A New Kind of Home Computer: Windows Home Server Preview
by Ryan Smith on September 4, 2007 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Performance Data
Because we were only able to get our hands on a release candidate version of WHS for the performance testing, all the results here need to be taken with a grain of salt. The WHS RC is quite good, especially in comparison to rockier launches like Vista, but we expect the performance numbers in particular to have changed slightly between the RC and the final version.
It's worth noting that the network packet throttling problem with Vista is still in play as of this writing. As a result all of our tests are under Windows XP SP2 unless otherwise noted, and when they're run on Vista it is with Multimedia Class Scheduler Service disabled to prevent throttling. Although this problem has existed in Vista since it has shipped, this is about the worst time it could come to light for Microsoft. Until it's fixed, Vista users wanting to move their media off of a personal computer and onto a WHS server will definitely want to hold off on doing so. Even though the problem with throttling isn't one with WHS, the problem occurring in Vista still drags down WHS.
| Client Test Bed | |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Quad QX6850 (3.00GHz/1333MHz) |
| RAM | G.Skill DDR2-800 (2x2GB) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-P35-DR3R (Intel P35) |
| System Platform Drivers | Intel 8.1.1.1012 |
| Hard Drive | Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500GB SATA |
| Video Cards | 1 x GeForce 8800GTX |
| Video Drivers | NV ForceWare 163.44 |
| Power Supply | OCZ GameXStream 700W |
| Desktop Resolution | 1600x1200 |
| Operating Systems | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-Bit Windows XP SP2 |
| . | |
| Server Test Bed | |
| Processor | AMD Athlon X2 4600+ (2.40GHz/400MHz) |
| RAM | OCZ DDR-400 (4x512MB) |
| Motherboard | ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (nForce 4 SLI) |
| System Platform Drivers | NV 6.69 |
| Hard Drive | 2x Western Digital Caviar Raid Edition 2(400GB) |
| Power Supply | OCZ GameXStream 700W |
| Operating Systems | Windows Home Server RC |
| . | |
We'll start with testing WHS's file server abilities by transferring files back and forth. With a gigabit network, the bottleneck will be the transfer abilities of our hard drives, so if WHS is achieving maximum performance it should be able to move data at speeds around the maximum of our hard drives. We'll be using a RAM disk on the client side to isolate the performance of WHS.
Also on this graph will be the performance of WHS while attempting to do file transfers in the middle of a balancing operation. Because of the importance in balancing data for data retention and performance reasons, WHS will sometimes need to balance folders even during times of backups and file transfers. This doesn't seem very common in our use since it's related to total use of the WHS server, but it needs to be noted all the same. WHS does seem to take steps to avoid balancing during heavy use when possible.
At 53MB/sec up and 67MB/sec down, the results are very close to those that we've seen WD RAID edition hard drives do previously. For users with gigabit networks, it looks like it's very possible for WHS to offer performance virtually equal to having the drives installed locally. Speeds while balancing aren't very impressive though, not that we expected them to be.
The other metric of WHS's performance is how it handles backups. Unlike pure file transfers, backups aren't "brain-dead" operations and require work on behalf of both the server and the client. The client needs to figure out what data is to be sent to the server, and the server is responsible for keeping all of that data organized and compressed. WHS backup performance is also heavily dependent on what else is already in the backup cache, because WHS avoids backing up anything redundant down to the cluster level.
These specific tests were run with empty caches as a worst-case scenario; actual performance of the initial backup on a new machine (as long as it's not the first machine) should be faster. These tests are being done on clean Windows installations, with the second "incremental" backup being done immediately after the first backup completes. This is more optimistic than a real incremental backup since virtually no data changes, but in doing it this way we can establish a floor for approximately how long the scan process takes. The reference sizes for these installations are 2.3GB for XP and 5.4GB for Vista, after factoring out the system page file and other files that WHS backup filters out.
Both Vista and XP turn in respectable, although not amazing backup times. Using the incremental backup as the baseline, we achieved an average backup speed of about 20MB/sec. This is well below what we've seen on our file transfer tests, but still fast enough to complete these backups in a short amount of time; since WHS doesn't have any true peers we don't have anything else to properly compare it to. In an actual deployment with real incremental backups and common data, we expect the results to be a lot closer to that of the incremental times.
We also took the liberty of backing up the XP machine again once the Vista machine was backed up in order to measure the size of the backup cache on the WHS server. Even with these clean installs, there's about 2GB of savings on the WHS server; 7.7GB of data is only taking up 5.7GB of space. Like Previous Versions on Vista, these savings should grow as more data is added to the backup cache.
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Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
Cheap motherboard-integrated controllers corrupt and outright lose RAID arrays all the time due to driver bugs, and performance is atrocious. I won't trust a RAID5 array to anything that costs less that $500, and for that price, you can just stick a few extra drives for duplication.n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
I did with LSI MegaRaid 500 with 128MB cache (originaly come with 32).I found it in second hand store for 50$ :)
actually you can buy new one scsi320 for ~300$
as for sata, there is IBM ServerRAID 7t, HP, adaptec and other controllers for ~300$
starting price of 150$ for 4 port SATA II controllers.
