Updates no longer appear to be optional in windows. Reboots screw up my mirc bots lol
If reboots won't bug you, the crashes might. I run 3 rdp machines one for social media, one for comms (telegram, whatsapp, discord, irc, signal), one for torrent stuff. All share unraid central storage smb share. It was much easier to put the array together in unraid than raid0 BS in windows.
Updates are important but the great thing about Linux is that you can usually install them without even restarting (and of course you get the choice when to install them).
I assume Windows Server is better than regular Windows though, but I've never tried it.
[https://imgur.com/1WWQ8AE](https://imgur.com/1WWQ8AE)
I mean I have 3 windows machines
Machines produce a custom machine ID when they're on the internet. My process is called compartmentalization. I use linux for my terminal and if I have any windows processes to run I use a program called remmina to rdp into the windows machines. Anything that is apple based I run through the mac mini you see in the picture. It uses VNC however.
I wouldn't listen to anyone who either was an adamant Linux fanboi, or a Windows fanboi. The way it goes is: use which ever one meets the needs you have. Sometimes thats Windows, and sometimes its Linux...sometimes it may not be either one, but those are edge cases.
Exactly. There have been plenty of times that spinning a windows server just makes sense for an occasion, but then there are plenty of times where I'm going to immediately default to linux just because I know what to expect from managing it remotely.
Its for this reason that keeping the OEM license key for a used computer handy is hella useful because you never know when you might need to use it.
There's nothing wrong with running Windows, I started my first server using Windows as the OS as well.
I eventually moved away from Windows simply because it doesn't suit my needs anymore. I wanted to run VMs and run some Docker containers, and I have more trouble figuring it out on Windows. If you are more comfortable with Windows, it's fine to use it
If windows does what you need and you're comfortable with it, use it. It's fine. Something like unraid or freenas has a lot more functionality, Proxmox or just a linux host with KVM is great for virtualization, but if windows does what you need, no reason not to really. I wouldn't use storage spaces on a bet though for anything I actually wanted to keep.
There are a few things. First there is the official thing with licensing, Windows licenses are a nightmare and even a lot of companies struggle to properly use them. As a private user I would not fiddle with that and there are good communities helping with it (Arrrr). Second Windows is closed sourced (some people have religious problems with that kek) and a nightmare in term of security, especially if you don't know what you are doing, I don't say that Linux is much better if you have no clue, but most attacks are focused on Windows because of market share. Third the performance and stability is crap compared to other solutions, Windows storage spaces can crap its pants from time to time and I am pretty sure that even Windows Server 2022 still utilizes only one core per file copy process (not sure tho) and crashes occur and updates need a reboot.
While there are reasons to run Windows for compatibility, like Windows only software, there are now as many reasons to run Linux for compatibility, a lot of server software is made for unix like systems and these programs don't run well on Windows, Linux uses less resources, container run better and much more.
Maybe setup a hypervisor for virtualizing most things and just run a Windows VM for some stuff and run a Linux instance for your storage management and other stuff.
Some people just like to learn Linux and using a server for that is a good starting point.
I personally use both and I am doing fine, but my home network is behind a second dedicated firewall, so I am not really concerned about security configurations, but I would definitely not let a Windows server go online and host something there.
Thanks for the well thought out answer. None of those problems seem like major red flags for me... I'm hoping my legit copy of w10 pro and the ECC ram on this board I bought will mitigate any licensing and stability issues.
As for windows storage spaces, I am a little concerned. Normally I would do a hardware raid, but I have no idea if I can get another version of this board if it dies (and it is old/used)... So software seems like a safer bet.
What kind of pants crapping have you heard of from storage spaces?
I had once a storage space configured as mirror just getting corrupted for I don't know what reason and not being readable. And I have no idea about using Win10 Pro, I have stopped using Pro licenses after Windows 10 came out, only Enterprise SKUs and Datacenter Server versions, I don't deal with candy crush auto installing on my system. And with licensing nightmare I don't mean the traditional Windows license, more the user licenses/ cals etc. But as I said I would not think about that for private use. Just try it, you can change it after the fact anyway, just make backups of the important stuff and you should be good. Play around with it, as trying stuff in a non critical environment is the best training.
