I have decided to post a little roadmap of what’s next on the site. I am a list making person, so this will hopefully keep me goal oriented. The next few weeks I will be focusing on some Windows Home Server add-in reviews and guides, some Linux/ OpenSolaris on Hyper-V guides, and some hardware testing. Other potential thoughts I have are to write up how to get decent network performance from a WHS (i.e. over 90MB/s which it seems like there are people who can’t figure this out). I may also move into trying some ESXi virtualization guides, some FreeBSD/ OpenSolaris ZFS guides, and some hardware reviews and benchmarks.
I also have been purchasing a few new pieces of hardware in the last few days:
- Dell PowerConnect 2724 (I am using other PowerConnect 27xx products so this makes life easy)
- Another Intel Pro/1000 PT Quad NIC
- AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition (may return this weekend)
- MSI 890GXM-G65 mATX motherboard (may return this weekend)
- Two Intel X25-V 40GB Drives
- 8GB of G.Skill DDR3 1600
Guides and Reviews Almost Complete
The below is a list of articles that I am in some stage of writing.
- ASoft AutoExit Windows Home Server Add-in Review (this week as I am just finishing it up)
- OpenFiler on Hyper-V guide. This was promised awhile ago, I just need to sit and write the guide. (early next week)
- An update on the Big Windows Home Server as it has been too long, and it now occupies over 8U of space! (next week)
Possible Next Reviews and Guides
- OpenSolaris on Hyper-V
- EON Storage on Hyper-V
- Intel X25-V in Raid 0
- Getting over 90MB/s speeds from a WHS over Gigabit Ethernet.
- Norco RPC-4220 v. RPC-4020 review
- Build your own Direct Attached Storage (DAS)
- USB 3.0 enclosures
- Other WHS Add-in reviews
Please feel free to leave a comment if there is something you would specifically like to see. I will probably set up a new test box or two this weekend so any input will help me decide how and what to build.
You mentioned IPMI in your Big WHS update. Can you show what that is?
Dude… HTPC’s & Win 7 MCE integration!
What about HTPC noise too?
that amd 955 BE power consumption and handbrake. is it a good server CPU?
“Getting over 90MB/s speeds from a WHS over Gigabit Ethernet.”
I’m definitely waiting for this. Maximum speed I’ve seen in my home network was 102MB/s. Not sure if it was OS capped thought, might have been the hard drives
@Timothy, I can do a piece on Supermicro IPMI 2.0
@Walt, I may get into the SFF/ HTPC’s at some point. It most likely will not be until May though.
@Donny, I did have a thought on a variation of this that has me wanting to keep the Phenom II. I will probably make up my mind tomorrow.
@Paul, 102MB/s is very good for Windows clients over a home Gigabit network! Above 90-100MB/s you really have to troubleshoot. There are tons of people though that see 20-30MB/s. Probably article 1 will be focused on bumping those numbers.
I would REALLY be interested in some information/guides for a build with OpenSolaris/ZFS as a host OS, and using xvm for guest OSs. The basics seem easy to find by googling (especially ZFS RAID wise), but when you get down to the specifics, especially for those not accustomed to UNIX/command line, it can become unclear. Specific topics I’d love if you covered are configuring xvm, using VT-d with xvm, and configuring iSCSI for sharing out all that ZFS storage.
Looking forward to it!