A New Kind of Home Computer: Windows Home Server Preview
by Ryan Smith on September 4, 2007 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
WHS As A File and Media Server, Cont
Besides SMB, WHS also offers additional ways for smart devices that aren't full-fledged computers to connect. Windows Media Connect is supported, so devices and software implementing that can use the server as a source of media, the prime example being the Xbox 360 and numerous home audio receivers. However users with very new devices will be disappointed to find that it only supports the older version 2.0 of this standard, which means some devices won't work.
New to this specific version of Windows is support for the Digital Living Network Alliance's self-named DLNA standard, a competitor for Windows Media Connect. Smart home audio receivers that don't implement WMC support usually implement this standard instead, and by offering DLNA support in WHS they will be similarly able to read media off of a WHS server. In an amusing note, by far the most widespread DLNA receiver right now is the Playstation 3, which got support for DLNA in the 1.80 firmware. So not only can the Xbox read media off of a WHS server, but so can the PS3.
So with all of this praise for the file serving features of WHS so far, why did we call this feature hit and miss overall? The answer is integration with Microsoft's existing home entertainment package, Windows Media Center Edition (MCE).
Simply put, there is no integration between the two. By default WHS and MCE are completely oblivious to each other, and furthermore if WHS is used to backup an MCE box it will purposely avoid backing up recorded shows (which makes sense, but only highlights the disconnect). Even accessing media on a WHS server from Vista MCE is more trouble than it needs to be; Vista Windows Media Player can use WMC to find media, but Vista MCE can't, it must log into a server's shared folders and be told specifically where to look for media. This is a one-time setup issue, but it still shouldn't be occurring.
All of these issues are just greater symptoms of the bigger issue though, and that is all of the space that both MCE and WHS both cover. An MCE box needs to be on 24/7 to record shows; a WHS box needs to be on 24/7 to backup and offer data. The obvious question quickly arises: why isn't the WHS box also doing the TV recording since it needs to be on anyhow, and we let the MCE box sleep? Microsoft has for some time now offered the Media Center Extender feature for other devices on a network to integrate with and control a Media Center Edition computer, but ultimately we run into the problem of a Media Center Edition computer being unable to act as an Extender itself; it's really a server. Even the Xbox has troubles in this regard, as it functions a heck of a lot better as an Extender than a WMC device.
The fact that Microsoft doesn't have a clear solution to deciding which device is really supposed to be the server is the representation of the disconnect that existed between the Vista and WHS teams. WHS really, really, really should have been an MCE-server box along with being a file server, so that it could hold several TV tuners and serve up TV to Extenders in a house.
In Microsoft's defense, Windows Server 2003 is a poor choice as a TV tuner; it's a file server and doesn't even offer the kind of driver compatibility required to work with the slew of tuners on the market. Microsoft has been aware of this oversight for quite some time and there's a lot of talk about making sure WHS 2.0 includes this kind of functionality, but that will be at least 2 years away. In the meantime anyone owning a WHS box and an MCE box will be on their own in finding a way to best split media serving abilities.
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mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
Surely the backup client can be disabled (On one of the two)? I would be very surprised if 2 WHS systems can't coexist given a configuration change if you just wanted to avoid the wasted redundancy of having both make backups. That is, unless MS had deliberately chosen to prevent the two from getting along.ATWindsor - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Does it souppert proper raid, like raid 5 for instance? That fits my use a bit better than this duplication of files. WHS looks interesting, but seemingly a bit to primitive to be honest, seems to be missing quite a few more or less nescessary features.Rolphus - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
The choice of OS should be entirely separate to RAID considerations. Software RAID5 is a bit of a waste of time, seeing as any performance advantage over just mirroring the data would be more than offset by software parity calculations. I don't see any reason why a BIOS-level RAID system (as supplied by many high-end and server motherboards and add-in cards) wouldn't be supported by WHS; Windows 2003 Server supports any RAID level you care to throw at it.mindless1 - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
Most people won't care about parity calculation overhead, it's not as though the system is being used like a PC or workstation, that's practically ALL the system would be doing besides sitting idle, particularly given the rough spec of a 1GHz or more processor which is not at all needed just to serve files. Maybe with GbE, you might want a 300-400MHz processor to keep networking performance good but on a system that old you'd probably be bottlenecked by the PCI bus before anything else.yyrkoon - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
What is wrong with software RAID, if that is all the system does(server storage) ? In my book, implementing *any* so called server OS *needs* to have at least RAID1, and should have RAID5 in software. If not, there is not realy reason to stop using WinXP Pro, with a few registry hacks tp bypass the RAID5 limitation.Anyhow, why pay for something that is lacking when you can get an OS that does it for free, or another earlier version of windows that will do it with a few hacks, and yu're already familiar with.
As I said in an earlier post, I used WHS for a few days several months ago(early beta program), and did not like what I saw. So . . .
ATWindsor - Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - link
Software raid5 can have very good performance, modern computers are fast, besides the main consideration is not wasting so much space, if you want to have som security for your files, you get by on loosing 1/4 insted of 1/2 of the space.The main advantage off WHS is the whole storage-pool-setup, I hope they implment somethin similar in w2k3.
Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
I tested software RAID5 on an nForce4 SLI motherboard (DFI LanParty nF4 SLI-DR) with Silicon Image 3114 chip and 4x WD 500GB drives. Reads were in 11-14MB/s range, writes sub-10MB/s, and CPU load was near full, on an Athlon 64 4000+.ATWindsor - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
Try to test a proper software-raid, instead of the inbuilt nforce-crap, just because you tested a poor solution doesn't make all solutions bad.Gholam - Sunday, September 9, 2007 - link
It's not nForce, it's SiI3114, nearly ubiquitous on higher-end motherboards of that era, as well as present on many lower-end PCI cards. Building RAID5 on an "affordable" solution from Silicon Image, Promise and such will give you exactly that kind of performance, as well as guarantee a high probability of data loss due to driver/firmware bug. In order to run RAID5 you need a proper controller from Adaptec/LSI Logic/3Ware, and that costs big bucks.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
It only supports proper RAID if you can configure it all in the BIOS. Any kind of softRAID that needs Windows' help isn't supported. Basically it needs to appear as 1 disk to Windows.