new server; win7 or win10, or win server

[rtarver]

Hello server guru's.

I've decided to upgrade my home server (does strictly home automation).  I currently have an Atom based unit, and am building an intel core i3 based unit.  The big question is OS.  I think I can still get win7 pro, but server is a bit pricey.  Any reason I shouldn't get win7?  I'm getting a gen6 i3, which apparently means there's less support for drivers or some such compatibility that's hard to ferret out on the web.  MS and Intel being who they are.

I'm thinking win7 and ride that until MS gets off their win10 kick.  But maybe I'm dreaming.

What would you guys do?  I find a number of sites offering download of server for a couple hundred bucks, but they make me a little nervous.

Thanks,

Russ

[Dean Roddey]

Supposedly they will never get off their Win10 kick, right? At least the last I was hearing, they planned, I guess like OSX?, to stop doing major new versions and just continue incremental improvements. Of course that story may have changed, or may already have changed for all I know.

Win Server 2012 would be a good choice. I sort of miss the days of having a real network with a domain controller and all the nice things that provides for. And it's optimized for server duties.

[rtarver]

Dean,

I've heard similar comments about incremental updates. I'm okay with that. I just hate all the background "talk to the mothership' nonsense going on with home versions. I can get an OEM version of server for a few hundred bucks. It's a little bit of a grey area if I'm doing that correctly or not.... MS has been changing their stance on it's use. Supposed to be strictly for manufacturers and not home-brew.

I've even considered whipping up a VM in my QNAP NAS, but I don't think it has the HP to manage storage serving and running a VM well.

I've considered hosting on the cloud and having it VPN to my home network for control, but I wouldn't want to pay more than $15/month to make that happen. That would be ~$200/year. If I could get an i3 performance spec for that, I'd give it a try. But I think that level of performance starts pushing $60-$100/month.

[Dean Roddey]

I definitely wouldn't host it outboard.

[batwater]

Win Server 2012 would be a good choice. I sort of miss the days of having a real network with a domain controller and all the nice things that provides for. And it's optimized for server duties.

Server 2012 mainstream End of Life is 10/9/18, extended support 10/10/2023 (patches only I think) If going server route then 2016 would be a better choice/investment from a product life cycle perspective.

[Dean Roddey]

Oh, OK. I was thinking 2012 was the Win10 variant, but it's the Win8 server variant I guess. I should have known that since our CQSL server is 2012 and it has the Win8 style start menu.

[batwater]

2016 server is the Win 10 variant

[rtarver]

That's why I was thinking server 2012. I thought 2012 was Win7 style? If it's win8 style, I'll stick with Win7 Pro thank you very much.

[rtarver]

Hey Dean, just curious. For your software, does core count matter? I can get an atom oct-core that performs as well as a higher end chip in multicore mode, but if software doesn't take advantage of multiple cores, it's a moot point. What about multiple physical processors?

Russ

[Dean Roddey]

CQC is stupidly multi-threaded. I'd hate to think of how many threads there are in, say, a master server. But, of course 99% of the time 99% of them aren't doing anything. They are there ready to respond when something becomes available to work on. So, it most definitely takes advantage of multiple cores, though in the end if a single CPU machine has sufficient oomph then it wouldn't know or care.

If you are running more continuously processing bits, then it starts to matter. If you want to have four video streams on the screen at once, and you are serving up data to clients, and it's a Plex server that's transcoding media data, then it starts to matter a lot more. But for just CQC by itself, if you watch the CPU on most machines, it's usually barely just tickling the CPU, because it's very efficient and very asynchronous in its design.