Windows Home Server (WHS)

[krwren]

Has anyone tried Sage on WHS (Windows Home Server) yet. I just got the beta and want to try moving the Sage service to the WHS.

If no one has yet, I will let them know my results. This weekend I will be building the server and then next week I will try installing Sage.

Talk to you later

Ken

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by krwren

Has anyone tried Sage on WHS (Windows Home Server) yet. I just got the beta and want to try moving the Sage service to the WHS.

If no one has yet, I will let them know my results. This weekend I will be building the server and then next week I will try installing Sage.

Talk to you later

Ken

I'm in the same boat so let us know. Just downloaded the beta and trying to round up enough for a machine to run it on. And waiting for a couple of 500 GB drives to show up.


Gerry

[Jesse]

Hi,

Look here: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...433#post200433

An "AMD LIVE! Home Media Server" is just an AMD powered WHS machine (check it out here:http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/V...115234,00.html).

There is an email link near the bottom of the announcement that one can use to request an eval. copy of sage.

Jesse

[criccio]

I've been running Sage on a WHS for a while now without issues. One thing i did do though is use a drive that is not managed by WHS for tv recording.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Jesse

Hi,

Look here: http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...433#post200433

An "AMD LIVE! Home Media Server" is just an AMD powered WHS machine (check it out here:http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/V...115234,00.html).

There is an email link near the bottom of the announcement that one can use to request an eval. copy of sage.

Jesse

It's one thing to announce support for the platform. It's another to actually run on it and take advantage of all the new features. As you can see from the above post the users is using not but NOT letting WHS manage the drives with the recordings. Some of the key features of WHS for storage are:
What makes it unique?
• Allows seamless addition of more hard drives
As you add more hard drives to your home server, they are treated as a single large pool of available storage space. You no longer need to deal with E:, F:, G:, etc. drive letters as you add more hard drives.
• Works with both internal and external hard drives
You can grow the amount of available storage by adding either internal or external (e.g. USB 2.0 or Firewire) hard drives to your home server.
• Shared Folder Duplication
Supports reliability by duplication of designated shared folders – so important data will be stored on separate hard drives helping to provide protection against hard drive failure. Duplication is configurable on a per shared folder basis, so a given shared folder can have multiple copies, with each one being stored on a separate hard drive.
• Easy to remove hard drives
It is also easy to remove hard drives and the contents are automatically moved to other hard drives in the system so that over time you can remove the older, smaller hard drives.



Why is this better than RAID solutions?
• Any hard drive, any time. You are not restricted to simply adding more hard drives of the same type and size. When you want to grow your home server storage, you just buy whatever hard drive you like and add it.
• Internal and external hard drives can be used to grow your storage. No space in your home computer case? No problem, plug in one or more USB 2.0 or FireWire hard drives.
• Drive removal, as explained above. As your system gets crufty, it will be important to remove the older smaller hard drives and put in new larger hard drives so you can store more stuff.


Gerry

[Jesse]

Hi Gerry,

I am aware of all the great features WHS brings to the table. I requested a chance to beta test WHS but have not heard back .

It's one thing to announce support for the platform. It's another to actually run on it and take advantage of all the new features. As you can see from the above post the users is using not but NOT letting WHS manage the drives with the recordings.

Good point. I certainly cannot see why anyone would want to run sage on a WHS machine and not take advantage of all the features WHS offers. As for whether they will work with sage I must admit that I assumed (dangerous, I know) that they would. What would be the point otherwise?

Please keep us all informed of how well this works out for you. I am sure I am not the only one who will be interested in your results.

Jesse

[Fountainhead]

Yeah, I know it's an obscure/unreleased product so far. It seems an ideal platform for something like Sage though. Just curious if anyone has installed WHS and tried Sage TV on it? I've gotten into the beta program and am downloading beta 2 now, but I won't be able to personally try Sage on it any time soon. Anyone else do it?

* merged *

[criccio]

I wanted to clarify my post.
It's true i am using a drive for my recordings that isn't managed by WHS. I don't think having WHS manage the drive would be an issue though.

I had started with an early beta that had some perf issues so i chose that direction, plus Sage recommends a cluster size that i wasn't sure would be used by the managed drive.

Recent betas don't have that perf issue, but now i don't want to blow away the data on that drive, so i haven't made it managed yet.

I do have music and movies on WHS managed drives without any noticeable problem.

Now i think i'll have to switch my recording location to start getting the data off the drive...

[prushing]

I am currently using the beta 2 of WHS, it isn't anything to wish for. It's simply a stripped down Windows 2003 R2 using the Small Business Server installer/PE scripts with almost no features of SBS or Windows 2003. No domain, no WINS, no DNS, no HTTP, no SMTP, no RAS...it's simply a file and printer server...nothing more and nothing less.

