Windows 8 as Home Server

Posted by: Dungassin on 13 January 2013

My youngest son-in-law is intent on setting up a PC server and is muttering about streaming audio. (he has this huge machine he acquired somewhere or other)

 

He asked my advice (strange, as he probably knows more about computers than I do), and I suggested he install Windows Home Server on it.  However, he has a Windows 8 multiple license and thinks that Windows 8 now has the same functionality.  Is this true, and if so, could he just install a copy of e.g. Asset on the 'new' machine?  Any problems with this approach?

 

He uses my old Naim DVD5/32.5/SNAPS/NAP90 (gift via my daughter) and her Linn Axis, and doesn't actually have a streamer yet.  Don't think he can afford to stretch to a Naim streamer, but any suggestions for something a little cheaper would be appreciated.  Cambridge, Pioneer, Denon, Logitech?

Posted on: 13 January 2013 by garyi

Depends really what he wants to achieve. A server is just that its purpose for creating email servers, web servers etc from your home.

 

Usually strangled by the fact UK upload speeds are shite.

 

For simple home streaming, sure just make it another a computer by installing 8 on it and some sort of UPNP server product.

 

Other options would be Freenas or Nas4free, or vortexbox, all could be installed on the computer.

 

Posted on: 13 January 2013 by Dungassin
Originally Posted by garyi:

Depends really what he wants to achieve. A server is just that its purpose for creating email servers, web servers etc from your home.

 

Usually strangled by the fact UK upload speeds are shite.

 

For simple home streaming, sure just make it another a computer by installing 8 on it and some sort of UPNP server product.

 

Other options would be Freenas or Nas4free, or vortexbox, all could be installed on the computer.

 


I think he wants to do more than just keep music files on the machine - probably videos for streaming as well.  He's a bit of a computer freak - uses Macbooks, iPads, Windows PC (mainly for games and some work he brings home (he's an actuary), and now this huge machine which I believe started out life as a PC server, although he's heavily modified it since acquiring it.

 

As far as I can see, Vortexbox seems to be just for music, so probably wouldn't do what he wants.  I went down the more convention Linux based NAS (QNAP) route, keeping the QNAP for music only, and my other files on a Buffalo NAS.

Posted on: 13 January 2013 by rjstaines

Windows Home Server is so much more than just a file server including UPnP (although it does this brilliantly too). One of it's primary functions was always to handle backup and restore of all your home computers and it is certainly the easiest software I've ever used to do this (talking about restores in particular). Older versions used to their own kind of disk mirroring, but I think they took out the good parts of this.

 

So does Win 8 do what WHS does...?  No it doesn't.

Does Win 8 provide UPnP serving..? Yes it does, but why use it if you have a WHS server?

 

I'd suggest grab and old PC with XP or Vista and replace this with Windows Home Server - use this as your music (&video) server and backup manager.

Load Win8 onto your tastiest PC / laptop and use that for your regular computing (email, surf, forums...) 

Posted on: 13 January 2013 by Dungassin

Thanks. I'm OK with my current QNAP NAS.  Just trying to make sure my son-in-law makes the right decision.

Posted on: 13 January 2013 by McGhie
For the £40 that WHS 2011 costs I'd go for that rather than using a free extra Windows 8 licence. You can stick Asset on either (there's a specific version for WHS 2011) but as said above WHS offers so much more too. It's a NAS plus monitoring and backup solution for all other PCs and laptops on the network. Cheers Ian
Posted on: 15 January 2013 by JeremyB

Recently I was faced with the same decision. W8 seems fine running dbpoweramp and asset. WHS has no long term support, there are x86 apps that do not even run in WHS and the hard drive support is 2T max, so no 3T, 4T or larger drives with WHS which limits its usefulness as a central backup controller, and anyway W8 has the built in Task Scheduler. That plus the fact that W8 includes the Windows Server Hyper-V virtualization implementation so it can run any other OS (including WHS!) on the CPU cores makes a convincing case for W8.

Posted on: 16 January 2013 by Dungassin

Thanks.  I think I'll tell him just to go ahead with his plans to use Windows 8, bearing in mind lack of future support for WHS.