Windows Server 2012 Plans

[RimBlock]

I have installed Windows 7 64, Windows 7 32 and WHS 2011 on a D2700 Atom board and it is very slow on the installs and updates. Saying that, actually using the machine as a file server is fine.

Note that, with this generation at least, Intel is not supporting 64bit OSs, mainly due to issues getting 64bit drivers for the incorporated chipset.

More or less any mITX board with an i3 or even possibly GXXX and up should be fine. Look at the S1200KP mITX workstation board if you want ECC ram and the ability to run a Xeon E3 as well as an i3 or Gxxx and even non-ECC ram. There is one on Amazon for around US$175 at the moment.

I run WHS 2012, Windows SBS 2011 and various other VMs on an E3-1230 via vSphere but mileage obviously depends on what people want to do with the installed servers.

RB

 

[ehorn]

... Look at the S1200KP mITX workstation board if you want ECC ram and the ability to run a Xeon E3 as well as an i3 or Gxxx and even non-ECC ram. There is one on Amazon for around US$175 at the moment...

RB

Provantage has it for $131.00

http://www.provantage.com/intel-dbs1200kp~7ITEM0NH.htm

One could pair it up with a i3-2120T (~$125.00) for a nice mini-itx platform for ~ 40 bucks more than the Atom 525...

But, at this price point, if micro-ATX is an option, Patrick's suggestion of the SuperMicro X9... series looks more intriguing.

peace,

 

[sjg]

Thank you, all, for your input. Good stuff.

Micro atx is an option. I focused on the Core i3-3220 and X9SCL+-F combo Patrick mentioned and was a bit surprised at the cost differential. The MB, i3, and 16GB total push $400. The same $400 can purchase the D525 system plus 8GB, and it includes case and power supply.

I didn't say so at first, but one of these test systems will eventually make its way to the family server rack. Power reduction becomes more an issue there.

Decision? The X9 board plus i3-3220 and 16GB does sound the better option, but $100+ times number of test units is real money to me. I think I'll order just one of the D525 units and see if it won't be tolerable. If not, well, it's about time to replace my SVN server.

Steve

 

[Andreas]

Power reduction becomes more an issue there.

FYI, with regards to power consumption.
I just finished the first phase of my family server.
E3-1245v2 CPU, 32 GB, Hyper-V with 6 VMs
12 x 3 TB, Raid5 @ 30TB
90 watt on the power plug at idle (all discs spinning, 5 vents)

rgds,
Andy

 

[Patrick]

FYI, with regards to power consumption.
I just finished the first phase of my family server.
E3-1245v2 CPU, 32 GB, Hyper-V with 6 VMs
12 x 3 TB, Raid5 @ 30TB
90 watt on the power plug at idle (all discs spinning, 5 vents)

rgds,
Andy

Little bit scary with 12x 3TB in RAID 5 ;-)

Great results. Which drives were those? 7200rpm 3TB disks can hit 10w power consumption during active and 4-7w idle. 5400-5900rpm drives are in the 3.5-7w range. Fans can be several watts each so that is a great result at 90w.

 

[Andreas]

Little bit scary with 12x 3TB in RAID 5 ;-)

As it is our family server, recovery time isn't a huge issue..... Backup is done daily

Great results. Which drives were those? 7200rpm 3TB disks can hit 10w power consumption during active and 4-7w idle. 5400-5900rpm drives are in the 3.5-7w range. Fans can be several watts each so that is a great result at 90w.

The new ivy bridge E3 are a marvel. Very low power at idle, enough oomph when needed. wrt to drives. Wanted to get WD Red, but they are currently out over here - hard to get them. So I took std WD green. I am currently using an old RocketRaid 2680 8-port HBA. Its only 5 watt and has more than enough bandwidth to support the GBit Lan connection at full hw speed.

As said, this is phase one of the build. I am waiting for the Adaptec 24 port RAID controller to connect all 24 drives in my little case to one controller (only one slot, less power than 2 HBA). Will later be available in october (hopefully)

rgds,
Andy

 

[RimBlock]

Provantage has it for $131.00

http://www.provantage.com/intel-dbs1200kp~7ITEM0NH.htm

One could pair it up with a i3-2120T (~$125.00) for a nice mini-itx platform for ~ 40 bucks more than the Atom 525...

