Windows 7 64bit or WHS 32bit?

[nebulink]

I am getting a new unit this week to replace my SageTV Media server.

Which OS would you guys recommend? My server is coming with 8GB RAM and I am not sure WHS supports more than 4GB RAM plus it is only 32bit. I am surprised WHS wasn't available in a 64bit flavor.

Thanks for all your opinions.

Terry

[Skirge01]

You could do a search for the benefits of WHS, since this has been discussed many, many times before. Essentially, it comes down to whether or not you want/need the features that WHS provides. If not, you have your answer.

That said, the next version of WHS is 64 bit only and will therefore support more than 4GB of ram. No 32-bit OS (except for specially modified enterprise server OS's) support more than 4GB of ram, due to memory address limits inherent to 32-bit.

[inlvnv]

I'm guessing all replies will be biased toward which ever OS those posters are using.

I've Been running WHS for the past 3 years myself. 32bit is correct and will recognize up to 3GB ram. Perhaps WHS 2.0 will be 64bit. Anyway, rarely a problem with WHS so far. Easy setup, auto backup of all PCs, remote access, pooled storage and option to duplicate. Negatives are - can't backup system drive and may not have Win2003 drivers for some of your device, although xp drivers work fine.

[nebulink]

Does anyone have any idea when WHS 64bit will be released?

I have not been able to find any sort of release date for it. Also, I am sure there will be no way to upgrade from 32bit to 64bit without a complete reinstall.

Thanks for the opinions.

[Skirge01]

There was a build leaked last week, which is discussed in an earlier link I provided. Something noted by CNet was that the leaked build was clearly an early build and needed quite a bit more work. So, no one knows when it will be released.

[Oats]

The rumor is WHS 2 will be out late 2010/early 2011. So it is a long way off.

If it were me I would use whatever OS I have laying around unless you want the backup features of WHS (then you will have to deal with something to backup your Sage install). What is happening with your old Server OS?

[inlvnv]

WHS 2 looks sweet, looking forward to doing a clean install.

Skirge01 - Enjoyed reading your blog. That's one sweet setup you have there.

[sic0048]

I use WHS for my SageTV system, but I wanted a single machine to run 24/7 and I liked the features in the WHS OS.

That being said, I'll throw in a couple more things to consider.

1) Make sure you check your tuners and other peripherals to make sure they will work with 64bit and RAM in larger than 4gb amounts. It is pretty clear that some of the Hauppauge PCI tuners do not like more than 4gb RAM. Better to know this before you decide what you want.

2) If you go with WHS, keep in mind the biggest complaint is that it doesn't back itself up (and there is no other software that can as far as I know). So there is definitely a risk of data loss with the WHS system drive going out. I'm considering moving my SageTV setup to a virtual machine running on my WHS hardware. That way I can still have just one physical machine running 24/7, but be able to back up my SageTV system to protect against loss. I'm not really concerned about the actual recorded content (ie I don't duplicate or put those shows in the WHS drive pool), but I don't want to loose my wiz.bin and other important files.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by inlvnv

Skirge01 - Enjoyed reading your blog. That's one sweet setup you have there.

Thanks. If I can find a few days worth of spare time, I have a few more interesting things I want to do with the server and blog about.

Originally Posted by sic0048

2) If you go with WHS, keep in mind the biggest complaint is that it doesn't back itself up (and there is no other software that can as far as I know). So there is definitely a risk of data loss with the WHS system drive going out. I'm considering moving my SageTV setup to a virtual machine running on my WHS hardware. That way I can still have just one physical machine running 24/7, but be able to back up my SageTV system to protect against loss. I'm not really concerned about the actual recorded content (ie I don't duplicate or put those shows in the WHS drive pool), but I don't want to loose my wiz.bin and other important files.

Without a doubt, this is the biggest complaint I have and you are correct that there's no way for other software to do so. WHS2 will fix this shortcoming, however.

[nebulink]

I think I will be going with Windows 7 Premium 64bit with RDP Hack. I may also move my mail server to this machine within it's own VM.

Currently all my receivers are pvr-500's I wouldn't mind upgrading them to something newer and better if there is such a thing. Maybe I will wait and see if cable card support is coming anytime soon.

Thanks for the input.

[crobs808]

Installing a 32-bit OS does not make sense if you have more than 3GB of RAM

[davephan]

Acronis does work with Windows 7 64 bit. I'd recommend Acronis Workstation 10 with the Universal Restore option. With Universal Restore, you can recover to different hardware. You can also schedule it to image every day with a combination of full, differential, and incremental images.

I was going to build my current (4th system) with either WHS, Windows 7, or XP Pro. I decided to stay with XP Pro since Windows 7 isn't officially supported and some people have trouble with it. I'm not sure why you need more than 3 gigs of RAM. My RAM consumption is normally about a gig. I haven't heard of SageTV consuming much more than that much RAM.

