Comments on: Review of Windows Home Server http://www.major-arcana.net/sajuuk/2009/11/windows-home-server/ Tossing fireballs at animango and games Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:45:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: sajuuk http://www.major-arcana.net/sajuuk/2009/11/windows-home-server/comment-page-1/#comment-122 sajuuk Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:57:32 +0000 http://www.major-arcana.net/?p=424#comment-122 Getting the old storage server back up and running would have required probably $300 in drives for a complete mirrored system like I previously had, not to mention at least $50 repairing and replacing the old coolant system, which entails at the very least a new coolant pump, tubes, and coolant. In the short term it would have been cheaper, but in the long term the old servers draw far more power than the WHS box does right now. I will eventually be repairing them for NAS useage in the future, but that probably wont happen until the spring when I don't have to worry about combining the cost of keeping them up with the cost of keeping the electric baseboard heat on. At that point, the WHS will most likely get used as a gateway for remote access of my media and streaming the media to the Xbox, assuming I can ever get that working for subtitled videos. As for the hassle of managing Windows, I have extensive experience with Server 2003 and 2008 (as well as Solaris and Linux servers), and when combined with the fact that managing WHS has been dumbed down the point where a trained monkey probably could do it, its no hassle at all. At most it requires maybe 5 minutes of management per day, mostly making sure that that the backup and storage balancing processes actually ran correctly. Beyond that, the only real hassle I've run into is the streaming problem, and I have found a solution to that, but the as I mentioned in the article, transcoding HD video won't work well on an Atom processor. Getting the old storage server back up and running would have required probably $300 in drives for a complete mirrored system like I previously had, not to mention at least $50 repairing and replacing the old coolant system, which entails at the very least a new coolant pump, tubes, and coolant. In the short term it would have been cheaper, but in the long term the old servers draw far more power than the WHS box does right now. I will eventually be repairing them for NAS useage in the future, but that probably wont happen until the spring when I don’t have to worry about combining the cost of keeping them up with the cost of keeping the electric baseboard heat on. At that point, the WHS will most likely get used as a gateway for remote access of my media and streaming the media to the Xbox, assuming I can ever get that working for subtitled videos.

As for the hassle of managing Windows, I have extensive experience with Server 2003 and 2008 (as well as Solaris and Linux servers), and when combined with the fact that managing WHS has been dumbed down the point where a trained monkey probably could do it, its no hassle at all. At most it requires maybe 5 minutes of management per day, mostly making sure that that the backup and storage balancing processes actually ran correctly. Beyond that, the only real hassle I’ve run into is the streaming problem, and I have found a solution to that, but the as I mentioned in the article, transcoding HD video won’t work well on an Atom processor.

]]> By: Anomyous http://www.major-arcana.net/sajuuk/2009/11/windows-home-server/comment-page-1/#comment-121 Anomyous Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:44:15 +0000 http://www.major-arcana.net/?p=424#comment-121 I don't understand why you didn't just spend the $300 on new HDDs, then slap them into one of the ``dead'' machines that you've got lying around. I'd much rather administrate a Solaris (or FreeBSD, now that ZFS support is production-ready) machine instead of dealing with Windows hassles. I don’t understand why you didn’t just spend the $300 on new HDDs, then slap them into one of the “dead” machines that you’ve got lying around. I’d much rather administrate a Solaris (or FreeBSD, now that ZFS support is production-ready) machine instead of dealing with Windows hassles.

]]> By: Windows Home Server – A Solid 9 out of 10 « MS Windows Home Server http://www.major-arcana.net/sajuuk/2009/11/windows-home-server/comment-page-1/#comment-120 Windows Home Server – A Solid 9 out of 10 « MS Windows Home Server Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:24:13 +0000 http://www.major-arcana.net/?p=424#comment-120 [...] The guys give Home Server a solid 9 out of 10 and point out the products good points as well as its bad ones too, which you can read about here. [...] […] The guys give Home Server a solid 9 out of 10 and point out the products good points as well as its bad ones too, which you can read about here. […]

]]> By: Review of Windows Home Server | Console Gaming http://www.major-arcana.net/sajuuk/2009/11/windows-home-server/comment-page-1/#comment-119 Review of Windows Home Server | Console Gaming Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:28:51 +0000 http://www.major-arcana.net/?p=424#comment-119 [...] post by Major Arcana [...] […] post by Major Arcana […]

]]>