OT: New server build. Opinions?

[trusselo 220]

Windows Server is a commercial grade server, yes. They do sometimes have trouble running consumer programs such as games, and driver support is very limited, sometimes limited to basic generic microsoft drivers. But servers arent for games, or apps or cool bonus hardware such as a fancy graphics card or a Dolby Digital up-encoding sound card. Servers serve services. And this server is headless, ie no monitor, no mouse, no keyboard, the only programs that run on the server are programs that run without interaction (or very little).  i can connect to the server with windows remote desktop from my main computer to check torrents, and see why my shows havent moved to the library if that happens.

 

I'm going to join all my computers to my servers Domain, have the server take over DHCP and DNS from my router, and make use of Active Directory Directory Services (AD DS) with roaming profiles.  this will let me or any user in the house login to any computer and get THEIR desktop, THEIR files, THEIR program settings (appdata) anywhere on the network. the server can also backup all the computers.

 

performance is only affected durring large file WRITES to the pool.  it would be a pool of TV and Movies.  the only writes are the shows and movies i acquire.

I am a single guy with a roommate.  multiple streams at most might reach 2 maybe someday 3.  the highest blueray movie quality is 30mB/s, the disks CAN READ at full speed with parity 100mB/s.  so i could stream 3 FULL quality DTS Blurays in ANY setup parity/mirroring ect.

 

not to mention every file written to the pool will come directly from the internet to the drive. so unless the write speed bottleneck is less than 10 megabytes per second, it would NEVER interfere, never be noticed AT ALL. and thats only if the torrent is maxing out my 100 megabit connection (which only microsoft, apple and google servers max out my connection). I will usually only get 2-6 mBytes per second per torrent.  So unless the bottle neck is LESS than 10 mB/s, i will NEVER be affected by it.

 

Windows storage pools do not increase read speed or multiple access of files with mirroring, no software solution does. you only get that with true RAID from what i have read.

[AgileHumor 123]

So I've deployed a couple thousand Windows servers.  I'm sure you have deployed a few too.  While I feel your idea is cool (or at least I thought so over the years), I'll give you the following advice from years of 10+ of running HTPC's:

 

* Windows 2012 = Windows 8  or Windows Server 2012 R2 = Windows 8.1.   The performance won't change by installing a server OS.  Choose the most stable platforms for your apps you plan to run.  You can run a Windows 8.1 "headless" without a keyboard. File sharing on a server will not make your file sharing faster.

* Keep you DHCP and DNS on your internet router.  You don't want your significant other unable to browser the internet when you reboot your server.

* Using AD logon for home computers might prevent a problem.  First, things like Surface RT won't join a domain or non-Pro windows.  Using a cloud based Microsoft Account logon to your PC's + Skydrive would probably be the easiest setup.  When your domain is not available, all your PC's can still work perfectly.

* Don't use roaming profiles for home use.  It works on highly managed, homogeneous PC's like a call center.  All PC's should be the exact same OS.  Roaming profiles might get corrupted when you upgrade your first PC to WIndows 8.2.

* Mirroring doubles your read performance.  So there is a benefit on READ. 

* What happens when you want to record a 2 TV streams (heavy writes), and watch a blueray (heavy simultaneous reads)?  The math doesn't add up as nicely when simultaneous conflicting IO operations don'tallow the theoretical maximums. 

 

YMMV, good luck!

Edited February 26, 2014 by AgileHumor

[trusselo 220]

Thanks for the information.

 

Actually this is my first interaction with any server OS. Its more of a learning experience than anything.

 

But, i am not using windows server for performance, i am using it because i know of all the many other things it can do, and i may want to experiment with.

 

not sure what you meant about the DHCP and DNS.....

 

Ive been running pro editions of windows since XP.  i dont see myself buying a useless RT, anything else would get pro installed. i have disks. Also i'm not ready to upgrade my gaming PC to win8 to get the microsoft log-on experience.

 

Roaming profiles....  i see the potential issues...  but i wanna play!  lol.  Just one of those things i will play with that has no real use or value for me. 

 

Mirroring - read some conflicting information. ill take your word on it. might be worth looking into if there is an actual gain.

And... lets just say i dont record. but i wouldnt have every drive tied up in storage spaces. i would keep a drive or two (or three) for specific operations.

 

great info man. this is actually what i wanted. someone to post some questions/issues to make me stop and think.

[trusselo 220]

Progress..