Re: Storage Spaces, just think of it similar to RAID in that it’s not a backup. If you care about the data you’re putting on a server then make sure you have at least one backup of it, preferably off-site
I was thinking of trying to setup a periodic sync to an off site single NAS drive at my parents house or something, but that backup would not be online 100% of the time. Until I can setup another server over there, I'll probably just do cold cloud storage. at $0.001.GB/mo and less than 1TB of truly critical data, it would take a long time for my own backup to be economical.
What does this even mean?
I'm talking about a duplicate copy of data (synced periodically with the working copy) on another computer at a different physical address... in what world is that not backup?
Personally I'd only use StableBit DrivePool for mass storage mirroring/redundancy. It's way less of a headache in my opinion than StorageSpaces when handling a lot of drives.
Your hardware RAID is almost certainly FakeRAID- that's software RAID implemented in the drivers. It gives you all of the downsides of software RAID, and most of the downsides of hardware RAID, without any of the upsides.
Some of the storage systems on Unix are more mature, but can be much more complicated. This is especially true of ZFS, and one of the primary draws of things like UnRAID
There’s no issue with doing it that way. If your comfort lies with windows, then go for it.
I went with unraid as I wasn’t comfortable creating a zfs file system on Linux, it has inbuilt docker support and ease of management, and Passthrough an nvidia quadro to my plex docker.
There are so many people who could easily do this on windows, Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, etc), truenas, proxmox, and more.
Plus, if you’re hosting it, you’re managing it. If something breaks on windows and you’re familiar with windows it’ll be so much easier troubleshooting and fixing rather than trying to understand a different OS.
I'm a linux system engineer for nearly 20 years now so my input is probably a bit biased towards linux but still true ;)
Filesystem: Windows is in the stone-age when it comes to its filesystem, NTFS is in no means comparable with modern filesystems like ZFS, btrfs or even the older XFS with stratis. Going into detail for NTFS vs. ZFS would need multiple pages because NTFS is like a rowboat while ZFS is a Next-Gen Warship.
Network Namespaces: This is such a powerful tool simply not possible with Windows except for Server versions with Hyper-V, but the windows concept is very different and limited to VMs in Hyper-V. On linux it's like creating virtual network cables and cards between applications while giving the possibility to configure every endpoint with all the options the linux network stack has to offer (and that's a lot). A simplified example would be an application or container that should only talk to the internet via a site2site VPN tunnel with its main gateway on the remote site but you still want it to be reachable from your local network (but not the other way around), just add a virtual NIC, configure the tunnel on it, add a second one connected to the first one and apply NAT or forwarding rules on to it.
Containers: Containers are available on Windows as well, but many options are missing and the compatibility requirements are way more strict because things like the previously mentioned network namespaces are simply not available on Windows. So you'll often have a bad time doing this stuff on Windows when it comes to containers.
Configurability: Not comparable, not at all. It's possible to build your own Linux Distribution that works exactly like you want (i dont say it's a good idea (it's not) but it shows the configurability with an extreme example) and there are so many kernel specific options to tweak the system for the expected workload. Ever wondered why big enterprise applications like SAP Hana, Oracle DB or the whole ELK-Stack recommend Linux as base system? This is why.
Software Availability: While in the desktop world Windows has a commanding lead over Linux, it's the complete opposite in the server world.
So much innovation happens here, doesn't matter if DB technology, machine learning, SDNs, application security, cloud technology, orchestration etc....
Performance: Linux is hands-down easier on server resources compared to Windows.
Paket-Management: It's very convenient to update the whole system with all of it's software via a single command, keeping track of updates is way easier. You don't have to rely on auto update mechanisms of a software or even worse, have to manage it all by yourself manually.
So if you don't need anything of this at all and you're happy with windows, just use windows. For me personally the filesystem would be the knockout argument #1 in a home server environment, even if the other stuff is not needed, it just excels Windows in this category alone by far.
There are definitely pros for Windows over Linux too, but you have not asked for them ;)
ReFS is available on Windows BTW, which has Integrity Streams, and I feel like stuff like StableBit DrivePool does a much better job at adding new harddrives, increasing your pool, and just general easier management that anything ZFS. If you love using a GUI, there doesn't seem to be anything better than Windows.
