if I'm not using an xbox anymore as an extender, I can finally think about making a dedicated home server.

Rumaged upstairs in the loft and found I got enough stuff to make a minimum spec home server (need a new case though)
Im going to try the evaluation pack, see if it works.

So questions. How easy is it to setup WOL so the other computers can access the info quickly?
Will I need to do anything to the hard drives for it to work? I.e I dont need to change the raid or anything cause I now have 2tb I dont want to loose.
If I added any tunercards to my setup in the future will all the recordings be seen from all the htpc's in my house?

Anyway Im going to build tommorow

(EDIT) I need to put it in the loft, only place left. Any problems with cooling and condensation?

[elootos]

(01-09-2010 11:23 PM)northan Wrote:  After alot of testing, come to the conclusion that using the xbox as an extender does not really do it for me. The quality of the videos is ok, but not great, menu system is a little slugish when transitioning between tittle with long menu delays and most importantly the other half complain's bitterly about the noise I get from the xbox when on.

Need to replace it with a new htpc, cheap quiet and small.

In the mean time, its got me wondering, if I'm not using an xbox anymore as an extender, I can finally think about making a dedicated home server.

Rumaged upstairs in the loft and found I got enough stuff to make a minimum spec home server (need a new case though)
Im going to try the evaluation pack, see if it works.

So questions. How easy is it to setup WOL so the other computers can access the info quickly?
Will I need to do anything to the hard drives for it to work? I.e I dont need to change the raid or anything cause I now have 2tb I dont want to loose.
If I added any tunercards to my setup in the future will all the recordings be seen from all the htpc's in my house?

Anyway Im going to build tommorow

(EDIT) I need to put it in the loft, only place left. Any problems with cooling and condensation?

hmmm, several answers there. Have a read of my brief WHS FAQ here.

The rest I'll think of tomorrow, zzzzzzz.....

[elootos]

Hmmm Xbox360s don't get a great press for their noise do they :dodgy:

As for Wake On LAN (WOL), it requires only one setting in your bios and all PCs should support it, but it may not be labelled as such. Could be wake up by PCI device or something else.

The ideal would be to bring the server out of sleep everytime it's needed, however how well sleep mode is supported on your PC of choice for your server is always going to be shaky. Mine is on from 4pm (set in the bios as RTC alarm) and boots down with AMP Winoff at 2am (administrative shut down mode). For the weekends when I want in on during the day I boot it remotely in the mornings from the kitchen PC with the excellent AutoExit software, which I'll write more about in a WHS Add Ins section.

Adding drives isn't great with WHS; they get formatted. I freed up one drive at a time and slowly moved all mine over. Speaking of which, I 'removed' a drive today (500Gb) and it took 4hrs!! What the hell was it doing?

In this current freezing weather I'm leaving my server that's in the loft on 24/7 to keep the system temp up. I think the heat in the summer may be more of a worry given the heat that the drives generate.

Let us know how you get on.

[northan]

Yea I thought that they might be formatted. I was affraid of that cause I don't have enough free space to move a TB at a time.
New Hard drive on the cards then.:dodgy:

Put together the bits together see how it worked, and found that my old power supply does not work anymore. go figure.

But good news ebuyer seem to have a case thats good looking for a server that only cost £8.50 and a power supply that only cost £8.50, so for £17 I could be back on track.

I looked at some of your previous post ellotos and saw that you hooked up a shower fan extractor, does this make a lot of noise when its on, cause if its anything like my extractor, couldnt put up with that drone for very long.

[elootos]

(01-11-2010 12:25 AM)northan Wrote:  Yea I thought that they might be formatted. I was affraid of that cause I don't have enough free space to move a TB at a time.
New Hard drive on the cards then.:dodgy:

Put together the bits together see how it worked, and found that my old power supply does not work anymore. go figure.

But good news ebuyer seem to have a case thats good looking for a server that only cost £8.50 and a power supply that only cost £8.50, so for £17 I could be back on track.

I looked at some of your previous post ellotos and saw that you hooked up a shower fan extractor, does this make a lot of noise when its on, cause if its anything like my extractor, couldnt put up with that drone for very long.

The case is good value, however I would always be cautious with a cheap power supply. They tend not to be very reliable and also quite inefficient, which for a server that's on a lot of the time isn't the best combination.

I would always try and go for a branded model and look to be spending about £25 - £30 on a 400W model. It they die they can take your drives and motherboard with them so always consider them important. Just my opinion of course.

