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Do I need WHS?

post #1 of 43
1/17/13 at 1:38pm
Thread Starter 
I'm ready to migrate my 6TB of media storage to a dedicated server. It's mostly movies, music and pictures which will be accessed by two XBMC clients in the house. I will also store some documents on there which I'd like to be able to access from any computer on the network or even remotely.

I've already built the server which is based on a mini-ITX Intel board with G540 Celeron. Yesterday I installed Windows 7 Pro (had a spare copy) and was able to access the files on the server from my other Window's PC's and XBMC boxes using Workgroups sharing function.

With regards to Data Protection I'll be buying Flexraid to protect from a disk failure and then backing up any important docs to the cloud (eg. crashplan).

Still - I'm wondering if I ought to ditch Win 7 and go with WHS 2011 which so many of you seem to be using.
Part of me feels I'm using Win 7 in a way in which it was not designed and WHS would be "better" but I'm not sure why.

Can anyone explain what benefits I'd get from WHS over Win 7?

Thanks
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post #2 of 43
1/17/13 at 1:48pm
Most of us stick with WHS 2011 are probably the satisfied customers of WHS v1. To me, the biggest draw of WHS is automatic backup of all my PCs nightly. So, if any of my PC fails suddently, (1) I still have access to all the files on that PC. (2) full disk image restore means I don't have to waste time install all the software and OS updates. It serves me well for 1 HDD failure in the past. Drop in a replacement HDD and restore. That's it. Also saved me a few times when kids and wife get couple PCs infected with nastiy malware. Restore the backup to a date that is known to be good is a quick and easy way to get rid of these stuff.
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post #3 of 43
1/17/13 at 4:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by chappy16775 View Post

I'm ready to migrate my 6TB of media storage to a dedicated server. It's mostly movies, music and pictures which will be accessed by two XBMC clients in the house. I will also store some documents on there which I'd like to be able to access from any computer on the network or even remotely.

W7 works just fine as a server.

From a "file serving only" standpoint, the only additional benefit WHS offers is NFS sharing. Most people don't even know this is there nor do they use it, because the default network sharing protocol is already 10-20 times faster than what you need for a full blu ray rip. Moving to NFS only benefits the frontends that can make use of NFS shares anyway (mediabrowser, xbmc, probably others)

Linux users love to crone about how fast their NAS to desktop connections are with zfs, but unless you just want to copy files around all day it's not of any practical value. For my usage, it's not worthwhile since I leave everything centralized.

Foxbat named the primary difference/benefit of WHS, which is health monitoring and backup of all your connected windows machines. For me, I don't have anything that needs backing up on those machines, nor do I care if I have to re-install sometime in the future in case of a hard drive failure. If that were important to you then WHS is definately the way to go


Onto other features . . . while all your 3rd party stuff can be done on the WHS machine, I think it would be impossible to argue that it's not easier and more straight forward to do everything in W7
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post #4 of 43
1/17/13 at 4:57pm
Forgot to mention that WHS connector will not install on one of my Win8 laptop (the true Win8 machine with touch screen). So, now I have one PC at home isn't backed up at all. Without the need for backup, WHS is really an overkill. And WHS 2011 is a few big steps backwards compared to V1.
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post #5 of 43
1/17/13 at 5:02pm
My WHS2011 box performs the following functions:

1. Back up all connected client PC's
2. Host shared directories for all my content (Movies, Music, Documents, Pictures, etc..)
3. Hosts a Ceton InfiniTV card for FIOS. Tuners are shared via network bridge to two other HTPC's.
4. Hosts a shared Lexmark All-in-one printer.
5. Hosts YAMMM service for adding metadata to movies
6. Hosts a well known P2P file sharing application, for the sharing of all the lastest linux distributions and stuff..
7. Host Guide tool for managing guide data for my FIOS connection (which is a real pain in the nuts to get right, but once you do it, it works well..)
8. Provide web access to all my shares.
9. Hosts an Agere 56k modem for displaying incoming caller ID data on all clients over the network using W7CallerID
10. maintains additional mirroring of important data to a removable disk using Sync Toy.
11. Automatically synchronize time for all connected HTPC's every day (I've had problems with recordings not starting/stopping on time.. this fixed the problem)
12. Host archived TV shows from the HTPC's.

Windows Home Server 2011 is based on Windows 7, but unlike Windows 7, it's optimized as a server. It has many of the server features that you'd find in Windows Server 2008. You can probably do all the things I have listed on a stand alone Windows 7 box, but you'd still lack the backup and client management features that WHS offers.

