My ‘Vail’ Home Server

Vail, or Windows Home Server 2011 is close to being released. With the RC available for testing, I decided to plunge in a give it a try.

The big change from Home Server v1 to v2 is the removal of Drive Extender. It was a very useful feature but the lack of it isn’t a deal break for me.

Whilst I like my HP MediaSmart server, it did lack power that you need if you want to do more than HP intended.

So with that in mind, I decided to build my own server. My key aims; Faster processor, USB 3.0, RAID-5 and more than 4 hard disk bays.

Case - $214 Fractal Design - Array R2 (from Ncix in Canada) Definitely a luxury but its a beautiful brushed aluminium case and it takes 7 Hard Disks (6x 3.5” and 1x 2.5”). Most OEM Home Servers only take 4 and I found that very limiting. Another selling factor is the size, it’s not much bigger than my HP MediaSmart and considerably smaller than a ugly standard PC case. The only thing it’s lacking is front facing USB, but that’s easy to work around. Motherboard - $119 Zotac H55ITX-C-E LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI USB 3.0 Mini ITX Intel Motherboard (from New Egg) There’s not many Mini-ITX motherboards but all of them are packed full of features. I chose the Zotac because it came with USB 3.0. Unfortunately it doesn’t have on-board RAID, so you have to make use of the only spare PCI-Express slot. There are currently no motherboards with USB 3.0 & RAID. RAID PCI-Express Card - $118.99 HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 PCI Express SATA II (3.0Gb/s) (from New Egg) I already had one of these lying around but there are a few options out there. The downside is this card only has 4 SATA ports and 6 would have been ideal. CPU - $129 Intel Core i3-550 Clarkdale 3.2GHz 4MB L3 Cache LGA 1156 (from New Egg) More power than you need, but I do use my Home Server for more than just it’s NAS capabilities. I found my MediaSmart really slow if I tried to do any sort of on-the-fly transcoding. Memory - $40.99 G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 1333 (from New Egg) It’s so cheap I didn’t even consider 2GB. Hard Disks - $70.99 each Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 2TB 5900 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0GB/s (from New Egg) I already had a pair of Seagate 2TBs drives and they have been very reliable, so I brought another two more to complete my RAID array. In addition to the 6x 3.5” drives there’s also room for a 2.5”. The idea being that you run your OS on this drive, and if you’re full of money you could use an SSD! I already had a spare 250GB Western Digital 2.5” drive that I’m using. Total Cost That’s all the parts, the total cost, if I didn’t have a few things already would have been $990.94.

Case (inc. delivery from Canada)	$214.00
Motherboard	$119.00
CPU	$129.00
Memory	$40.00
2TB Hard Drive	$79.99
2TB Hard Drive	$79.99
2TB Hard Drive	$79.99
2TB Hard Drive	$79.99
RAID Card	$118.99
250GB 2.5" Hard Drive	$49.99
Total	$990.94

DIY vs. OEM Home Server Windows Home Server’s aim is to be a cheap, yet powerful in-home Server. So whilst $990.94 isn’t crazy money I still wanted to have that goal in mind. A brand new HP Mediasmart EX490 1TB costs $549.99 with 1TB of storage. To upgrade this to 8TB of storage you’d need to either throw away the 1TB and buy 4 x 2TB or buy some 3TB drives. Minimum you’d spend $240 more on storage. Making it $798. So what do you get for the $200 extra I spent?

Intel Core i3-550 instead of a Celeron 2.2 Ghz Processor
4GB DDR3 vs 2GB DDR2 Memory
The option to add two more 3.5” drives and a 2.5” drive
USB 3.0 ports
A beautiful brushed aluminium case
Video Out, Home Server is design to be headless but it’s always nice to be able to use it directly