Sage v7: WHS vs. Win 7 Pro

[ohpleaseno]

As some of you know, I'm a huge fan of the fact that I can use Sage on my WHS, but with v7 coming out and with a computer that I have running all the time on my network, I'm considering moving my Sage install to a Win 7 Pro box. I've generally been happy with my WHS install and will probably wind up replicating that environment for version 7.

No matter which way I go, the server is headless running in a closet. I am totally on extenders, so connecting the computer directly to a TV is not a possibility. Here are my questions.

1) If I run Sage off of the Win 7 box, will I be able to record to the WHS storage pool? Would doing that be stupid? I currently only have a 120 gig hard drive in the Win 7 box, so if the storage pool wouldn't be possible, then I would need to upgrade that hard drive. If I am best off recording directly to a local drive, then besides using SJQ to move recordings, is there another way to automatically move recordings from the Win 7 box to the WHS and have it show up seamlessly in Recorded TV?

2) The Win 7 Pro box has an AMD Phenom II 550 BE while I'm running a Regor 250 in the WHS box. Would the faster processor provide any performance enhancements on the extender side?

Any other issues I should consider? I imagine the difference would be minimal, but I want to make sure there is something I'm not overlooking.

Thanks!

[ohpleaseno]

so i'm guessing that with all the crickets chipring in here that there is no recommendation either way?

[sic0048]

I'm using V7 on my WHS machine without any issues. Upgrading was totally seemless.

Since you are using extenders, there is little benefit to using Windows7. I guess it just comes down to which you are more comfortable with.

[wubdich]

I'm running also SageTV V7 on a (self build) WHS and I'm verry satisffied. In my point of view there is no reason to switch to Windows 7 when using extenders. Running on WHS offers the oppotunity to power only one system 24 hours a day.

[Naylia]

I'm on Win 7 Home Premium and everything works great, but I use mine as both server for other rooms, and as the client connected to a tv. If I were going headless I'd probably dump Win 7 and switch to WHS.

[dgeezer]

I'm also running Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. This is on an athlon 64 x2 with 3 gb ram and an Nvidia 8500 video card. This same pc used to be a SageTV client running Vista. No matter what I tried I could never get smooth playback on mkv dvd rips or even most HDTV recordings. My intention was to use it as a headless server and I installed Win7 only because I had an extra upgrade on my 3-pack. To my surprise running EVR under SageTV7 my playback is perfect. I have it hooked to my 24" monitor for easy tweaking until it goes headless. But I'm tempted to start using it as a direct playback client again....

[SWKerr]

In your case I am not sure why you would elect to use two servers in the process. If you want to use WHS for storage it will work but why not just put the storage on the box that Sage runs on. A 500GB harddrive can be had for $45. WHS works well as a Sage server but I did change to Win7 because of RAID support.

I moved from WHS to Window7 64 bit for my SageTV server. I retired my WHS. I used WHS for about a year and was pretty happy but needed to upgrade it because of issues I was having with the hardware.

Reasoning for Change: I really was not using the capabilities of WHS.

I originally used the duplication function but decided it was a waste of disk space for how I wanted it to work. What I ended up doing was setting up SyncToy to keep my Movie, Pictures, Music and other important stuff replicated on a separate Hard drive in the server.

I did not use WHS to backup my other machines. By default it wants to backup everything and all a really cared about was either already on the server or in the personal directory on the machine. You can set it to just backup what you want but it is easier to setup SyncToy to copy across the network. If something dies I would rather reinstall then re-image the drive. Chances are something has changed anyway. Reinstalling and reconfiguring is just not that big a deal to me.

WHS does not support RAID. I have lost data under a RAID setup so it is not a replacement for a Backup\Archive but it is very fault tolerant. A RAID5 array is a very efficient way to manage space and risk. WHS duplication is not as efficient as a RAID5. A WHS disk does have the benefit of being readable on any machine in the event of a crash but that feature is going away in the next version.

New Setup:
Gigabyte 890GPA with 4GB RAM and Phenom II X4 (Really a X3 unlocked)
Windows7 64
Boot 2x 1TB in a RAID1(Mirror)
Data 4x 1.5TB in a RAID5 (4.5TB usable)
Backup 1x 1.5TB
Off-site Backup 1.5TB External Drive

All recording go to the 1TB mirror drives. I manually move recording from the recording drive to the larger RAID5 drive as space is required. The Recording Directory on the RAID5 disk is setup as a Video Library but Sage will recognize the recording correctly after the move. My use SJQ to do this in the future. I do not backup the DVR recording so I do have some potential to loose something if the RAID5 or RAID1 setup fails but that is pretty unlikely unless I do something stupid. I also have the potential to loose movies, musc, etc if it crashes before the weekly sync but I will usually do a manual sync if I have done very much new.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

Reasoning for Change: I really was not using the capabilities of WHS.

I did not use WHS to backup my other machines. By default it wants to backup everything and all a really cared about was either already on the server or in the personal directory on the machine. You can set it to just backup what you want but it is easier to setup SyncToy to copy across the network. If something dies I would rather reinstall then re-image the drive. Chances are something has changed anyway. Reinstalling and reconfiguring is just not that big a deal to me.

If you had lived through a machine going bad while using WHS to back it up, you would probably change your tune. It is just dead simple to restore machines using WHS. Plop in your recovery disk, connect to the WHS machine, and sit back while all the work is completed. No more installing the OS, loading drivers, updating windows, reloading all your programs, etc, etc, etc.

That is worth the price of admission right there.