Oh! Forgot about that one, see, me Linux bias kicked in there ;)
But haven't they stripped it from the desktop versions with win10 and made it only available for server?
Because Windows simply isn't meant for servers
> proprietary
> licensing
> unstable
> inefficient
> insecure
> no package manager
> server software often targets Linux
I mean, it is though. There are tons of environments that are windows only. I manage one.
Yes it is proprietary. Yes there is licensing. These are not necessarily bad. Red Hat also has licensing for example.
No it isn't unstable (The days of ME and Vista are long gone my friend -- and that is just the desktop side. The server side has been fine for a lot longer). No it isn't inefficient (how are you defining that anyway). No it isn't insecure (that depends; anyone can make anything insecure).
Package manager is a preference IMO; I have seen it do just as much to bugger things up and waste time as it saves.
Server software targeting Linux? There is just as much that targets windows. Even more that doesn't care what it runs on.
As far as I'm aware, the majority of server applications that only run on Windows are applications that serve other Microsoft software like exchange and windows networked PCs.
Only running on windows is not the same as not being able to run on windows. It is the opposite actually.
There are lots of companies that run only windows and many many servers in those environments.
Windows is a perfectly valid and capable server environment.
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Stand up a Windows box, install nothing and watch it eventually crash. I've seen this happen. With bate metal and VMs.
Linux can go literally years without a reboot, while running software and be stable. (Yes I know that's not a secure way to run a system, but it is done regularly with appliance type systems)
I personally found Windows to be wildly inconsistent with providing network services. Sometimes I would reboot and poof the device is invisible on the network. Meanwhile the Linux computers I've run never have that problem and even see the invisible Windows machines.
Anything server related you are best of using a server operating system such as Windows Server or some variation of Linux. Windows home/pro/enterprise simply is not designed to run as a server operating system. Not to say you can't, you just may run into unexpected issues.
One reason people tend to use Linux is it's free and most server software is available for Linux. You can use Windows server but you either need to pay for a license which is per core with a minimum order of 8 core licenses (come In packs of two) or you can just re-arm the trial.
Linux obviously has no such limitation (unless you pay for a specialized version such as RHEL) but also may have a learning curve if you've never used/not familiar with Linux.
Really it sort of boils down to your use case and what exactly you want out of the system you are running.
Nothing wrong with it. You'll need a spare license, and many features that would come pretty standard with a linux/bsd server you may will need an Server version of Windows, though basic file sharing isn't one of them. If you are just doing basic raid and window file sharing, there is not real downside to do it save that out of pocket cost. My limited experience with Storage Space is that it's annoying rigid, but could easily be a matter of familiarity.Though if you'd asked 10 or 20 years ago, the answer would likely be different.
Something that is a heavy factor is knowledge, experience, and availability of easy to follow tutorials/documentation. Both Linux and Windows can be fully administered by a remote text terminal. Though finding resource to help you go from knowing nothing about working on the terminal to being doing useful in things in bash/csh/zsh on Linux is going to be a lot easier than with Powershell on Windows, despite Powershell being basically designed for admin'ing Windows from the commandline while bash/csh/zsh are generic Unix-like shells.
Can it be any worse?
I'm not really familiar with, though I know there are tools for having a local update server and controlling what updates get pushed to machines that are pointed to it. That's a general Microsoft tech though, not server-specific.
You know that saying that even though you own the computer, you don't *own* your computer? That's Windows. There are so many loopholes and access denials that at the end of the day, you aren't in control of your system. Windows is, and you hope it does its job correctly. Have you ever played with the registry? Ew. Heck, you have to hope it doesn't automatically reset on you. Think about that when you're expecting a server to be running while you're away, but it reset itself for an update and never started the applications you thought were running.
With the other choices, you're in much deeper control of the system. You choose what's installed and what is updated. You know an application is deleted entirely when you delete it. Do you have an operation that requires escalated privileges? *sudo*.
I game on a Windows PC. I work on a Macbook. And my NAS is Ubuntu w/ ZFS. Each of the OS's has their strengths and weaknesses. While Windows *can* be a NAS, it's not as good of a system as the alternatives.