IMHO, you are probably better off running Sage on a Windows XP or Vista platform, it's probably cheaper, multimedia and support rich for the vast majority of the laypeople out there. If you run out of space, by more or larger drives or get build or buy a NAS solution.

[Grasshopper]

Any difficulty installing drivers for your capture cards? I was accepted for the beta and am contemplating installing this on my current "server", as it appears to make backup of other PC's in my network very easy and automatic.

[Jesse]

Hi,

Just got the invite from MS to participate in the WHS beta.

It is my understanding that when you add a drive to the pool it is going to format it. So my question is how do I get my recordings onto the WHS system without having them become "imported?"

Anyone come up with a way to do this, or am I just out of luck on this?

TIA

Jesse

[Grasshopper]

Maybe I don't understand your question. If you install WHS, it's a whole new OS, and you'll have to install Sage again as well. So were you planning to duplicate your existing drive letters in your new WHS installation?

[Jesse]

Hi,

More research looks like this may be possible. It looks like drives can be added without merging them into the pool.

Maybe I don't understand your question. If you install WHS, it's a whole new OS, and you'll have to install Sage again as well. So were you planning to duplicate your existing drive letters in your new WHS installation?

Thanks for responding Grasshopper. Yes, I would like to set up the WHS machine with a couple of drives in the pool. I would then like to add my recording drives to the WHS machine and duplicate their existing letters (F,G,H). I would then like to install sage and then move in the wiz and props files from the old server. This should allow sage to see all my existing recordings as it did in the old install. I would then like to move all the recordings onto the pooled drives so that sage will still see them as normal (ie not imports). Once this is done I would like to merge the old drives into the pool.

Will this work?

TIA

Jesse

[Grasshopper]

Dunno. But I'll let you know as soon as I buy a big HD to start my WHS build/conversion. Your plan is my plan, too, now that I understand it.

[cenwesi]

Guys, why not run Linux (Ubuntn v6.10) and setup samba. I just got done setting up Ubuntu on a pc i bought just for SERVER/File storage. I have a total of 1.5TB.... The only drive on my HTTPC (sagebox) is just a 40gig drive... All recordings/movies are dumped to the Linux box. I have even tested out 3 recordings at the same time to the box with not issues. I can even play DVD's from it and not one lag or shutter...
I will even use it for FTP, web server and I even have VMware server running on it and i have NT 2003 R2 server running just fine in VM for doing other stuff like commercial detection and SQL 2005server. I plan on using the Ubuntu for backups and few other things down the road...

Anyway i am curious to know who else is using Linux for their File Server Storage

[Grasshopper]

Why not run Linux on a fileserver box? Mostly because I'd rather have 1 box running all the time than 2 boxes. Also, it appears that WHS will have nice features for automatic backup of other Windows PC's on my LAN (6 at last count). So at least in theory, WHS provides me with a Sage server and a file server with nice disk management and remote backup tools, all in one box. In theory. Will it work? We'll see.

[PGPfan]

Originally Posted by cenwesi

Guys, why not run Linux (Ubuntn v6.10) and setup samba. I just got done setting up Ubuntu on a pc i bought just for SERVER/File storage. I have a total of 1.5TB.... The only drive on my HTTPC (sagebox) is just a 40gig drive... All recordings/movies are dumped to the Linux box. I have even tested out 3 recordings at the same time to the box with not issues. I can even play DVD's from it and not one lag or shutter...
I will even use it for FTP, web server and I even have VMware server running on it and i have NT 2003 R2 server running just fine in VM for doing other stuff like commercial detection and SQL 2005server. I plan on using the Ubuntu for backups and few other things down the road...

Anyway i am curious to know who else is using Linux for their File Server Storage

For me, and I suspect a lot of us - I don't have Hauppauge capture cards, and that's all that SageLinux supports.

-PGPfan

[Jesse]

Hi,

I would like to verify that I will need a special version of sage to run on WHS. Would anyone who has sage up and running on WHS please confirm what version of sage they are using.

I am also curious about hardware drivers. Who is using which capture cards and did you use the standard xp drivers?

TIA

Jesse

[rlvogel322]

I haven't heard that there is a different version of Sage to work with WHS. I was planning on installing 6.1.4RC.

Hopefully later this week I can do the install. I'll keep an eye on this thread and update my progress.

[Grasshopper]

Originally Posted by Jesse

Hi,

I would like to verify that I will need a special version of sage to run on WHS. Would anyone who has sage up and running on WHS please confirm what version of sage they are using.

I am also curious about hardware drivers. Who is using which capture cards and did you use the standard xp drivers?

TIA

Jesse

I'm running Sage 6.0.19. Serves to MVP's just fine. I'm getting occasional playback exceptions on a PC Client, but that may or may not be related to WHS (see other thread).

Capture cards are a Hauppauge 250 and an Avermedia M150. Both working with standard XP drivers.