The Supermicro X8SIL-F motherboard is an excellent board for home and small business servers. When building a file server built upon Windows Home Server (V1 or V2 Vail) or another open source NAS project such as FreeNAS, Openfiler, EON ZFS storage, the Supermicro has a feature set that differentiates itself from both AMD and Intel based consumer-level motherboards. Compatibility...
Oftentimes, users running file servers such as Windows 2008 Server R2, Windows Home Server, Linux variants (including Openfiler), OpenSolaris, FreeBSD (including FreeNAS), and so forth will require more storage than their server can physically store. One option is to add more servers to the SAN. Another option is to add more storage to an existing server. Adding a second (or...
The Supermicro X8SIL-F mATX motherboard is becoming a favorite for home servers, especially those built upon Core i3's and Core i5's because it provides lots of expandability in a small form factor, and has IPMI 2.0. The Supermicro X8SIL-F's supported processors can easily handle a network attached storage (NAS) virtual machine as well as additional virtual machines for other...
As I mentioned in the previous post on the compatibility issue, I had to RMA my Supermicro X8SIL-F (mATX LGA 1156 server board with IPMI 2.0 and dual Intel gigabit NICs) last week because it was version 1.01 PCB instead of v1.02. The difference being support for Clarkdale CPU's.
Just to give an idea of why Supermicro's support is so...
I have been using Adaptec products for over a decade, and have generally been a fan (with a few exceptions over the years). My first Windows Home Server was based upon an Adaptec 31605 RAID controller. Today, PMC-Sierra acquired Adaptec's channel storage business, including their RAID business for $34m USD in cash.
This is probably a sign of things to...
Just as a quick note. I purchased a Supermicro X8SIL-F (mATX LGA 1156 server board with IPMI 2.0 and dual Intel gigabit NICs) last week, along with two 2TB Western Digital Green EARS drives using advanced format, and two Hitachi 2TB drives. First off, I was very excited about the X8SIL-F because it is a great mATX motherboard with...
Windows Home Server v1 (WHS) was limited to using 2TB Master Boot Record (MBR) partitions in its storage pool, but the public preview of Windows Home Server V2 codename VAIL is not. This guide will show one how to use GPT Raid volumes passed through Windows Server 2008 R2 running Hyper-V into WHS V2 Codename VAIL. (That sounded way more complex...
Many Windows Home Server machines utilize a smaller OS disk (oftentimes in Raid 1 for redundancy) and then large SATA 3.5" disks for storage. Common 2.5" disks are laptop drives as well as SSDs. Another factor influencing their popularity in home-built WHS boxes is the fact that the Norco RPC-4220 (a popular home server 4U rackmount enclosure) has the ability...
DuplicationInfo is a small Windows Home Server (WHS) add-in that allows one to see what Drive Extender is doing. More specifically, DuplicationInfo allows a user to map a specific file stored on the WHS to the drives being used.
To see this information, one needs to first install DuplicationInfo just like any other WHS add-in. After installation, it is as...
After using one of the the lowest power AMD CPUs around, the Sempron 140 Sargas (single core) in a WHS, I decided to go to the other extreme and try a Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition. With the release of six core AMD CPU's, and the existence of the Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition, the Phenom II...