Upgrading Windows Home Server

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

Larson

Member
Nov 10, 2015
99
7
18
53
Would someone share their thoughts/opinions on upgrading my Windows Home Server v1 to Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials?

Priorities:
1- I still love the client computer backups in Windows Homes Server, which is one of the reasons I'm sticking with Windows for a Home Server.
2- Centralized location of everything (data) in home and home office.
3- Ability to store/stream music/videos/movies on the network and outside the home/office.

I'm a novice to intermediate SMB IT administrator at best, so I would really appreciate your guys input. This is what I'm thinking about doing:

Motherboard: Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F
Processor: Intel Xeon D-1540 (Embedded in Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F)
Memory: 128GB 4x Samsung M393A4K40BB0-CPB 32GB DDR4-2133 Memory MEM-DR432L-SL01-ER21
Storage: 4+ WD4000FYYZ 4TB HDDs
OS Drives: Not sure yet.
Case: Fractal Design Define R5
OS: Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials

First Questions:
1- Does this seem like overkill, or am I headed in the right direction?
2- Any problem with the above combination of components?
3- Is there an equivalent motherboard to the Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F, except with 2 m.2 slots for RAID1 OS installation?
4- Are you limited to 64GB if running Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials 64-bit?
5- Anybody know of a good online backup for Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials? I'd love to use CrashPlan, but they don't support Essentials, even though they say it should work.

Thanks for all your help,
James
 

vl1969

Active Member
Feb 5, 2014
634
76
28
I am not sure if essentials have the backup feature you want.
And anyhow, with this much power, get the standard and run hyper-v. Than you can have a dedicated vm for each option.
You can get all functions by running proxmox and do vm for all other funtions as well. Much better use of the resources imho. And free as well
PS: your setup is 3 times more powerful than my main hyper-v server at work. I run a dc/ad server,
Sql server, file server and 2 general purpose vms on that.
 

j_h_o

Active Member
Apr 21, 2015
644
179
43
California, US
  1. Xeon D-1540 is probably overkill. What CPU is in your current server? You can go to PassMark Software - CPU Benchmark Charts and compare; I think D-1520 even is probably enough for what you're doing.
  2. You probably won't need more than 32GB of RAM.
  3. I'm running Crashplan on my Server 2012 R2 Standard installation. It eats RAM with large number of files, but works fine. And you'll still have more than enough RAM with 32GB even with Crashplan :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: Sergio

RadDoc98

New Member
Mar 14, 2016
18
0
1
51
I've been running Crashplan on my 2012r2 essentials server for 2 years. No issues at all. Backing up nearly 3 tb of stuff with 16gb of ram.
 

Zathras

New Member
Sep 15, 2015
16
12
3
Ottawa, Canada
Essentials is definitely the next step if you've liked WHS; I went from v1 to WHS2011 to Server 2012 and it works just as easily as ever for sharing and client backup. Your plan definitely looks like overkill though; my server runs R2 Essentials on an X10SLL-F with nothing but a Pentium G3420 and 16GB of ECC RAM (actually only 8GB at the moment) and it never misses a beat. However, it doesn't do any transcoding of media so you probably need extra power if that's a priority. I still have the option of dropping a Xeon E3 in there if I want to do more with Hyper-V or something else. I also have Crashplan running on it with no problems, although I do find their cloud upload speed to be very slow (usually less than 100KB/s) but YMMV.

I also wouldn't place too much importance on a RAID1 for the OS unless uptime is critical; by default the server will back itself up twice a day, so I just used a cheap 120GB SSD for the OS and a 1TB 2.5" drive which stores over a month of system backups.
 

Larson

Member
Nov 10, 2015
99
7
18
53
Thanks again j_h_o for your suggestions. I've been looking and comparing.
 

Larson

Member
Nov 10, 2015
99
7
18
53
Thanks RadDoc98 for the feedback; I was hoping somebody else was using CrashPlan on Essentials 2012 R2. Have you ever had to restore anything from CrashPlan?
 

Larson

Member
Nov 10, 2015
99
7
18
53
Thank you Zathras for your feedback as well. Maybe that would be better to use a motherboard that supports multiple processors in case the need changes. I'm hoping for a RAID1 setup for the OS because uptime will be critical since my home office computers are on the same network and they will be on the domain, I think. I take it your are using your Essentials server setup without the domain?
 

RadDoc98

New Member
Mar 14, 2016
18
0
1
51
I've restored a few files from Crashplan here and there. Works fine. Thankfully never had to pull all my data back.
 

RyC

Active Member
Oct 17, 2013
359
88
28
Thanks RadDoc98 for the feedback; I was hoping somebody else was using CrashPlan on Essentials 2012 R2. Have you ever had to restore anything from CrashPlan?
CrashPlan should work fine with 2012 R2 essentials, I'm running it on 2012 R2 Datacenter with no issues
 

Larson

Member
Nov 10, 2015
99
7
18
53
Can any one recommend a good, solid, quiet power supply for my new home office server?
 

j_h_o

Active Member
Apr 21, 2015
644
179
43
California, US
What are your power requirements? How many connectors? What size power supply do you need? What board/config did you settle on?
 

Larson

Member
Nov 10, 2015
99
7
18
53
Can somebody recommend the best way to create a RAID 1 (2 disks) for Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials OS using the Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F motherboard, but without using the 6x SATA3 connections? The ideal situation would have been for this motherboard to have 2 PCIe m.2 slots for a RAID 1 OS setup, but it only has one. I'd like to keep the 6x SATA3 connections for storage.
 

Deslok

Well-Known Member
Jul 15, 2015
1,122
125
63
34
deslok.dyndns.org
Can somebody recommend the best way to create a RAID 1 (2 disks) for Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials OS using the Supermicro X10SDV-TLN4F motherboard, but without using the 6x SATA3 connections? The ideal situation would have been for this motherboard to have 2 PCIe m.2 slots for a RAID 1 OS setup, but it only has one. I'd like to keep the 6x SATA3 connections for storage.
You'll want to add a raid controller(perc H310 or similar) or move to a different board, if itx isn't a requirement one like this is a tad slower (1537 vs 1540) but offers more options in that regard Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X10SDV-7TP4F