I’ve outgrown my home server!  A few years ago I purchased a Windows Home Server from HP… yes version 1.0.  That was back when I owned a simple computer and lived in a two bedroom apartment with my then girlfriend. 

Since then I’ve upgraded her to Wife 2.0, purchased House 2.0, and now it’s time to upgrade my main storage server to version 2.0 which will eventually be put onto my rack 2.0.  What better way to do that then with Windows Storage Server 2011!

I’ve purchased a few parts for this purpose:

 

 

1. Power Supply:  CORSAIR Enthusiast Series CMPSU-650TX 650W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible …

2. Motherboard:  ASUS P8B WS LGA 1155 Intel C206 ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server/Workstation Motherboard

3. RAM Memory:  G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL9Q-16GBRL

4. Processor:  Intel Xeon E3-1240 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz LGA 1155 80W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31240

5. Data Hard Drives:  (4) HITACHI Deskstar 7K3000 HDS723015BLA642 (0F12114) 1.5TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

6. OS Hard Drives:  (2) 1TB 7200 3.0Gb/s 3.5” Internal Hard Drive

7. Optical Drive:  Generic one I had lying around.

 

I’ll also be using an old generic case to hold it all until I can purchase a proper rack mount server case.

The 2 OS drives will be setup via RAID 1 (1tb usable) while the 4 data drives will be arranged in RAID 5 format (4.5tb usable).

 

I’m still waiting for the Processor… Newegg had problems shipping the CPU immediately… they wouldn’t say why.  As a result, I’ve had parts sitting in the spare room ready for assembly for 3 weeks.

It’s due to arrive tomorrow which will prompt me to post more.

 

The biggest gain I’ll receive by upgrading from a Windows Home Server to Windows Storage Server 2011 is domain compatibility.  On my server rack, I’ve setup a Domain Controller, Exchange for email, Lync for IM, Web servers as well as a SQL server which also acts as my Tivoli Endpoint Manager server (formerly BigFix).

All of my systems are linked via domain… which leaves the Windows Home Server the last remnant of my “home” network… This upgrade will make all my servers and workstations linked via Domain and easily managed.

More to come…