The complaint that drive pooling is unavailable was a disappointment for a lot of people who used the older version of WHS (drive pooling saved my bacon once) but the same functionality can be added via third party applications. Actually, I think I'd trust flexraid before I'd trust things like drive bender. Flexraid is officially supported in WHS 2011 (http://www.wegotserved.com/2011/11/08/flexraid-set-support-windows-home-server-2011/).
Edited by ajkrishock - 1/17/13 at 5:09pm
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post #6 of 43
1/17/13 at 5:03pm
I was at this point a couple weeks ago. I bought my server, and had an extra copy of 7 as well. I installed it and had it set up. I felt like I was missing something, because it was a "server". My wife bought me a copy of WHS 2011 on sale, for Christmas. I have it set up and running fine...but there are some things I was not aware of, until I have been playing around with it.

1. No MSSE. MS does not support Security Essentials on WHS, and there are very few FREEware antivirus that work with WHS. (Now, you aren't really using a server to "surf" the web, but if it will pull some double duty as an HTPC, or torrent box...you may think about it.)

2. WMC is not included in WHS. (So, again, if it will pull any HTPC duties...no sense in switching.) I had WMC running on my copy of 7, and had all my shares set to my various PC's and Xboxes, with one of them set as an extender, and working well. Now one of my PC's is the WMC box, accessing the files on the server, and dolling them out to my xbox. Seems oddly circuitous...

3. I still have a couple drives to buy, and in the meantime, am still accessing the MYBOOK 320 gig, connected via usb...(my previous "storage") The WHS machine cannot back up the MyBook, because it is in FAT32 format??

4. Once you license WHS to your machine, it's married to THAT machine. adding, and changing drives and cards are ok, but if you have to change the motherboard, you need MS to sign off on the swap. (for the re-install) If the machine gets aged, and you want to upgrade to bigger/better/faster...it's a new license.

I have a few more minor examples, but you get the picture. If I knew more about it at time of purchase, I could get by without WHS. I am glad she got my license on sale. If I knew she paid a good amount for it, I may not be as "ok" with it.
Edited by kevin g. - 1/18/13 at 5:13am
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post #7 of 43
1/17/13 at 5:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevin g. View Post

1. No MSSE. MS does not support Security Essentials on WHS, and there are very few antivirus' that work with WHS. (Now, you aren't really using a server to "surf" the web, but if it will pull some double duty as an HTPC, or torrent box...you may think about it.)

Assassin's server guide could help you out on this one
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post #8 of 43
1/17/13 at 5:17pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ajkrishock View Post

1. Back up all connected client PC's
2. Host shared directories for all my content (Movies, Music, Documents, Pictures, etc..)
3. Hosts a Ceton InfiniTV card for FIOS. Tuners are shared via network bridge to two other HTPC's.
4. Hosts a shared Lexmark All-in-one printer.
5. Hosts YAMMM service for adding metadata to movies
6. Hosts a well known P2P file sharing application, for the sharing of all the lastest linux distributions and stuff..
7. Host Guide tool for managing guide data for my FIOS connection (which is a real pain in the nuts to get right, but once you do it, it works well..)
8. Provide web access to all my shares.
9. Hosts an Agere 56k modem for displaying incoming caller ID data on all clients over the network using W7CallerID
10. maintains additional mirroring of important data to a removable disk using Sync Toy.
11. Automatically synchronize time for all connected HTPC's every day (I've had problems with recordings not starting/stopping on time.. this fixed the problem)
12. Host archived TV shows from the HTPC's.

Out of the box, W7 can do everything except 1, 7, 8, 11, 12

7 maybe could be done, but I'm not sure
8 can be worked around lots of ways, Picasa, Dropbox, GDrive, Plex, or just plain old FTP for file access
11 should be unecessary. Did you try to schedule your clocks to sync to time.windows.com
12 could be handled with a service, but isn't built into WMC for anything other than WHS afaik

Always missing 1, but there are 3rd party back up tools out there. I don't use that many backups, but WHS still makes the most sense for backups
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post #9 of 43
1/17/13 at 5:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevin g. View Post

I was at this point a couple weeks ago. I bought my server, and had an extra copy of 7 as well. I installed it and had it set up. I felt like I was missing something, because it was a "server". My wife bought me a copy of WHS 2011 on sale, for Christmas. I have it set up and running fine...but there are some things I was not aware of, until I have been playing around with it.

