Building new server Which OS???

[Apap]

I am in the process of building a new server to be used primarily for Sagetv but it may serve other purposes as well.

It will have an Intel Q6600,2 gig ram, and several terrabytes of storage spread across multiple drives. It should have the horsepower to do commercial skip processing for H264 as well as some video encoding while serving TV to 2 client pcs 2 mvps and 1 HD extender(probably no more than 3 locations at once). It will not be headless but will not be an everyday general purpose or gaming rig. It will be used as a print server and possibly home security dvr as well.

I am used to XP and it has served me well but Vista is actually less expensive to buy now. I thought about WHS as well but I just am not sure its what I need. I really dont want to upgrade the Hardware or OS for a long time after its up and running so the OS should last for a few years at least.

Is Vista that much of a pain in the a$$ to setup Sagetv on?
Is XP really at the end of its life expectancy?
Does WHS give me anything more than easy automated backup?

Help this Cheap Bassturd decide.
Apap

[dravenone]

Hi Apap, I use WHS and really like it. I would leave my old Sage server on 24/7 so figured why not leave one box running instead of two (WHS and Sage) and moved to Sage for WHS. Besides Sage, WHS is a central location for all my music, photos, software and whatever other data I want to store in a single, backed up, easy to find location. You, your family or friends could have access to your data on your network or via the Internet with a login and password and they could also upload their data (pics, movies, etc) to you as well. You can install what are called Add Ins (Sage being one of them) to expand the features of your server (Google We Got Served). I host a photo album site and personal website from my WHS with an add in. If you have time to play you can get a free 120 day eval from MS, I had to pay shipping way back when I ordered mine but I see now that is free too. Also if you do go WHS, do not add your Sage drives to the WHS storage pool.

Good Luck!!

[sic0048]

I would also recommend looking at WHS or Vista. WHS for great backup security. Vista is actually fine now with SP1. It is also the future, so I would definitely recommend it over XP Pro now.

[Apap]

I will look further into WHS but I already have a working backup solution, Vista will probably be my choice since Sp1 seems like it has cleared up most issues concerning me.

Thanks for the input!
Apap

[ewelin]

You should really give WHS backup solution a try... You'll be amazed at how easy it is and how little space it uses up. I have 5 PCs in my house each with 40-80GB of data on them. My retension setup is currently 6 days, 3 weeks, 3 months and with all of that my the backups on WHS only take up 287GB of space. The backups are complete images as well, so if your HD fails, plop in a new one, put in the restore CD and select the backup you wish to restore to. Within an hour your PC will be back up and running. I've already used this feature a couple of times when trying to decide between SageTV, MCE, or VMC. I setup and configured Sage.... tried it out for a few days, then took a backup and formated and went to Vista. As you can see I'm back on Sage, but yeah give the WHS backup solution a try. It really is a nice complete solution.

[stevech]

I run an always on PC, Win XP. I use Second Copy to do automatic file and dir backups. And TruImage to do automatic full/incremental backups, using shares.

I don't care to eat any more Microsoft Dog Food.

[Apap]

Originally Posted by stevech

I run an always on PC, Win XP. I use Second Copy to do automatic file and dir backups. And TruImage to do automatic full/incremental backups, using shares.

I don't care to eat any more Microsoft Dog Food.

I hear you man!

I even thought about using linux but I am not quite ready to take that plunge.

[ewelin]

I wouldn't knock the WHS backups until you've tried them. MS really stepped up to the plate with the backup engine on WHS and it really is powerful, reliable and quick. I used to have a mix-match of programs like yourself doing different types of backups to a central location, but I never knew if one of them failed or not. WHS console sends out alerts whenever a PC has a failed backup, or if a PC hasn't been on for an extended period of time and there hasn't been a backup. WHS has a 120 free trail, so give it a wirl...

[Apap]

Ok, I just ordered the free trial of WHS.

The final components for the server arrive tomorrow so I will probably do an initial evaluation with the latest version of Ubuntu until WHS arrives.

[ewelin]

If you have any questions about WHS, let me know... I'll be more than willing to help out.

[dravenone]

I'll try to help with any questions too.

[Apap]

I appreciate that guys and will probably need help when the time comes.

[Naylia]

My free trial never came

[Apap]

Originally Posted by Naylia

My free trial never came

Mine has not arrived yet so I tried Ubuntu without success(driver issue). Then I tried XP SP3 and it loaded and ran fine but I wanted to see what else would work so I am currently playing with Vista x64 but that probably wont last long. WHS looks promising but I sure would like to try before I buy.

As I was typing this the new server hung while running Showanalyzer on some HD-PVR files and a reboot showed the new WD 250 gig hard drive reporting a problem(S.M.A.R.T. status Bad, Backup and Replace) Ugh!

Well I guess it's better to happen now than when its online serving Sage.

[stevech]

what's wrong with ole XP and 64KB block-size partition for video. Big clusters makes a big difference in no. of I/O's per second with Sage.

and another partition w/4KB blocks for photos/backups.

[Apap]

Originally Posted by stevech

what's wrong with ole XP and 64KB block-size partition for video. Big clusters makes a big difference in no. of I/O's per second with Sage.

and another partition w/4KB blocks for photos/backups.

There is nothing at all wrong with XP. I may well end up using it.

All my recording drives will be formatted with 64k blocks and if I use WHS they will be kept out of the drive pool.

[inlvnv]

Originally Posted by Naylia

My free trial never came

I think mine took about 2 months. Although I've been using WHS since beta version was released in 2/07, I ordered 3 trial discs to pass out to others.

Originally Posted by Apap

All my recording drives will be formatted with 64k blocks and if I use WHS they will be kept out of the drive pool.

That is how mine is setup. Whatever TV recordings I decide to keep, I move them over to pooled drives to free up spaces on the recording drive.

[ewelin]

Do you think that recording to a 64k block is really a benefit? i'm recording to the drive pool and I don't notice any stutter or skipping when watching tvs.

[Apap]

Originally Posted by ewelin

Do you think that recording to a 64k block is really a benefit? i'm recording to the drive pool and I don't notice any stutter or skipping when watching tvs.

I use 64k blocks on recording drives to prevent the possibility of stuttering and to hopefully increase drive lifetime. Using 64k blocks reduces the number of times the drive head needs to seek to a new block when reading or writing a large file.

I want to keep the recording drives out of the drive pool to make it easier to replace them in the future with larger drives and to reduce the possibility of stutter.

A friend gave me WHS trial disk that he never installed and 2 WD green terrabyte drives arrived today so this weekend will be WHS test and Server burn in time.

[ewelin]

I wasn't sure if there was any real benefit.. .I know sage recomends it but I didn't see an issue with the way I had it configured currently. I guess I'll try swaping it in the near future.