A New Kind of Home Computer: Windows Home Server Preview
by Ryan Smith on September 4, 2007 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Initial Thoughts
In assessing the value of Windows Home Server, for even a "simple" product like it with only a handful of core functions, there are a number of variables that really need to be taken into consideration. We can't give a blanket recommendation on WHS as a result, as the decision to use WHS rests on the variables to take into account for each user/household that a server would be installed in.
The chief variable is cost, and even this is in several forms. WHS is a new product, not any kind of upgrade, so using it is a matter of either buying an OEM box, or building one yourself, which can dramatically affect the actual cost. For enthusiasts with suitable hardware practically collecting dust, WHS is the cost of the OS plus minor costs for additional parts such as a gigabit switch. For more normal home users or enthusiasts without the spare parts, WHS means making an investment in new hardware. WHS has very low system requirements, so high-end OEM configurations will be well below the cost of a high-end computer, but it will still be in the neighborhood of a low-to-mid range computer.
Then there is the issue of the price of the WHS software, which we don't have. We're confident it will be between $100 and $200, but that's a very large range. We do know what the pricing will be outside of North America, and after converting currencies we are seeing $175-$200 in most regions. Microsoft's software is seldom more expensive in North America than in other locations, so this is a solid cap, but as they do charge less in North America on some pieces of software, it's not a solid floor.
The final element in the cost equation is the number of computers in a home. If you count WHS solely as a backup suite, in a house with the maximum of 10 computers the per-computer cost for having a top-tier backup suite is at most $20. This is more than competitive with other backup suites sold at retail. And then there is everything else WHS can do too; what's the value of an easy to configure file server? A web server? Various Linux distributions come close in some features but don't offer an equal feature set overall, so we can say WHS is overpriced compared to a free operating system, but...
And then we need to ask if WHS is even ready for use yet. HP says no, and they're holding back the launch of their WHS products from a September ship date, towards November and later. In doing so they're citing their desire to wait on third-party add-ins, on which development started much later, to catch up to WHS. Furthermore the WHS team is already at work on some unspecified updates that HP wants to wait for.
As a matter of opinion - and we're not disputing HP on their own choices - we think it is ready, especially for the enthusiast crowd that is the main audience here at AnandTech. We haven't encountered any noticeable bugs in using a WHS server even with the release candidate (although undoubtedly there are some lurking beneath) and the interface is more than easy enough for any enthusiast user to deal with. WHS is ready for the enthusiasts that want it.
We're a bit more tepid on recommendations for typical users however, some of which is due to our own inability to measure what counts as "average" computer knowledge these days. WHS is not caveman-simple, then again neither is Vista if you go far enough off of the beaten path. A bare minimum amount of computer knowledge isn't enough to properly operate a WHS server if we're talking about how it comes in the default Microsoft configuration; OEMs will be adding their own spice to the out-of-the-box experience.
But on the other hand Microsoft has done a great job simplifying the controls for what is really Windows Server 2003, and someone doesn't need to be an enthusiast to use it. With a level of knowledge above the bare minimum it's very possible and easy to make a WHS server work. And frankly, actually using (as opposed to configuring) a WHS server is extremely easy once it's set up; this is something even users with minimal amounts of computer knowledge could handle if a big box electronics store set up the server in the first place.
The next issue then is the feature set, and if it justifies the effort and the price. WHS is a file server/NAS, it's a backup suite, it's a webserver, and more. We really, really like the folder duplication feature (even if it is really just a poor RAID 1 knock off) because of the excellent ability to select what does and doesn't get extra protection. Most of these features work quite well, and we have no problem justifying WHS when two or more features are going to be used, since other devices WHS is in direct and indirect competition with are limited to only one function. A critical mass of computers is still required, but a couple of computers that receive heavy use would but enough to reach that critical mass.
Finally, there are the issues that have cropped up in our time with WHS that are outright design/feature problems. We speak of course about the nagging integration between WHS and Media Center functionality. If you have a full suite of Microsoft products (Xbox 360, MCE, and normal Windows computers) and want to use WHS as a media repository, it's simply an ugly mess. It can be made to work for the most part, but it's not a smooth experience out-of-the-box, and should be a lot better. There's going to be a lot of people - ourselves included - taking a hard look at WHS 2.0 to see if Microsoft has done a better job at integrating MCE and WHS into one box. This isn't a problem that kills WHS, but it does present a problem.
Particularly as enthusiasts we like WHS and consider it a product that justifies the costs of adding an entirely new device to a home environment. It has its flaws, but what it does well it does well enough to overcome those flaws; Microsoft 1.0 products have a bad reputation (and not for the wrong reasons, either) but this is one product where Microsoft has come out and managed to get things right enough on the first try. Starting with WHS it can seem to be a schizophrenic product, but in the end it comes together once you know what you want to use it for.
Our only caveat here is that it will take some time for most people to figure out just what those uses are. Microsoft will be releasing a 120 day trial of WHS soon, and we'd highly recommend trying it out and discovering the variables for yourself before purchasing the software or hardware for a server; not everyone will find it useful enough to purchase. It's also worth noting that while Microsoft doesn't officially support this, as a server product WHS works particularly well in a virtual machine since there's no need for high graphical performance. A virtual machine can be a good way to go through a WHS trial without taking any other risks.
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ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
All NAS-boxes have horrible performance. (at least all I have seen). It hardly seems fair to use benchmarks from them, when this is a "Proper" computer, there are plenty of benchmarks from software raid 5 run on "real" computers to find, see this for instance:http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/19/using_windo...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/11/19/...appen/pa...
MDADM is as far as i know even faster, hower for whs it would likely be built on the software-raid of win2003.
Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
All NAS-boxes have horrible performance.Wrong. Proper NAS boxes have superb performance. Look at NetApp FAS270 for example. Of course a FAS270 in a typical configuration will run you in the $20,000-30,000 range.
That Tom's Hardware test is running a 2.8GHz CPU. http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/121499/tranquil-t7h...">This WHS box is running a 1.3GHz VIA C7, for example.
Also, WHS is designed to be easily and transparently expandable by end-user using external drives. Please show me a RAID setup of any kind that will work in a mixed ATA/SATA/USB/FireWire configuration with drives of varying sizes.
ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
Ok, all consumer NAS-boxes then, I thought that much was implicit. It doesn't matter anyway, the point is that your comparison to a box like that isn't very good when it comes to "proving" that software-raid automatically has bad performance.A lot of boxes with WHS will be using a CPU that is better than a 1.3 Via, if the hardware isn't suited for the job, then you just don't run a software raid5, it's that easy.
I don't see how the WHS storage-pool is incompatible with raid as a concept, a raid-array presents itself as a single drive, more or less, wich can be merged into the storagepool if one feels like it.
Gholam - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ is a consumer level NAS. However, it's built on an SBC running a 1.4GHz Celeron M ULV, and in actual testing outperforms many self-built systems. On the other hand, it also costs over $1000 without drives.ATWindsor - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
The benches I have seen points to a read-performance of 30 MB/s give or take lets say 10 MB, thats hardly good performance, it doesn't even outperform a single drive. One can easily build a software raid with several times better speed.Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
WHS is made to run on low-power, low-end and old hardware; calculating parity blocks in software is bad enough on a modern desktop CPU, an old PIII/800 or a VIA C3/C7 (present in some OEM WHS box implementations) will get murdered.In addition, recovering data from a failed RAID5 array is quite difficult, requiring specialized (and expensive) software as well as user expertise. Recovering data from a failed WHS box with duplication is as simple as mounting the drives separately.
ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
The raid will not fail before two drives goes down, if that happens in WHS, you still need to run recovery-software and hope to get out data. WHS will be run on diffrent kinds of systems, even the cheapest of CPUs today are pretty powerful. More than powerful enough to get reasonable spped on raid5. Why limit WHS in this way? That is exactly the problem I'm adressing, the lack of flexibility, the reasoning that all WHS-users have the same needs, I think a pretty large number of WHS-machines wich poeple build themself will have performance several times higher then a P3@800, if not most.Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
The raid will not fail before two drives goes downOh how I WISH that was true. Let me give you a recent example I've dealt with. HP/Compaq ProLiant ML370G2 with SmartArray something (641? don't remember) running a 4x36 RAID5 array, Novell Netware 5.0. DLT VS80 tape backup drive. Worked for 4 years or so, then the tape died. Took the organization in question 4 months to buy a new one, LTO-2 - which means they've had 4 months without backups. Downed the server, connected the new tape, booted - oops, doesn't boot. Their "IT guy", in his infinite wisdom, connected the tape to the RAID controller, instead of onboard SCSI - which nuked the array. It didn't go anywhere, the controller didn't even report any errors, but NWFS crashed hard. They ended up rolling back to 4 months old backups because pulling data out of a corrupt RAID5 array would've cost several thousands.
I work for a small company that specializes in IT outsourcing for small and medium businesses - basically shops that are too small to afford a dedicated IT department, and we give them the entire solution: hardware, software, installation, integration, advisory, support, etc - and I've got many stories such as this one. We also deal with home users, but not as much.
This said, I don't consider RAID5 a suitable for home use, at least not yet. It's too expensive and dangerous - mirroring files across a bunch of drives is cheaper and easier. Also, as far as I understand, when a drive in WHS drive pool fails, it automatically syncs protected folders into free space on remaining drives, so the window where your data is vulnerable is quite small. RAID5, on the other hand, will be vulnerable until you replace the drive (which can take days or even weeks) and then until it finishes rebuilding (which can also take a very long time on a large array). You can keep a hotspare, but then you'll be eating up another drive - in case of 4 drives, RAID5+hotspare eats you the same 50% as RAID1/RAID10 - while WHS mirroring makes your entire free space function as hot spare.
ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
Hardly a very plausible scenario for a home user, of course a RAID can go down if you mess it up, but you can just as easily mess up non-raided drives to the point that running recovery-software is needed, when it comes to normal drive-failiures two of them have to die.If you only need 2 Drives worth of storage, you might as well mirror, but when you need for instance 10, it adds up, but drive-cost, electricity PSU-size and physical size (especially if you want a backuo-machine in adition, I would never keep my data on only one computer like that). If the syncing is going to work,you also need to have at least a disk of usalble free space, so you basically need to "waste" a whole disk on that to if you wnat to get hot-spare-functionality.
Gholam - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Hardly a very plausible scenario for a home user, of course a RAID can go down if you mess it up, but you can just as easily mess up non-raided drives to the point that running recovery-software is needed, when it comes to normal drive-failiures two of them have to die.Not quite. WHS balances data between drives, so if one of them becomes corrupt and one of the copies of your protected data is gone, you can still access it on the other - no extra tools required, just mount the drive in a Windows system. You will only lose it if both drives become corrupt simultaneously.
If the syncing is going to work,you also need to have at least a disk of usalble free space, so you basically need to "waste" a whole disk on that to if you wnat to get hot-spare-functionality.
Again, not quite. Since you protect the data on a per-folder basis, your free space requirement depends on the actual amount of data you're keeping redundant, not the total, and there's little point in wasting redundant storage on backups - they're redundancy in and of themselves.