WHS 2011 vs SBS 2011 Essentials, vs New Motherboard

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fblittle

New Member
Apr 5, 2011
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Gridley, CA (near Sacramento)
Currently I am running WHS 2011 on my home server. I have an old (2004 vintage) Intel Server motherboard with 2 - 2.9 Ghz Xeon procerssors on it. When running WHS Vail I was able to see that both CPUs and their threads were being used. When I installed the Released version of WHS 2011 I can now only see that it is using one processor. I know that SBS 2011 Essentials is able to utilize both CPUs. Since I have a copy I am tempted to try it, but WHS 2011 is set up and running. I would have to start my configuration over with SBS 2011 Essentials. It would be worth it if I knew that I wasn't loosing any functionality after installing and configuring it.

I am tryiing to decied what to do about it. I don't need the second CPU sitting there using power and not being utilized.

:confused: The question is: Will I loose any functionality of WHS 2011 if I install SBS 2011 Essentials on my server instead? I heard, but have not read, that SBS 2011 will do video transcoding. I like that, but really don't know if I really utilize that anyway. Having 25 clients is good, but in reality its a home server and I will probably never even use the full 10 clients of WHS 2011. I will install SharePoint Foundations on either setup when I decide which way to go.

Is there a comparison chart of WHS 2011 vs. SBS 2011 Essentials?

My Options are:
1. Install SBS 2011 Essentials. Would have to reconfigure all software.
2. Scrap the motherboard and get a lower power board, but that would be expensive. New Memory, New CPU, New Motherboard, and worst of all I will loose my 12 port 3ware RAID card because it is a PCI-X slot card.
3. Remove one CPU. This seems like a waste, I am fairly confident, but not certain, this board will run without one CPU.

Any advice, thoughts, or more options would be very helpfull.
 
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PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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Perhaps try running Hyper-V server (the free version) on the hardware and run WHS 2011 as a VM? You'd still be limited in the thread/CPU count of WHS 2011 - nothing you can do about that - but at least you could fire up another VM or two and make use of all the cores on the MB. And you don't have to invest any more money...
 
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fblittle

New Member
Apr 5, 2011
19
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1
Gridley, CA (near Sacramento)
I hadn't thought of that option. I don't know anything about Hyper-V Server. I have only tried vmWare Player and Virtual Box on a Desktop computer. Maybe I'll give it a try. Maybe I can run WHS 2011 and SBS 2011 Essentials on the same Box.

But I'm still wondering if anybody knows the answer to the question about the difference of WHS 2011 and SBS 2011 Essentials?
 
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Metaluna

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Dec 30, 2010
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Does SBS 2011 come with any kind of client backup software? The client backup system is about the only thing I can think of that is still worthwhile about WHS, now that Drive Extender is gone, and with the add-in community basically ignoring WHS 2011.
 
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fblittle

New Member
Apr 5, 2011
19
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1
Gridley, CA (near Sacramento)
SBSe 2011 Backups

Metaluna said:
Does SBS 2011 come with any kind of client backup software?
Click to expand...
Yes it has both Server Backup and Client backup. I installed SBSe 2011 and saw little reason to keep using it after I finally decided to replace my server motherboard. I just need a NAS solution not a Domain network. My final solution was to replace my server and get a more energy effecient solution. My old system heated up my office, no need for a heater during the (California) winter. The new server is already cooler, which should save on energy for cooling as well as energy for running the server.
 
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fblittle

New Member
Apr 5, 2011
19
0
1
Gridley, CA (near Sacramento)
DIY Server

Patrick said:
What did you end up using for a server?
Click to expand...
I Got some discarded parts from work. A 19" card cage that had circuit boards in it the size of hard drives. So I modified the card cage to hold 12 hard disks on aluminum plates, vertically. I then put in a backplane board for each drive and now they plug into the card rack just like a circuit board, and they are Hot swappable. I have 8 drive slots that are connected to my new IBM ServeRAID M5015 (Reviewed on this site) and 4 drive slots connected to the motherboard. Two in a mirror and 1 SSD for caching and one 1TB drive for backups. The top half of the card cage is where the motherboard is mounted. and the PSU next to it. Each drive has an activity light so I can identify the drives. I used a Gigabyte Z68 motherboard with a Core i3 2125 processor with onboard graphics, more than good enough for a server. A picture is worth a thousand words, I'd post it in the DIY forum if I knew where to post a photo, or where and how to link one. It sounds like a kludge, but it's actually a nice looking server in an industrial sort of way. It has clear covers in front and an aluminum back plate. It mounts in my 1/2 height open frame server rack. I just finished it last week so I haven't done much testing. I loaded WHS 2011 on it, and created a 5 x 2TB RAID5 disk array on it, but haven't had time to transferr my data yet. I need to do some house cleaning (dupes, old, and junk files) of the data before, or as, I load it up. I need to come up with a better, more logical data tree.
 
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