But, at this price point, if micro-ATX is an option, Patrick's suggestion of the SuperMicro X9... series looks more intriguing.

peace,

Nice, thanks.

They also have the S1200KPR will all the improvements (if you believe them) which is US$141.46.

Not sure if they ship external to the US or to US PO Boxes though.

RB

 

[zicoz]

So I just installed Storage Server to test it out, and I've already run into a small problem. Are you not supposed to be able to grow storage pools? I created a pool and then added another disk to the system, but my only option seems to be to create a new pool.

edit: Turns out it was a defect harddrive. But one thing I've noticed is that the Storage Spaces setup on Storage Server is way more complicated then it is in Windows 8. To be honest it's a small mess.

edit 2: Does the 63TB limit excist in Server 2012 aswell, or is that only for Windows 8?

 

[zicoz]

Windows Server 2012 Essentials have now reach RTM-status, and is available for Technet/MSDN subscribers

 

[low858]

windows 2012 in an mITX build for my NAS and media server. Running Hyper-V w/(1 x server 2012 vm, 1 x Windows 8 vm, 1 x WHS2011 vm, 1 x Ubuntu 12.01). So far, things have been pretty solid. I have storage spaces set up but dont have any disks in HW RAID.

Pool 1 - mirrored 4TB drives, created a 3TB volume for file storage. Remaining 1TB split into two volumes for Time Machine backups from mine and the wifey's macs.
Pool 2 - playing with 6TB of storage in simple mode for streaming media.


I'm just on the fence with Essentials 2012 cause you are required to have a domain with it. There are hacks, but still battling in my head if its worth the headaches. I do want to reformat my volumes to ReFS however. WHS2011 only supports NTFS.

 

[jcl333]

Hello Patrick,

Since you posted this, I wanted to chime in since I work as a server admin. So it is nice to see a post that I can offer some meaningful input ;-)

I just setup a pair of HP BL460c G7 server blades in my lab at work with a Server 2012 Hyper-V v3 cluster. I also have some HP bl460c Gen8 blades on order, because the G7's don't support SR-IOV that I really want to try out.

Here are some of the things that I find exciting on Server 2012:
* Nothing shared live migration - even VMware only just got this with vcenter 5.1

* SR-IOV *with* live migratiion - VMware doesn't have this, and I see no indicaton of when they will (asking about it though). People here may want to pursue a setup that can support this, you could definately get some higher density with VMs by reducing the CPU overhead from paravirtualized NICs.

* Virtual HBAs - this is amazing, the only other thing I know of that can do this is the Cisco Nexus 5000, and even they consider it a bleeding edge feature (and the nexus 5000 is $50K), and it *still* doesn't break live migration - Microsoft is getting serious here.

* ReFS - I think it is about $%#@# time they did something like this. I am really curious if this is a viable option to ZFS. Time will tell, the only issue I see so far is no support for quotas, but maybe they will add that back in later.

* File server scaling (SMB3) - in Server 2012 you can actually create a file server cluster, and create a file share that actually spans servers, I have not seen this done before. So, need more bandwidth? Just add more servers. Before you could have active/active file server clustering, but no share could be owned/served by more than one server at a time.

Those are the biggest highlights I see so far. They completely re-did SCVMM with 2012, but it is at a *very* early stage...

So, the main thing I plan to test out with this is building a large SQL server using guest clustering. I will put it on some big full height blades with 256GB or more RAM in them. This was not practical before in VMware or Hyper-v because both Microsoft and VMware place huge limits on what they will support with guest clustering. Server 2012 pretty much takes away most if not all restrictions on doing this. And I certainly plan to standardize on 2012 for file servers.

Now, thanks in large part to your fine site here, I am contemplating a home lab server setup. Partially for media storage like everyone else is doing, partially for backups, but also to maybe create a mini virtualization environment. I'm a Citrix Admin and don't often get to play with their latest stuff. It would be very cool to have some of it working from home, and then go to my boss and show him ;-)

-JCL

 

[Patrick]

Very cool thoughts! Still playing around myself.