For new SageTV server - Win7 or 10?

[wayner]

Over the next few months I will likely be building a new SageTV server. Anyone have advice on which Windows to use? This PC will be not used to watch media it will be in my "server room" in the basement and I will usually access it via RDP.

I will likely be using a socket 1151 CPU and apparently it can be a PITA to install Win7 which may make me lean towards Win10.

Anyone know if you can run WHS backups from a Win 10 PC?

[stanger89]

I installed Window7 on my new i7 6700k (Asus Z170-a) no problem.

I think I just had to do method 1:
http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/...uide_print.pdf

[wayner]

That doc seems kind of unclear to me - do you need a DVD drive to do the install?

The other method that I have heard of is to do the first part of a Win7 install on an older, pre 100 series PC from a USB. When it goes to do the first reboot you then shut everything down and move your new system disk to your 100 series DVD. Apparently the first step of the install is to copy files from the USB (or DVD) to the new system hard drive/SSD.

[stanger89]

I had a USB stick for the Windows 7 installer, and just stuck the driver disk that came with the motherboard in the optical drive during installation so it could find the drivers.

[wayner]

That's not too bad I guess - but I you still need an optical drive for at least a short period of time and it is a pain to put one in temporarily if you don't plan on having one in the PC.

[stanger89]

My PC has one, since it was my desktop, and I do all my ripping on it.

FWIW, for a server I'd get something with vPro/AMT or IPMI, being able to remotely access the "physical" console is just too darn convenient. I don't think the there's a vPro compatible 100 chipset yet is there?

[wayner]

That sounds useful, I didn't know it existed.

I guess the big thing is that this allows you to remotely reboot a machine if it has died, is that right. I do have a web enabled power switch that I have used to reboot my server, HD-PVRs, etc.

[stanger89]

It's more than that, you have full access to the machine, as if you were there, but (in the case of AMT) via VNC. You can reboot, power off, power on, but the really great thing is, you can access it even if it locks up or becomes otherwise unresponsive via the network. You can access the BIOS, change settings, pre-windows command prompt, etc. It's just like being at the machine with a real keyboard/mouse/monitor, except you can do it from another machine even with the server tucked away in a closet without any of those attached.

IPMI (Supermicro) is similar. I was sold on the idea with my old unRAID server hardware (Supermicro X7SPA), when I rebuilt it I went to great lengths to find a good Q77 (since I had a "spare" i7 3770s and RAM already) board. One of the most useful things is, for unRAID, there's a script you run on new drives before you add them to the array that checks them and preps them so you have minimal downtime of the array. However on modern, large drives, the script takes upward of a day to run. That means you really can't use normal remote access (telnet/ssh) because if that times out or otherwise dies, the script dies, you have to run it from a local session. You can do that remotely with IPMI or vPro/AMT. It also comes in very handy for debugging if you run into problems.

The one niggle with AMT/vPro is that if you power up the system (not reboot), your NIC is stuck at 10Mbps until you reboot. It happens because the NIC drops to low power 10Mbps mode when the machine is "off" so that you can still access the management functions. But when those are active the NIC can't reset to 1000Mbps when you power up. But as noted, as simple reboot fixes that.

[KeithAbbott]

Originally Posted by wayner

That's not too bad I guess - but I you still need an optical drive for at least a short period of time and it is a pain to put one in temporarily if you don't plan on having one in the PC.

Buy a external optical drive for about $30. It plugs in via USB port, and comes in handy often. Well worth $30...

[tmiranda]

I think if I were setting up a new server I'd go Linux. Reasoning:

- The performance is better. I have a few test machines that run Windows and/or Linux. The Linux server feels snappier to me on identical hardware.

- Most of the open source development is being done by people focused on Linux. Doing builds for Linux is trivial. Doing builds that create a Windows installer is not. (To be fair there are people looking at this and it will certainly become better.)

[Skirge01]

I use devices like this one so that I can use any SATA device on any computer with a USB port.

Still, having full remote access is awesome; no more dragging monitors and keyboards all over the house, having trip hazards throughout walkways, etc. I use TeamViewer (free for non-commercial usage) on my PCs, but VNC is great, too. My home server has 4 virtual machines on it using ESXi and that's impressive, as well, but that's more than most people want/need.