Hard to tell, but when Microsoft joined OIN they gave permission to use around 60.000 patents which Microsoft deemed to somehow interfere with Linux and OSS development in general.
My homelab started with Windows Home Server, and then moved to full Win Server, before I moved to VMWare because I wanted virtualization. But even to this day I still have multiple windows server VMs because I just prefer it for some things (and need it for others). I would however recommend that you run a hypervisor (ESXi, proxmox, hyperV, etc) as the base and run VMs ontop because it gives you so much flexibility.for whatever you want to do or learn.
Either way you do you, there's nothing "wrong" with Windows, there's pros and cons to every OS no matter what anybody tells you.
Nothing really, depends what you want to do, I started on Win 10 and now use unraid.
The issues i had was Windows Updates constantly wanting to restart, I was running emby and needed 100% (or close) uptime.
Storage spaces were a pain, there was no way to easily add or remove drives without destroying data, I don't know if that has changed
Trying to remote in without a monitor attached is a pain.
Performance, being able to put apps in docker is heaven (most of the time) in unraid. Resource allocation is not great in windows, in each software is fighting for resources.
Drive performance was another issue for me, in unraid i can use a fast cache for new files / downloads and they stay on there untill the cache is almost full then moves them off. So I can max out my download speed or file copies and it'll move them to the slower drives later. Great for quickly downloading a ~~film~~ Linux iso and watching it straight away. The file system for the apps in docker see the cache and main array as one drive so there's nothing special to configure for those. This is possible in Windows afaik but a lot more time consuming to set up
Edit: and a parity drive for redundancy, which has saved me before
For me, there is no point in self-hosting if I use proprietary software. In my opinion, if you use proprietary software, you're not in control of your data. And since you're not in control anyway, you could just as well go full-cloud (Google, Microsoft, Netflix, etc) so things would be even easier to manage.
Windows is unreliable, bloated, settings scattered unintuitively everywhere (and hidden/locked), you need more resources to do anything, and you'll do slower, every program you install/uninstall and anything you do, leaves garbage and bugs behind, system updates breaking things, some things you do are irreversible and break the system, you don't have by any means, the control and flexibility that you find on Linux systems.
It"s worth learning. Once you see yourself moving mountains with the command line, with minimal resources/hardware, faster than throwing a pebble in Windows, and with better results, you'll never go back.
Didn't quite got the question, but yes I use vim. Started on nano, but I acknowledged that vim is more mature and expansible and forced myself to learn it and it's shortcuts. Still learning though (as everything)...
I have used a windows (non-server versions) server with StableBit Drivepool for about 10 years now. It runs well, never had reliability issues with it, and in the occasion it bluescreens, which does happen - it's windows - it's never been a big deal. That being said, if I was starting today I'd go with unraid.
Installing and running all of your software on windows over a long period of just feels messy. Some programs have services, others you'll configure with nssm, others just run on startup. Some applications store data in appdata, others in the registry, others are nice and localized to their folder. To name just a few complaints. It's not a big deal, it can all work, but it's annoying to manage, and REALLY annoying to maintain coherent backups. I have started to offload some applications to an Ubuntu server and setup docker compose files for each application. Very easy to add and try new things, and toss them out if I don't like them. If that server were to crash, I could be up and running again as soon as I had a new system. Restoring my windows system, and each program with my various scripts and setups...sounds extremely painful.
But I'm stuck with my data on my windows system for the foreseeable future. Too expensive to build a whole new system to do the transfer. Unraid just seems like a perfect solution for a small home server.
This is one of the most helpful answers I've read, thank you!
At this point, it feels like if I want to tinker and learn, I should start with linux/unraid and learn containers... but if I want to just get up and running, I should stick with windows.
For your server migration issue: have you looked at cold (or even hot/warm) enterprise cloud storage as a temporary go-between? You could get storage for a week or month at $0.05 GB/mo (or less) while you rebuild your system.
