A New Kind of Home Computer: Windows Home Server Preview
by Ryan Smith on September 4, 2007 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Performance Data
Because we were only able to get our hands on a release candidate version of WHS for the performance testing, all the results here need to be taken with a grain of salt. The WHS RC is quite good, especially in comparison to rockier launches like Vista, but we expect the performance numbers in particular to have changed slightly between the RC and the final version.
It's worth noting that the network packet throttling problem with Vista is still in play as of this writing. As a result all of our tests are under Windows XP SP2 unless otherwise noted, and when they're run on Vista it is with Multimedia Class Scheduler Service disabled to prevent throttling. Although this problem has existed in Vista since it has shipped, this is about the worst time it could come to light for Microsoft. Until it's fixed, Vista users wanting to move their media off of a personal computer and onto a WHS server will definitely want to hold off on doing so. Even though the problem with throttling isn't one with WHS, the problem occurring in Vista still drags down WHS.
| Client Test Bed | |
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Quad QX6850 (3.00GHz/1333MHz) |
| RAM | G.Skill DDR2-800 (2x2GB) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-P35-DR3R (Intel P35) |
| System Platform Drivers | Intel 8.1.1.1012 |
| Hard Drive | Maxtor MaXLine Pro 500GB SATA |
| Video Cards | 1 x GeForce 8800GTX |
| Video Drivers | NV ForceWare 163.44 |
| Power Supply | OCZ GameXStream 700W |
| Desktop Resolution | 1600x1200 |
| Operating Systems | Windows Vista Ultimate 32-Bit Windows XP SP2 |
| . | |
| Server Test Bed | |
| Processor | AMD Athlon X2 4600+ (2.40GHz/400MHz) |
| RAM | OCZ DDR-400 (4x512MB) |
| Motherboard | ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (nForce 4 SLI) |
| System Platform Drivers | NV 6.69 |
| Hard Drive | 2x Western Digital Caviar Raid Edition 2(400GB) |
| Power Supply | OCZ GameXStream 700W |
| Operating Systems | Windows Home Server RC |
| . | |
We'll start with testing WHS's file server abilities by transferring files back and forth. With a gigabit network, the bottleneck will be the transfer abilities of our hard drives, so if WHS is achieving maximum performance it should be able to move data at speeds around the maximum of our hard drives. We'll be using a RAM disk on the client side to isolate the performance of WHS.
Also on this graph will be the performance of WHS while attempting to do file transfers in the middle of a balancing operation. Because of the importance in balancing data for data retention and performance reasons, WHS will sometimes need to balance folders even during times of backups and file transfers. This doesn't seem very common in our use since it's related to total use of the WHS server, but it needs to be noted all the same. WHS does seem to take steps to avoid balancing during heavy use when possible.
At 53MB/sec up and 67MB/sec down, the results are very close to those that we've seen WD RAID edition hard drives do previously. For users with gigabit networks, it looks like it's very possible for WHS to offer performance virtually equal to having the drives installed locally. Speeds while balancing aren't very impressive though, not that we expected them to be.
The other metric of WHS's performance is how it handles backups. Unlike pure file transfers, backups aren't "brain-dead" operations and require work on behalf of both the server and the client. The client needs to figure out what data is to be sent to the server, and the server is responsible for keeping all of that data organized and compressed. WHS backup performance is also heavily dependent on what else is already in the backup cache, because WHS avoids backing up anything redundant down to the cluster level.
These specific tests were run with empty caches as a worst-case scenario; actual performance of the initial backup on a new machine (as long as it's not the first machine) should be faster. These tests are being done on clean Windows installations, with the second "incremental" backup being done immediately after the first backup completes. This is more optimistic than a real incremental backup since virtually no data changes, but in doing it this way we can establish a floor for approximately how long the scan process takes. The reference sizes for these installations are 2.3GB for XP and 5.4GB for Vista, after factoring out the system page file and other files that WHS backup filters out.
Both Vista and XP turn in respectable, although not amazing backup times. Using the incremental backup as the baseline, we achieved an average backup speed of about 20MB/sec. This is well below what we've seen on our file transfer tests, but still fast enough to complete these backups in a short amount of time; since WHS doesn't have any true peers we don't have anything else to properly compare it to. In an actual deployment with real incremental backups and common data, we expect the results to be a lot closer to that of the incremental times.
We also took the liberty of backing up the XP machine again once the Vista machine was backed up in order to measure the size of the backup cache on the WHS server. Even with these clean installs, there's about 2GB of savings on the WHS server; 7.7GB of data is only taking up 5.7GB of space. Like Previous Versions on Vista, these savings should grow as more data is added to the backup cache.