Yeah I have a showerfan on my lounge PC, currently turned off in this freezing weather though! However, now all my hard drives have moved out of that PC across to the server, I guess I'll have to amend it so it feeds the server with cooler air in the summer. Plus I may look to get a cooler running graphics card in my lounge PC at some point this year.

As for noise from the fan, I've hung it from string which isolates it from direct contact with any beams that would normally cause hum. Perhaps with your fan in your shower, remount it with some rubber or neoprene behind it to eliminate the drone you currently get.

For power, I've simply wired it into a normal plug and then stuck that into an intelliplug that brings the fan on when the PC is on. Easy.

   

[northan]

Quick update.
Trying out old motherboard on the power supply I have now. Don't wan't to buy stuff to find out mobo and stuff doesnt work.

Mobo is an asus AN8-e, no idea where I got it, I think it was a swap from a mate. But it has a bad northbridge fan on it, makes more noise than a jet engine.

AMD 1.8ghz single core. I think that came with the mobo.
Stock amd cooler

1.5mb ram. Used all the spare 433mhz ram I had floating around

WD 250gig hard drive.

Using current graphic card to get started (zotac gt940)


I thought I might boot evaluation of home server from a 8gig usb stick I had lying around. Why? Cause I couldnt find a writable DVD
Downloaded Evaulation iso from the link that elootos provided in his post.
Used this tool to make a bootable usb stick
http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool
Works only in win7, very easy to use, also makes bootable dvds.

So letting the system do its thing right now, update soon to see how this pans out.

[northan]

School Boy error

Got it all running after a gazillion restarts. Tried to update to version three and couldnt get it to work.
It kept returning error in updating, try agian.

After a little scratching of the head, worked out that the system date and time was out of sync (by 4 years 4 months and 2 days)
Not a problem, just need to change system time, should fix it. It then comes up "your evaluation time has expired please enter key" arhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh:dodgy:
So take two, be back after formats and reinstalling

[elootos]

(01-13-2010 01:16 PM)northan Wrote:  Mobo is an asus AN8-e, no idea where I got it, I think it was a swap from a mate. But it has a bad northbridge fan on it, makes more noise than a jet engine.

AMD 1.8ghz single core. I think that came with the mobo.
Stock amd cooler

(01-13-2010 03:16 PM)northan Wrote:  Got it all running after a gazillion restarts. Tried to update to version three and couldnt get it to work.
It kept returning error in updating, try agian.

After a little scratching of the head, worked out that the system date and time was out of sync (by 4 years 4 months and 2 days)
Not a problem, just need to change system time, should fix it. It then comes up "your evaluation time has expired please enter key" arhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh:dodgy:
So take two, be back after formats and reinstalling

Don't you work?!?

Good to hear you're finally dipping your toe in the murky waters of Windows Home Server. Sounds like though we should have a competition on this site to see who can build the oldest, most ramshackle PC to run it! (BTW I threw my old P4 in the bin last week after recently updating my WHS hardware - and I originally paid £1100 for it back in 2002 :s)


I hear your frustration with the install etc. I started my WHS journey almost 2 months ago and only this week have I got it where I want, and I've still yet to install an OEM version of it!

And getting the install right is a bugger, on paper it seems simple, but with using older hardware and trial versions there's always something to catch you out and invalidate your hard work!

Overall though, when its running smoothly archiving RecordedTV and I'm browsing the film library in Media Browser on the lounge/bedroom/kitchen Media Centers, it's f'ing great!

[northan]

(01-13-2010 04:08 PM)elootos Wrote:  Don't you work?!?

Nope snowed in again

After spending over two hours getting a mile down the road of my 50 mile journey, I gave up.

Ironically I'm the one that fixes peoples broken bones. As you can imagine I'm a little busy the last couple of days.:-/



On a server based update, I've got it reinstalled again, getting new service pack, just letting it do all its updates.
Do you have to get anysort of virus protection on servers, and do you always have to password log in?

[elootos]

(01-13-2010 05:05 PM)northan Wrote:  Do you have to get anysort of virus protection on servers, and do you always have to password log in?

ER, maybe and yes.

The password should be remembered though in each client PCs console.

I guess if each of the client PCs has virus protection installed then the server has no need for any. (I use AVG but uncheck all other functions other than the basic virus checker during install)