1. No MSSE. MS does not support Security Essentials on WHS, and there are very few antivirus' that work with WHS. (Now, you aren't really using a server to "surf" the web, but if it will pull some double duty as an HTPC, or torrent box...you may think about it.)

2. WMC is not included in WHS. (So, again, if it will pull any HTPC duties...no sense in switching.) I had WMC running on my copy of 7, and had all my shares set to my various PC's and Xboxes, with one of them set as an extender, and working well. Now one of my PC's is the WMC box, accessing the files on the server, and dolling them out to my xbox. Seems oddly circuitous...

3. I still have a couple drives to buy, and in the meantime, am still accessing the MYBOOK 320 gig, connected via usb...(my previous "storage") The WHS machine cannot back up the MyBook, because it is in FAT32 format??

4. Once you license WHS to your machine, it's married to THAT machine. adding, and changing drives and cards are ok, but if you have to change the motherboard, you need MS to sign off on the swap. (for the re-install) If the machine gets aged, and you want to upgrade to bigger/better/faster...it's a new license.

I have a few more minor examples, but you get the picture. If I knew more about it at time of purchase, I could get by without WHS. I am glad she got my license on sale. If I knew she paid a good amount for it, I may not be as "ok" with it.

I run AVG Server edition on my WHS 2011 machine. Also, the clients run MSSE, so I feel like I have enough security checkpoints across my network to handle anything that comes up. I haven't had to re license the server, but I have a license key, so it shouldn't be a big deal if I had to swap out hardware. At $50 for a license, I really have no complaints. It does what I need and does it well.
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post #10 of 43
1/17/13 at 9:39pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the responses guys. I guess I feel a bit better about using Win7 for my server and buying WHS is probably unnecessary for me at this point.

I actually found a program called Hanewin NFS which allows me to use NFS to stream to my XBMC boxes. SMB seemed terribly unstable and using NFS this way has been much better all-round.
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post #11 of 43
1/18/13 at 5:12am
Quote:
Originally Posted by ajkrishock View Post

I run AVG Server edition on my WHS 2011 machine. Also, the clients run MSSE, so I feel like I have enough security checkpoints across my network to handle anything that comes up. I haven't had to re license the server, but I have a license key, so it shouldn't be a big deal if I had to swap out hardware. At $50 for a license, I really have no complaints. It does what I need and does it well.

Sorry, I should have clarified...few FREEware antivirus that is supported for WHS 2011...**fixed**
I have DL'd ClamWIN, and it installed fine, but there's no "Real Time" protection. you have to run scheduled or manual scans.

From what I have read, it doesn't matter that you have a licese key, (My copy is legal, with a key, as well...) If there is a major hardeware change, it is possible that you cannot get MS to verify/activate the re-install...I haven't read of any "problems" just that the possibility exists. (in fact, most are saying it usually just takes a phone call to MS to explain the reason for the change) I agree, that WHS does what it does, and well...It's just that If I had done more research...I probably wouldn't have spent the 40 bux...
Edited by kevin g. - 1/18/13 at 5:19am
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post #12 of 43
1/18/13 at 5:15am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Foxbat121 View Post

Most of us stick with WHS 2011 are probably the satisfied customers of WHS v1. To me, the biggest draw of WHS is automatic backup of all my PCs nightly. So, if any of my PC fails suddently, (1) I still have access to all the files on that PC. (2) full disk image restore means I don't have to waste time install all the software and OS updates. It serves me well for 1 HDD failure in the past. Drop in a replacement HDD and restore. That's it. Also saved me a few times when kids and wife get couple PCs infected with nastiy malware. Restore the backup to a date that is known to be good is a quick and easy way to get rid of these stuff.

Yeah, the backup feature of WHS is unparralled. THere is nothing better than if something goes wrong on my HTPC (likemy TrueHD issue I posted in another thread), just popping in the restore disc and about 20 minutes later I'm back to a perfectly running HTPC. Major WAF bonus.
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post #13 of 43
1/18/13 at 6:33am
Whs is cheaper. I think that's a solid point.

Unless you have a spare windows and already own price advantage goes to whs
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post #14 of 43
1/18/13 at 7:14am
I came to this decision point earlier this year too -- WHS vs. W7. I went with WHS and here's why:

1. Price. WHS was $45. Even though I had a bunch of W7 licenses, the replacement cost of one those W7 licenses (which I ended up using them all) was 2x the price of WHS.
2. Backup. It includes backup for up to 10 clients. To set that up I just needed to install the WHS Connector. The rest is automagic.
3. TV recording archiver. Automagic again. With the WHS Connector installed on my HTPCs, an add-on gets installed in WMC that manages this. I didn't have to do anything but click a couple of buttons and tick a box.
4. Dashboard. All the stuff I care about in a single app that already comes with the system.