[wayner]

That may not work in this instance as the thing that you need to load from the DVD is the USB drivers as without out you have no USB functionality when installing Win7 to a 100 series mobo - no keyboard, mouse, etc. But you could just place an "internal" DVD drive off the side of the case and attach power and SATA cables.

Here is a bit of info on the issue: http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-re...latform-specs/

[wayner]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I think if I were setting up a new server I'd go Linux.

I have dabbled in Linux (and Solaris) for almost 20 years but I still really struggle with things, like installing packages that are far easier in Win.

And I worry that when it comes to stuff like drivers for capture devices that they will be harder to find or less stable when it comes to Linux.

In this instance the playback will be on extenders, or whatever we are using for extenders in the future - which could very well be Linux. But the performance will be more dependent on dealing with the limitations of JVM for multiple extenders since that has been my biggest pain point in the past, and I don't see that being dependent on the server running Linux vs Win.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by wayner

That may not work in this instance as the thing that you need to load from the DVD is the USB drivers as without out you have no USB functionality when installing Win7 to a 100 series mobo - no keyboard, mouse, etc. But you could just place an "internal" DVD drive off the side of the case and attach power and SATA cables.

Here is a bit of info on the issue: http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-re...latform-specs/

By the Asus instructions, it should work with a USB drive, I think it's more of a "knowledge" issue on the Windows 7 side than a technical one. For example when I was installing, it would boot off the USB drive (windows installer) fine, but they it would complain about a missing driver. Keyboard and mouse all worked, so clearly it wasn't an "all or nothing", though I was plugged into the USB2 controller.

What I should probably do is build those drivers into my install USB so I don't have to go through that if I reinstall.

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I think if I were setting up a new server I'd go Linux. Reasoning:

- The performance is better. I have a few test machines that run Windows and/or Linux. The Linux server feels snappier to me on identical hardware.

- Most of the open source development is being done by people focused on Linux. Doing builds for Linux is trivial. Doing builds that create a Windows installer is not. (To be fair there are people looking at this and it will certainly become better.)

I've actually got my Sage server running as a VM on my unRAID 6 server. It's working really well. Though I'm keeping a keen eye on the V9 developments, I really like the idea of a SageTV Docker. That should work fine for me since I use all HDHRs.

[Fuzzy]

I've installed win7 from usb thumbdrives many times, there are plenty of tutorials on the web to make thumbdrive installation media. You can just as easily download the drivers for the motherboard, and thor them in a separate folder on the thumbdrive, and install them after the system is up and running in windows.

[wayner]

So have I Fuzzy but things have changed in the chipset used for socket 1151 mobos:

Microsoft is removing support for the EHCI host controller (USB 2.0 spec) and keeping only the xHCI host controller spec (also known as the universal USB 3.0 specification). While the USB 3.0 spec is backward compatible with most USB 2.0 and 1.0 functions, installing windows 7 via USB will not be one of them

[Fuzzy]

Microsoft has not changed anything in the windows 7 media supplied years ago. Where is that quote from and what's the context?

[wayner]

Click on the link in post 12.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

Click on the link in post 12.

Okay, that's a pretty misleading quote. Microsoft didn't remove anything from windows - Intel simply didn't implement any USB 2.0 or 1.0 in those chipsets, 3.0 only, which windows media does not have drivers for. You can roll the USB 3.0 drivers into your installation media though.

[Humanzee]

I recently moved, and built a new server about a month ago. I had my product keys written down, but was in a pickle because my OS discs were packed away still. You use to be able to download the install files from MS for Win7, but apparently they changed that. So i dug through all my boxes and found my Win7 discs. Install only went so far as it seemed some driver was required to access the m.2 slot where the SSD was installed. Or now that I think of it I couldn't get the optical drive to work because of some combination of ports that I was using disabled the optical drive because I was using the m.2 slot. Or something.

Anyway I had to build a win7 install stick that had all the required drivers added to the image for the motherboard. Which involves unmounting the boot.wim file, adding the drivers and then remounting it, then adding it to your USB stick. observe this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd37BJwTxiM

Of course the motherboard disc had a bunch of other poorly labeled drivers on it for different boards and OS's so it took a bit of trial and error to get the install to complete. Yes, kinda a pain.

I was thinking of upgrading to win10 before installing sage, to establish my hardware profile with microsoft, then downgrading to win7 again to install sage and test, so at least then I could get my free win10 in the future. But at this point I might just stick with win7 for a while. At least till win10 / sage combination is out of the guinea pig trials stage.