Personally, i prefer raid 10, but the problem is were to put the disks.
i already have 5 and only 1 empty slot left. (3x5.25 reserved for future water cooling)
n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
I did with LSI MegaRaid 500 with 128MB cache (originaly come with 32).I found it in second hand store for 50$ :)
actually you can buy new one scsi320 for ~300$
as for sata, there is IBM ServerRAID 7t, HP, adaptec and other controllers for ~300$
starting price of 150$ for 4 port SATA II controllers.
Personally, i prefer raid 10, but the problem is were to put the disks.
i already have 5 and only 1 empty slot left. (3x5.25 reserved for future water cooling)
Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
A 5 year old controller that you pick up at a second hand store is not something that I - or an OEM - can base a line of products on. A new RAID5 controller which is not built by Promise or Silicon Image will run you $500+ - the ~$300 solutions are ZCR cards that are basically addons to $500+ motherboards. ServeRAID 8s costs around $700, HP P400/256 nearly $600, well over $800 for P400/512. A bigger case to store extra drives - or a few external USB/Firewire/eSATA enclosures - will run you much less.tynopik - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link
> power outage is not on option when we talking about some kind of server.don't tell me, that UPS is something you don't use.
1. ups is not something most home users will use, you have to design assuming it won't be there
2. even if you do have ups, what happens when the batteries die? often the only warning you will get is one day the power flickers and the system shuts off. do you replace all batteries every 2 years whether they need it or not?
3. even if you meticulously maintain your ups, the internal power supply can still go bad
> hardware problems will do the same to your system and its really does not matter what you running inside.
NOT TRUE
ntfs by itself is fairly fault tolerant. you yank the power you might lose a file, but everything else is fine
raid5, you yank the power you might lose EVERYTHING
that is why WHS file duplication is far safer and better
> of course i can give you examples of corporate Data Centers with 0 data loss, but we are talking about home.
of course i said it works if you're using ENTERPRISE LEVEL HARDWARE everywhere. Good raid cards start at $300. A $150 motherboard with onboard raid doesn't even begin to cut it.
> let's organize it from worth to best.
> no raid
> soft raid
> raid 1
> raid 1+0 or 0+1.
there is no such thing as 'best'
there is 'best for a particular set of requirements'
maybe your requirements are such that your best looks like that
my best would like
soft raid
raid 1
no raid
raid 1+0 or 0+1
(that's right, i would rather have no raid than 1+0 or 0+1)
> This press machines working at full load non stop 24/7/365. Year @ IT department, no problems with raid.
congratulations, you are one of the 70% who didn't have problems with their raid last year. Are you confident you won't be one of the 30% next year?
> for not very advanced user i will recommend Debian box with Bacula to manage backups, syncing, share etc.
not very advanced users aren't going to have a clue about Debian
not very advanced users are going to be setup up raid properly
n0nsense - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
Any UPS have connection to computer and will shut it down properly when configured to do so.As for controllers. I was surprised to find that almost all integrated raid controllers (including my), actually software and not hardware. So need to admit you were right about it. (I spent few hours to transfer my disks to Promise ST150 TX4 and rebuild the raid).
NTFS is the best in Microsoft's world. but since we can't run Windows on ext3 or reiserfs, or Linux on NTFS, we can't actually compare them in real world benchmark. Theoretically, NTFS is inferior. Actually any modern FS of all desktop systems is good enough.
So we still at the same point.
I agree with you that WHS is good for redundancy (if you enable this option) where you don't want to use real raid controller with "small" price tag.
But I just can't see justification to use it. Compared to alternatives it does not have something spacial enough to pay extra 180 USD. Yes I know that for most of users, Linux is something horrifying. But we are not talking about them, but about the WHS and alternatives. in this case about raid.
by the way, i'm very curious. what raid 1+0 or 0+1 did to you ? :)
that remind me to answer. shut down will cause you to lose open/unsaved files in any scenario. but it can also damage you entire HD. raid 5 will give you better redundancy then SINGLE disk(single data instance). but when duplicating, raid 1 is the best.
n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
nForce (i'm not sure, but i think there is intel's chipset based MoBos with raid 5) raid still better in terms of stability, redundancy and performance then any soft raid.think what will happen if your WHS will crush unrecoverably.
how will you restore your data ?
n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
Hello, if you have important things that you don't want to get lost or corrupted by some virus or anything else, do your self a favor and checkhttp://www.debian.org">http://www.debian.org
http://www.ubuntu.com">http://www.ubuntu.com
or any other user friendly distro.
you will find a way better solutions for home (and not only) server.
more exactly you'll find OS capable to be everything with more then proven stability and security.
and yes, it will work inside your MS environment. as for file server (and this is main purpose of home server), you will find much better performance.
You may want to extend it to be your media server. means really distributed one. server with tv card and clients on other boxes.
tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
> as for file server (and this is main purpose of home server)no, the main purpose of WHS is backup
if your main purpose is just a simple file server then yes, WHS probably isn't for you
mindless1 - Saturday, September 8, 2007 - link
Absolutely not. A server is not backup, it would be a very foolish thing to keep your back as an online windows box.