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ATWindsor - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
And if one drive in a raid5 goes corrupt, you can still accsess the data. That doesn't mean you can't mess it up to the point where additional recovery is needed, and its the same with WHS, you can stand to loose one drive, but no problems "bigger" than that.Thats not the point, the point is that for you to have "hot-spare-functionality" as you talk about on WHS, you still need to have that amount of aditional free space, so having that dta will cost you extra HD-psace, just as having a hot-spare will. Depending on usage, WHS will need more or less free space than a hot-spare drive will provide.
You might think it's little point having redundancy on backups, i feel like it's worth it. If one doesn't feel the need for this redundancy, the duplication-system in WHS isn't that useful either (that if if you don't want to risk having all your data on a single machine).
To repeat the point yet again, the system should be more flexible, there are of course quite a few people who don't need the extra functionality, but there is also quite a few that want's to have smething easy to set up, but still maintain some features and flexibility.
Gholam - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
Thing is, however, on first glance RAID5 is very alluring - on paper, you get great performance, high reliability, and minimal loss of usable HD space.However, in practice, it is far, far more complicated, expensive and dangerous - but your typical home user doesn't have the depth of experience to know that.
Therefore, if you absolutely must have a RAID5 setup, just buy a controller, set up WHS on a single large volume and disregard its drive pooling features.
As for myself, I'm currently planning replacing my system which is getting a bit long in the tooth to handle the latest games. It's an A64 3200+ on ASUS A8N with 3GB RAM and GF6800GT, housed in a CM Stacker case. So, since upgrading a S939 CPU is currently next to impossible, once WHS is available over here (Israel, supposed to arrive sometime in october-november) I'm planning to build a new system, and in this one, replace the graphics card with something passively cooled (7100/8400), stick in a bunch of drives (probably 4x500GB) and run WHS drive pool on it. I considered getting a hardware RAID5 controller, but after examining my options, dismissed the idea as too expensive - I can get 3-5 extra 500GB drives for the price of a decent RAID5 card with cables. With room for 12 HDDs in the case, 8 SATA + 2 PATA connectors on the motherboard and ability to expand via USB/Firewire, I don't see this system capping out anytime soon.
ATWindsor - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
I agree that raid5 has some pitfalls, but once (properly) setup, I think it's pretty easy to handle, just stay away from it until a drive goes down, and then replace it :)However I would still like to have it implmented in WHS, if needed under some kind of "advanced setup", one has to activate.
Personally I use a 16-port-hardware-controller, with the same controller also in my off-sote backup-computer. It might be over the top, but I find it worth the convinience when i have well over 10 sata-drives, restoring from backup is a hassle, so it's nice to be able to handle a single drive going down without having to get everything from the backup, and you get added security aggainst file-corrption when the cache has battery-backup (and also, the preformance is good, but that is not so important, only nice :))
Gholam - Monday, September 10, 2007 - link
16-port hardware controllers are nice, but I can't justify sinking $800+ into one, not on my budget.n0nsense - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
hm ...raid 5 corrupted ?
search google for "raid 5 corruption".
the only thing that real threat is 2 or more dead disks simultaneously.
WHS redundancy duplicate files over several disks, which mean that you waste as much space as in mirror.
advantages - different disk sizes.
disadvantages - performance.
hard to believe that some one will think to mix IDE SATA and SCSI disks for file server (actually i do mix as i have 2 mirrored 36GB SCSI drives @ 15k rpm for system 2 mirrored 500GB SATA drives for sensitive (in terms of redundancy) data and 250GB SATA drive for temp files, incoming, and other things that i don't care about).
Once i used raid 5 of 4 74GB SCSI for about 3 years 24/7/365 with almost constant load, then it was replaced with bigger SATA drives when one of them died without loosing 1 bit of my data.
more probably you'll put 2-6 really big (250-750GB) disks for such purpose. smaller will go to the boxes.
you wont run dedicated box for less then 3 clients.
so for the same space price you can set up hardware raid 1, probably get more performance (controller dependent), 0.0004% failure rate.
depends on where you live, WHS price save (~180 USD) will give you about 2x250GB or 1x 500GB SATA drives + SATA to PCI card with RAID support.
archer75 - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
Performance isn't a disadvantage here. All of your data is copied to a single drive at first. Think of it as a holding area. Data is then analyzed and moved off of that to where it needs to be. So as far as you are concerned you are only transfering to one single disk.The performance is good enough for me to stream a HD movie off of it. So it's good enough.
If you are running a RAID array with constant usage for years then it seems WHS is not marketed for you.
n0nsense - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link
it's right, but even at my home with only 2 users, i can see much more load on disk performance.restoring something, can be done @ 30MBps or @90.
tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
> the only thing that real threat is 2 or more dead disks simultaneously.you're naive
power outages (either from power company or blown power supply, controller errors, driver errors, there are a ton of things that can mess up RAID5. RAID5 is very fragile in the sense that if you mess up just a bit of it's structure, the entire thing is shot.