As others mentioned WHS has a major flaw, since you cannot backup the operating system. A scratch rebuild is a time consuming and annoying hassle verses rolling a system back to a previous image. A few minutes to start the recovery process, the rest of the 30 minutes unattended. If you use SageTV every day, you don't want a lot of downtime if you have a computer problem.

Dave

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by davephan

As others mentioned WHS has a major flaw, since you cannot backup the operating system.

Not true. I use Symantec Ghost 11.5 (old but works) to create weekly images of my WHS, and I have successfully re-ghosted to a brand new harddrive (as a test to see if it would work or not), and it booted up and ran just fine. No need to reinstall anything or setup settings again. Using Symantec Ghost is like the HDD crash never happened since it is a full image everytime you ghost, with boot files and all.

[Fuzzy]

I believe there are tombstone issues that arrise when doing so. i think the only way the imageing.recovery will work is if the pool data doens't change between image and restore. probably why it worked in your test case.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by crobs808

Not true. I use Symantec Ghost 11.5 (old but works) to create weekly images of my WHS, and I have successfully re-ghosted to a brand new harddrive (as a test to see if it would work or not), and it booted up and ran just fine. No need to reinstall anything or setup settings again. Using Symantec Ghost is like the HDD crash never happened since it is a full image everytime you ghost, with boot files and all.

It's good that you tested recovering WHS with an image. That's news to me that the WHS boot drive can be recovered with an image, loosing nothing in OS partition or the drive pool.

If the recovery was done immediately after the image was taken, it may not be an accurate test. If you create the image of the boot drive, then make changes to the files in the pool and boot drive, then let the computer run for a week, then recover it back one week. You then could verify that no files were lost or tombstone data became lost or corrupted.

I haven't found any imaging product that actually supports WHS recoveries. The Symantec web site shows that Ghost 15.0 doesn't support WHS (it isn't listed as one of the supported operating systems). Acronis doesn't support WHS recoveries either.

The newer Ghost 15.0 does support cold imaging, similar to PING, Partition Image is Not Ghost, which might have a better chance at recovering WHS, but I don't know if the recoveries would be successful or reliable.

Dave

[crobs808]

Originally Posted by davephan

The Symantec web site shows that Ghost 15.0 doesn't support WHS (it isn't listed as one of the supported operating systems). Acronis doesn't support WHS recoveries either.

Just to be clear I said "Symantec Ghost" not "Norton Ghost"...believe it or not, there are two different versions, and "Symantec Ghost" is the Corporate version which does support WHS (version 11.5 or higher)

[davephan]

Originally Posted by crobs808

Just to be clear I said "Symantec Ghost" not "Norton Ghost"...believe it or not, there are two different versions, and "Symantec Ghost" is the Corporate version which does support WHS (version 11.5 or higher)

According to the Symantec web site, there are two versions of Ghost
Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 and Norton Ghost 15.0

http://www.symantec.com/themes/ghost/index.jsp

Norton Ghost 15.0 doesn't say anything about supporting WHS

http://www.symantec.com/norton/ghost

Symantec Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 doesn't say anything about supporting WHS

http://www.symantec.com/business/ghost-solution-suite

The Norton Ghost 15.0 looks like the only imaging product in the home consumer product list

http://www.symantec.com/norton/products/index.jsp

Ghost solution Suite and Backup Exec look like the only imaging products in their Business product line

http://www.symantec.com/business/pro...llproducts.jsp

I haven't found any Symantec product that claims they can image and recover WHS. I haven't found any other product that claims it can image and recover WHS. I know Symantec also has a product called BESR, which I use at work to image and recover servers. BESR cannot image and recover WHS either.

Can you post any URLs of any products that claim they can image and recover WHS? I'd like to see the products that claim they can image and recover WHS because I've been looking for them for months.

Dave

[Fuzzy]

??? Ghost does not support WHS. The reasoning is to recover a WHS drive pool, you ahve to regenerate the tombstones (which are stored on the system drive). If you restore old tombstones connected to a more recent drive pool, you WILL corrupt data. Doing the system reinstall option in the setup is the only way to restore a failed system, because it recreates the tombstones upon reconnecting the drive pool. There is no provision in any version of ghost (or any other imaging software) to do so.

[Fuzzy]

He DID say ghost 11.5, which is the version of ghost that is included in Symantec Solution Suite 2.5.. however, it is no different than any other version of Ghost 11.5, and certainly doesn't have any more features than Ghost 15. Included in the list of features it doens't have would be true WHS support. Yes, it can image a WHS system partition, and yes, it can restore that partition to the drive.. That does NOT mean it will fully restore a WHS system after a drive failure.

[stevech]

Wouldn't using a 64 bit OS lead to unavailable drivers for certain tuners?