Neither W7 not WHS has any kind of drive-pooling/RAID feature so either way I'd be looking at adding something. (I still haven't though).

I don't do anything fancy -- just share files and backup. It just works and I didn't really have to do much to get it to work.
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post #15 of 43
1/18/13 at 7:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by StardogChampion View Post

I came to this decision point earlier this year too -- WHS vs. W7. I went with WHS and here's why:

1. Price. WHS was $45. Even though I had a bunch of W7 licenses, the replacement cost of one those W7 licenses (which I ended up using them all) was 2x the price of WHS.
2. Backup. It includes backup for up to 10 clients. To set that up I just needed to install the WHS Connector. The rest is automagic.
3. TV recording archiver. Automagic again. With the WHS Connector installed on my HTPCs, an add-on gets installed in WMC that manages this. I didn't have to do anything but click a couple of buttons and tick a box.
4. Dashboard. All the stuff I care about in a single app that already comes with the system.

Neither W7 not WHS has any kind of drive-pooling/RAID feature so either way I'd be looking at adding something. (I still haven't though).

I don't do anything fancy -- just share files and backup. It just works and I didn't really have to do much to get it to work.

Add in the Remote Launcher app to the dashboard and you can pretty much do everything you'll ever need on the server without ever using RDP or logging in directly.
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post #16 of 43
1/18/13 at 9:16am
I don't know if you guys realized. If you own WHS, you get following unexpected benefits from Microsoft:
1. a free domain named assigned to your internet IP in the form of yourname.homeserver.com
2. a free SSL digital certificate to enabled your WHS as a HTTPS website. There are many ways to extend your WHS site functionality.

Both items normally cost you some yearly $$ to accquire otherwise.
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post #17 of 43
1/18/13 at 9:20am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

Out of the box, W7 can do everything except 1, 7, 8, 11, 12

7 maybe could be done, but I'm not sure
8 can be worked around lots of ways, Picasa, Dropbox, GDrive, Plex, or just plain old FTP for file access
11 should be unecessary. Did you try to schedule your clocks to sync to time.windows.com
12 could be handled with a service, but isn't built into WMC for anything other than WHS afaik

Always missing 1, but there are 3rd party back up tools out there. I don't use that many backups, but WHS still makes the most sense for backups

I haven't found a 3rd party app that competes with the WHS backup tool. It's seemless and quick.

Also another thing you can do with WHS is install WSUS and manage all your windows updates that way. If you have data caps on your internet plan, that means only downloading the updates once, plus you can control it for PC's (like an HTPC) via the WHS rather than needing to log into your HTPC.
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post #18 of 43
1/18/13 at 9:23am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Foxbat121 View Post

I don't know if you guys realized. If you own WHS, you get following unexpected benefits from Microsoft:
1. a free domain named assigned to your internet IP in the form of yourname.homeserver.com
2. a free SSL digital certificate to enabled your WHS as a HTTPS website. There are many ways to extend your WHS site functionality.

Both items normally cost you some yearly $$ to accquire otherwise.

I wonder if they will continue that though with the phasing out of WHS. You can setup WHS to use your own domain name. I already have a site that I use for testing web development, so I thought about doing that using a subdomain, but then you have to pay for the SSL certificate.

Another cool thing you can do with WHS is you can set up custom web pages for sharing photo albums and such. Neither my parents nor in-laws use facebook (and the photo quality sucks anyway if you want to print them), so I set up a dedicated site for them to view and download pictures and video of my daughter. It's set up so that basically when I put them in my folder on the WHS, they are added into the website, so I don't even have to worry about loading them elsewhere. I do want to enable something so I can send them an email whenever I upload something new.
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post #19 of 43
1/18/13 at 9:26am
They will probably shut it down as soon as WHS2011 reaches End Of Life for support.
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post #20 of 43
1/18/13 at 9:51am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Foxbat121 View Post

I don't know if you guys realized. If you own WHS, you get following unexpected benefits from Microsoft:
1. a free domain named assigned to your internet IP in the form of yourname.homeserver.com
2. a free SSL digital certificate to enabled your WHS as a HTTPS website. There are many ways to extend your WHS site functionality.

Both items normally cost you some yearly $$ to accquire otherwise.


