ServeTheHome – Intel Xeon AMD Opteron RAID Controller Reviews

With Windows Home Server 2011 coming out in the near future many less experienced home users are looking into RAID subsystems to create larger storage pools. This is a segment where without a very solid basic understanding of what the technologies involved are, a user can make a purchasing decision detrimental to their machine’s ultimate performance and data security. It is important that a user understands the relative strengths and weaknesses of different RAID philosophies, software RAID, “Fake-RAID”, and hardware RAID. Read the full story

With Windows Home Server 2011 and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials both having recent release candidates indicating an imminent release, I thought it would be wise to take a minute to show how to setup a RAID 1 array using the Intel ICH which is found on most modern LGA 1155, LGA 1156 and LGA 1366 Intel motherboards. With very widespread support, the Intel RAID 1 provides at least a decent solution for Windows Home Server 2011 users that would like redundancy under the new operating system. Using RAID 1 arrays, users can setup redundant mirrors of disks so that if one fails, the other disk can be used (oftentimes called mirroring.) Be forewarned, this is a very simple guide, and there are a lot of other options out there in the world of RAID, but this is the easiest way to setup a RAID 1 array for a lot of users. Read the full story

The ASUS P8H67-M EVO is a very interesting board with a lot of features for the HTPC enthusiast. Based on the H67 chipset, the mATX board utilizes Intel’s Sandy Bridge on-die GPU to provide video connectivity. With the P67 chip set supporting overclocking, split PCIe lines off of the GPU, but lacking the ability to utilize Intel’s on-die GPU, the H67 chip set found on the ASUS P8H67-M EVO positions the board for the HTPC market or others where 3D graphics performance is not required beyond Windows 7′s Aero interface. This particular board intrigued me because it has not just a PCIe x16 slot, but also includes a PCIe x4 slot (with AMD CrossFire support), a PCIe x1 slot, and a legacy PCI slot in the compact mATX form factor. Read the full story

This was an exciting week, and one that had many home server blogs heating up the RSS feeds with both a big Intel flaw found and Microsoft releasing much anticipated release candidates. Read the full story

Microsoft’s Windows Home Server Vail platform has had a rough development cycle. First cheered for the public beta with a slew of new media features such as on-the-fly transcoding, the euphoria did not last. This fall, Microsoft announced that the popular and updated Drive Extender V2 technology would no longer be a part of the Vail platform.  Drive Extender V2 provided both enhanced data security alongside the ability to pool drives using a technology not all too dissimilar to RAID 10 (ed. this is a bit of a stretch, but it does stripe and mirror.) Today we have Windows Home Server 2011 and Small Business Server 2011 Essentials release candidates which is the next evolution of the Windows Home Server and Small Business Server platform, bringing the more stable 64-bit Windows Server 2008 R2 platform to the consumer and very small business market.

A lot has been discussed in the community about having to use RAID for storage. As someone who has been using RAID with WHS for more than two years, this is not an issue at all if you understand how disk technologies work. That is precisely why using RAID and GPT with Windows Home Server v2 was covered in April 2010 at ServeTheHome.com.

Read the full story

Intel announced today that it has discovered a flaw in the Sandy Bridge desktop chip sets that are part of the Cougar Point family, and I am looking for a workaround. Read the full story

A lot has been made of the new Intel Sandy Bridge parts. For HTPC’s they are really great CPUs as they offer low power consumption, in line with Clarkdale, and have a slew of new features. Since there has been a lot of discussion regarding the new CPUs already in terms of overclock ability and general performance, I am going to stick to a home server/ HTPC related review of the Core i7-2600K which is the top-of-the-line January 2011 Intel Sandy Bridge part. Read the full story

A lot of comments have been logged asking for an entry/ low-end storage DIY guide. The purpose of this guide is to provide a solution for a system with 2-6 drives which is more robust than a simple 1-2 drive NAS system sold by many vendors. Unlike the higher-end and mid-range builds, this guide will optimize for cost of initial purchase as well as power consumption. It will be assumed that these systems are only running one operating system in a bare metal installation (i.e. these will not be virtualized systems). Read the full story

Having recently published the high-end home/ small business December 2010 buyer’s guide, I received a lot of feedback requesting items for the mid and low-end guides. The mid-range I define as a minimum of six drives in the system with a maximum of fourteen drives. Anything more than fourteen drives and getting a 4U storage chassis becomes cost effective. Furthermore with only one add-in or onboard 8-port controller to handle 7-14 drives this seemed like a strong cut-off point. Read the full story

A constant question I am asked is what is a good NAS build for various usage scenarios. Based largely on my experiences with things like The Big WHS and reviewing other components for this site, I have put together two power-user builds below that provide a strong starting point for someone looking to build a 20+ drive home or small business server. One thing that I learned is that building twice is generally more expensive than purchasing an end-state build up front so the below does not represent the absolute least expensive build possible. Instead, I tried to configure two machines that are cost optimized using quality components. Read the full story