CQC runs on Windows Home Server 2011?

[beelzerob]

I'm probably going to do a whole house PC upgrade in the next few months, which includes going to Windows 7 on everything, as well as upgrading WHS to WHS 2011. Right now I run CQC on the WHS, which is very convenient since it stays on 24-7 anyway. I just wanted to make sure that the CQC Master Server will install and run on WHS 2011 as well. Anyone done that?

[potts.mike]

I am running it on whs2011. The only issue that I ran into was that the old intermatic usb zwave stick didn't have drivers. I bought a new aeon labs stick and it works fine.

[beelzerob]

Oh ya, drivers. I can't remember all that I'm running on that machine now...mainly some external RS232 boxes. Oh, maybe a video capture card too.

I guess I'll go for it and see what happens. But good to hear CQC runs ok in it. Thanks!

[khill]

I upgraded to WHS 2011 recently and things went smooth for most part. I ended up having to unload and reconfigure most of my drivers using virtual com ports for reasons unknown to me. but that is the only way I could get them back online.

I also named the new server WHS-2 (I'm keeping the original WHS) not remembering I had hardcoded the server name into some weather templates and then had to go find all the references and change the name.

Other than that, so far so good...

[SamVimes2]

a little off-topic and you may be well ahead of me on this, but something that turned out to be economical for me on the whole house win7 upgrade was a microsoft technet membership for 1 year. though I ultimately renewed to have access to testing other software, any keys that you activate are still valid even if you don't renew the membership, as long as you are not using them in a production/enterprise system.

[znelbok]

So this is the "Evaluate full-version software* with no time or feature limits" option of the technet product.

Having 10 odd PC's around the house, it may be the way to go for the near future upgrade.

What would you pick (and why), WHS2011 or Windows Server 2008 for a new install?

i use a domain, which is precluded from WHS, but it can be enabled but against the EULA. But are there other features such as the backup optiosn in WHS that may make one more desirable over the other.

Mick

[batwater]

So this is the "Evaluate full-version software* with no time or feature limits" option of the technet product.

Having 10 odd PC's around the house, it may be the way to go for the near future upgrade.

What would you pick (and why), WHS2011 or Windows Server 2008 for a new install?

i use a domain, which is precluded from WHS, but it can be enabled but against the EULA. But are there other features such as the backup options in WHS that may make one more desirable over the other.

Mick

Mick it really depends on your requirements. What you have to decide is whether the WHS2011 bells and whistles are really what you want.

When my WHS system blew up, hardware failure, I evaluated WHS2011 and Server 2008 r2. Went with 2008 r2 as I wanted an OS that would not blow with the proverbial marketing winds and would have the longest time of being current and receiving patches. Given that 2008 is business class, it'll be around for quite some time. I've been on 2008 for near a year now and have had zero issues. Another consideration is the user account limits (# of unique accounts) on WHS, there may also be a concurrent connection limit as well.

For WHS2011 the automatic machine backup sounds cool but if you keep all of your data files on the server then that's kind of a moot point. Workstation system recovery option with WHS, how often do you think you might ever do that? For recovery I use a standalone snapshot utility and image the C drive, that way I'm not dependent on whether WHS is running. The WHS client is another piece of overhead to install on every machine. Just some food for thought, it's a good product, in the end for me, it just didn't provide anything I needed.

Last thought, I'm eventually going to put VMs on the server, I know for certain it works with 2008, probably does with WHS2011 but 2008 is a slam dunk.

-Ben

[SamVimes2]

I run a "virtualization server" using windows server 2k8r2. only thing that server runs is hyper-v. then i have several virtual machines running within that:
-windows home server (for windows client backup, windows client remote access, web-based file access. connected to disks by direct passthrough, not virtual)
-server 2k8r2 (automation: CQC, Brultech, etc.)
-server 2k8r2 (automation test and sandbox platform)
-windows 7 ("virtual desktop" for me)
-windows 7 ("virtual desktop" for the wife)
-some linux distro (to play around with linux)

next step in the plan is to set up another server 2k8r2 VM to be a domain server.

this is sort of a "best of both worlds" approach.

[znelbok]

Thanks guys

I am running a ESXi setup at the moment and about to move my CQC MS (W2K3) over to it. Think I will go for the W2K8 options.

I also run UnRaid virtualised with PCIe pass through for the drives that are "raided"

Any reason to run a seperate domain server?


Mick

[batwater]

Thanks guys

I am running a ESXi setup at the moment and about to move my CQC MS (W2K3) over to it. Think I will go for the W2K8 options.

I also run UnRaid virtualised with PCIe pass through for the drives that are "raided"

Any reason to run a seperate domain server?

Mick

Overhead is very little for the # of machines you are talking about. One less machine to patch and maintain by rolling it up. Even virtualized it's still another machine instance to deal with...

Memory, it's all about memory!

-Ben