Elaborate, how to do this???
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncarty97 View Post

I wonder if they will continue that though with the phasing out of WHS. You can setup WHS to use your own domain name. I already have a site that I use for testing web development, so I thought about doing that using a subdomain, but then you have to pay for the SSL certificate.

Another cool thing you can do with WHS is you can set up custom web pages for sharing photo albums and such. Neither my parents nor in-laws use facebook (and the photo quality sucks anyway if you want to print them), so I set up a dedicated site for them to view and download pictures and video of my daughter. It's set up so that basically when I put them in my folder on the WHS, they are added into the website, so I don't even have to worry about loading them elsewhere. I do want to enable something so I can send them an email whenever I upload something new.

DITTO...Can you provide some info, or a link so I can read up on this?
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post #21 of 43
1/18/13 at 10:21am
Just got to Dashboard->Server settings->Remote Web Access and turn it on. There you can setup your domain name and if you use homeserver.com domain, you will get a SSL certificate as well.
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post #22 of 43
1/18/13 at 10:32am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevin g. View Post

DITTO...Can you provide some info, or a link so I can read up on this?

First get the remote access thing set up.

This link is for WHSv1, but I think the process is basically the same.
http://www.andrewgrant.org/2007/06/09/how-to-create-a-windows-home-server-photo-album-in-minutes.html

I thought there was a WHS2011 on wegotserved, but I don't see it.

edit: The link above uses Whiilst which is not available for WHS2011. I'll have to check out what I did to set up the album.

Now that I think of it, I already had IIS enabled with PHP and mySQL for running a contact manager that I used. I may have just grabbed some open-source basic viewer.

Look around, while I'm not using either of these, they both seem nice (in fact now I'm interested and might have to upgrade myself!)

http://coppermine-gallery.net/

http://www.galleryserverpro.com/
Edited by ncarty97 - 1/18/13 at 10:40am
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post #23 of 43
1/18/13 at 11:54am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Foxbat121 View Post

Just got to Dashboard->Server settings->Remote Web Access and turn it on. There you can setup your domain name and if you use homeserver.com domain, you will get a SSL certificate as well.

I skipped that portion of the setup, because I had read that, now, you could only do a godaddy.com (or similar) domain...
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post #24 of 43
1/18/13 at 11:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevin g. View Post

I skipped that portion of the setup, because I had read that, now, you could only do a godaddy.com (or similar) domain...

It does make it seem like you have to have your own domain, but I was able to use homeserver.com. Granted I had an existing subdomain there from my WHSv1 days, but I think you can still sign up new with WHS2011.
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post #25 of 43
1/18/13 at 12:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevin g. View Post

I skipped that portion of the setup, because I had read that, now, you could only do a godaddy.com (or similar) domain...
What you read was to use your own domain (keving.com) for the setup you had to get it from godaddy. Otherwise you get the free subdomain name from MS.

I moved on from WHS 2011 over the holidays to Windows Server 2012 Essentials. You get a yourname.remotewebaccess.com site with WS2012Ess. It also brings back drive pooling and provides an even better computer backup using File History. You do lose the pricing benefit unless you have access to TechNet or something.
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post #26 of 43
1/18/13 at 12:51pm
File History just restores files though, not a full metal rebuild. I was under the impression that WS2012e still included a full system image backup function like WHS2011. Is that not correct?
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post #27 of 43
1/18/13 at 7:55pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncarty97 View Post

File History just restores files though, not a full metal rebuild. I was under the impression that WS2012e still included a full system image backup function like WHS2011. Is that not correct?

That is correct. It does both.
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post #28 of 43
1/18/13 at 8:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevin g. View Post

From what I have read, it doesn't matter that you have a licese key, (My copy is legal, with a key, as well...) If there is a major hardeware change, it is possible that you cannot get MS to verify/activate the re-install...I haven't read of any "problems" just that the possibility exists. (in fact, most are saying it usually just takes a phone call to MS to explain the reason for the change) I agree, that WHS does what it does, and well...It's just that If I had done more research...I probably wouldn't have spent the 40 bux...

If Microsoft wants to give me a hard time for re-licensing a purchased copy of their software, no problem. I'll just crack it and move on to other things. I'm clever like that.
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post #29 of 43
1/22/13 at 12:15pm
Anyone have a tuner card installed in their WHS2011 machine ???

I am wondering if it makes sense or not ??? Any problems vs inside a windows 7 HTPC ???

(I could turn off HTPC since server runs 24/7)
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post #30 of 43
1/22/13 at 12:24pm
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/buy?ocid=CPRP_r_january13_na_body_1_1
wondering if I should grab it just because.....
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