> 0.0004% failure rate
did you read that article i posted? try closer to 20-30% in the real world (now that doesn't necessarily mean data loss, but problems nonetheless)
> disadvantages - performance.
for backup this isn't really an issue
plus when copying between computers you're going to be limited by your own harddrive
i need to backup a bunch of laptops (which don't contain raid obviously) daily so WHS is definitely NOT going to be a bottleneck
tynopik - Thursday, September 6, 2007 - link
here's what i pulled from ONE threadhttp://www.nforcershq.com/forum/image-vp511756.htm...">http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/image-vp511756.htm...
khayman80
"I have had these drives configured as a RAID 1 array ever since I built the computer.
I built this system 15 months ago, then 10 months ago I experienced a severe RAID failure (i.e. I lost all my data). "
aragorn_246
"I have exactly the same problem on my Asus K8N (NForce3) mobo."
andy b
"I also have the identical problem."
mschoaf
"I'm going through this exact problem right now"
"I don't think I have very good news for you all. Windows does SEEM to be running ok, but I have a bunch of little quirky problems. When I brought Outlook up for the first time, it said my mailbox was corrupted, so I pulled that from my backup. Word had a problem with the normal.dot. Norton said it's settings were corrupt and reset to the defaults. And who knows about the stuff I haven't seen yet.
So, I'm reluctantly coming to the conclusion that I need to reformat and re-install. I'm also thinking about pulling an old IDE drive from one of my spare parts computers to use as a backup drive and backing up my full system weekly and my data daily. The sad part is, that's why I bought a MB with RAID 1 capability, so I wouldn't HAVE to do this."
SteelBlueXI
"it happened to me for the third time this morning"
"So frustrating to lose my computer for a couple hours every week or so to rebuild my friggin' hard drive (when it doesn't even really need it!!!)"
"I've had this happen 3 times now with 2 different versions of the drivers."
ratts
"i saw this raid drive split thing once."
Mile Hy
"Guess what...Over the week end I got the infamous red message about the Raid degrading."
_MarcoM_
"Same problem here, today"
vsko
"The same thing just happened to me"
StedyONE
"I also got blasted by this mysterious raid degraded bug last week for no apparent reason."
Bloona
"have the same issues on my machine with an ASUS K8N"
mooredads
"Had same problem flasing red degraded."
bradwolf
"I am getting the red flashing "degraded" message from NVidia at boot."
walsterdoomit
"now i have this problem also....degraded data"
pc2099
"Over the past few months I have had 4 instances of nvraid dropping 1 drive"
"the first test trying to copy data from the raid to the external firewire drive resulted in not 1 but 2 drives dropping out."
notice that last line, copying data to an external firewire drive caused TWO drives to drop out. If he had had that in RAID5 that would have been disastrous.
n0nsense - Friday, September 7, 2007 - link
funny, but we are arguing about almost everything.of course there is a lot of problems and failures.
the 0.0004% about raid1. power outage is not on option when we talking about some kind of server.
don't tell me, that UPS is something you don't use.
hardware problems will do the same to your system and its really does not matter what you running inside.
of course i can give you examples of corporate Data Centers with 0 data loss, but we are talking about home.
and you can build cost effective system that will do the same.
let's organize it from worth to best.
no raid
soft raid
raid 1
raid 1+0 or 0+1.
about forums. you will not find many happy user of raid there. Simply because they don't need until they have a problem.
My SATA raid build on build-in controller which is part of Asus P5N32-E SLI, based on Nvidia 680i chipset.
Indigo (part of HP) with about 1000 press machines monthly out, using integrated intel's matrix storage controllers for raid (1 and 0) (they use standard HP wx4000). This press machines working at full load non stop 24/7/365. Year @ IT department, no problems with raid.
the big problem is moving raid array to another type of controller (new MoBo for example).here soft raids have big advantage.
again the main question is "Shall you or shall not pay 180 USD for WHS"
for not very advanced user i will recommend Debian box with Bacula to manage backups, syncing, share etc.
You will have fully functional machine where file/backup server can be the only task, or it can be only one of other features like gaming machine, workstation, mail server, ftp server(not fake server ), DNS, DB server (yes, there is a use for it at home. for example media library of Amarok can use it ), media server and media center, web server, and stream server. You will not limited by MS greediness, but by your need and will.
all of it or even more can run on single box when we talking about home. it was time that i had 7 computers at home for only 2 people, now it's only 2.5 (can't call P II 400MHz 186MB ram laptop computer, but it perfectly extends media and internet to balcony for nice Saturday breakfast with sea view).
i do like some MS products like Office, but when it come to OS, DB, servers, use real one.