Advice on choosing type of server software

Don't try to confuse the users.

As I wrote, one of the advantages of WSSE over the plain essentials is that the former can be activated in any way, Legit/Slic/Kms

 

this kind of useless comment is usually posted by people who never tried it or who never understood its strength.

 

This kind of useless reply is usually posted by people who think only their oppinion counts.

I have tried it.

Please don't assume because I dont agree with you that I haven't.

 

Your opinion is welcome as any other contribution.

But saying that WHS is "junk" w/o adding anything else is not an opinion, is just an useless comment.

 

It doesent support data deduplication without hacks. The op wanted it for file storage.

 

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Almost forgot to mention this.

That image is more updated than the ones inside Standard or Essentials, so more time spared.

 

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i tried years ago to port the MS deduplication on W7. Looks not possible.

If you talk about third party, just use opendedup, that's not an hack is a third party implementation and it works.

The OP didn't tell anything about his usage. Not everyone is an ISO collector, most people use the home servers as home servers, and there the biggest slice of the pie is made by movies, where the deduplication has little to no impact.

Nothing comes free. Deduplication is more dangerous no matter how good is its implementation.

Try to have a folder deleted by mistake, then try to recover it with any classic undelete/recoveru sw, then come back and report if deduplication isn't more dangerous than a plain filesystem.

I have around 20% of saved space, most of it is due the ISO folder.

 

Thank you for creating this thread digixpc, I plan on replacing the WHS 2011 OS I have running here next year after the WHS 2011 "Extended Support" ends.

My plan is to install Windows Server 2016 Essentials when its released/RTM & use that for my future PC's backs & restores.
I have been testing it & am satisfied it will server the purpose here.

Sadly it wont BU & restore both legacy & UEFI systems, I'm hoping dual booting to separate HDDs (2) w/ each setup different (legacy or UEFI) will solve that.

 

So, if you plan to use the deduplication you can use ddpeval.exe to understand in advance the spared space, and to evaluate if the risk/benefit ratio is worth for you.

 

Frankly I can't see any valid reason to jump early on the 2016 bandwagon, servers aren't desktops being conservative is almost always the right thing to do.

Unless a specific and needed feature is missing on the older versions, there isn't any reason to have the higher build number, personally I would upgrade to 2012 R2 (or even stay on WHS), for now.

Also the WHS support date is mostly a false problem. 2008 r2 is supported until 2020 and most of the critical updates will be applicable to WHS as well. The update would be forced only if a specific WHS component like the client backup would be broken by a client OS update. A possible scenario, which is unlikely to happen in the early future.

 

I find all the 2012 R2 products are very polished, very stable for server environment. I'm glad you have chosen to go down the 2012 R2 variation route. There may be some learning but it's well worth the effort.

I didn't see much mentioned about the hardware, but if it's a powerful server you should consider having some space allocated for VM's and implement Hyper-V, It's a good way to try out ISO's or run other servers for your home lan (eg a WSUS server, WDS etc.). Again more work to learn but worth it.

 

The ISO's will benefit from data deduplication if there are lots of similar ISO's, such as editions of Windows ISO's. That is where you will benefit.

SIS is pretty pointless in your case where there is 1 user storing files ... not like your going to store hundreds of copies of the same file similar maybe ... that's where Data Deduplication is much more useful than SIS.

 

I would actually agree with you on not jumping on 2016, other than in a VM or spare server for evaluation. The TP's will expire, and require reloads. for storage stuff I think he wants something that's low maintenance so an established none preview line would be better.

 

I would say it's impossible. The difference between the 7/2008R2 vs 8/2012+ is just too vast.

I am sure it does. I still consider it a hack when you try and inject something to change the behaviour of components. That's not a bad thing - I don't consider hacks bad, there are some very impressive ones out.

My point was just why not use something with it built in than start with something older and hack a (good or bad) solution in.

Correct. So I recommended the most flexible solution, which in my experience was the 2012 R2 based solutions.

Why would you use old tools .... times change and so do technologies. Including data recovery. I usually enable the volume shadow copy service for example.

That's 20% more than you would I guess with SIS.

 

If you are aware of ANY recovery SW that works on deduplicated disks I'm all ears.

The last time I checked, there wasn't a single SW able to restore a simple folder deleted by mistake, obviously an error due to a messed FS or a bad phisical sector related one, would be even worse.

I didn't suggest to use it, indeed I just shared a news about the server capabilities.

Anyhow, I repeat that disk pooling/duplication is usually more important than deduplication, given the relatively low price of the HDDs.

And the disk pooling isn't that friendly with deduplication.

The ugly storage space from MS is ReFS based.

The good Drive bender doesn't work at all

The great Drive Pool has actually some workaround which requires the use of the beta version, and which not fix fully the amount of problems introduced by the deduplication. It's usable but not out of the box.

Given the above I still consider WHS a better suited solution, although WSS-e isn't a bad replacement.

Whatever WHS is anything but junk, as you stated.