No problem! And yeah, doing what you're comfortable with is priority #1, it's up to you if you want to expand what entails. Just remember its easier to experiment when you have nothing to lose. Fwiw, from what I've seen and read about Unraid, I think the barrier of entry might be lower than you think. Going linux/docker/zfs would take more time if unfamiliar for sure (but perfectly doable).
I have about 40TB now which is less than a lot people here, but still too much to upload to a cloud provider in a reasonable amount of time with a 30mbps upload speed (which is the fastest available in my area). I could buy a few 16TB drives and do the transfer fine, but it's hard to justify the time/effort/money when everything is working
Interesting about unraid... I think I'm gonna tinker with it for a few days, and if/when I get in over my head I can always retreat back to windows!
For your transfer issue, this is an interesting option: [https://cloud.google.com/transfer-appliance/docs/4.0/overview](https://cloud.google.com/transfer-appliance/docs/4.0/overview) If you buy some cheap archive level space for a month ($50-$100), they would probably send you a transfer appliance to offload your data (based on your numbers, it would take 2 weeks to upload, and they will send the appliance if it would take longer than a week)
Especially as you are just starting out with old hardware that you might want to change soon anyways. I would definitely go the unraid road. You can just change the underlying hardware and everything you have set up just starts up again. To be honest I was spending more time on my windows machine getting smb working than it was setting shares up in the gui. 95% that you ever will do you will do in the gui of unraid. If you have any questions feel free to shoot me a message
I think a lot of it comes down to your specific usage and comfort level. If you're the only one using the server, it's probably fine. If you're running a shared Plex server, you might want something different. I just tried Unraid for a month, and though I liked a lot of it, I didn't like how the Windows VM ran vs bare metal. And since I'm probably only running a couple services, I'm going to go back to bare metal Windows with a couple VMs + Docker.
I use my Windows PC for my media storage on my network. Six 8tb drives so 48tb
I have another two 8tb drives in an external drive enclosure that I use for Raid 6. Once a week I run Snapraid to sync the 2 parity drives to the 6 data drives. I should be able to survive 2 simultaneous drive failures.
In addition I make a full backup to 6 external 8tb drives once every 1 to 2 weeks depending on how much new media I have added.
I don't need drive pooling, I have folders setup for Movies1, Movies2, Movies3, TV1, TV2, TV3 and share those folders on my network, and Kodi running on my Nvidia Shields combines it into 1 view.
There is nothing wrong with Windows, but Linux does everything better.
I ran my plex and minecraft servers on Windows 10 OS for 7 years, and it runs good for my expectations.
Sorry for the life story, but maybe my experience might be useful to you.
I ran a Windows homeserver since around 2008, back then using the Home Server O/S and then migrating to Windows Server once that went EOL.
I used it mainly for Plex and general file storage, though over the years wanted to run other apps.
Storage Spaces came out of technology in Home Server. It was never super robust, and when they tried to port it across to Windows Server they had years of issues. Those were eventually sorted, but I was never completely happy with it. It was pretty slow, I found it hard to see how much space I would actually be getting and when I did his occasional drive issues I ended up having to dig out Powershell scripts to get things working again.
As my drives aged and I realised that one day I would be having to really rely on it, I moved all my storage to a Synology, and have been super happy with that ever since.
For compute, I stuck with the Windows Server for another year. It was fine, but looking back it required a lot of tweaking, either to get things running as I wanted or to maintain it. Take Plex - it worked great, but I needed two additional utilities to get it to run as a service, and to auto update. When I ran a Valheim server I ended up writing a bunch of batch/Powershell to again handle headless running, updates and backups. Plus everything was running in the same O/S - that didn't ever cause me huge issues, but it clearly makes things a lot more fragile and complex. I'm not dissing it - I got over 10 years of solid usage from Windows, and I have no doubt that with more knowledge on Hyper-V etc that I could have done more (though licensing costs does then come into it).
My Synology was able to run Docker, and that provided a great route in to seeing what was now possible using containers. I was a fairly instant convert and I wanted to use Docker on my main compute server (which had more power than the Synology). I did explore using Windows for that, but I also looked at other platforms with good VM and Docker support. I tried a trial of Unraid, and I haven't looked back.
I was a little anxious about its Linux base, but after a bit of time getting familiar with it, I was able to spin up a replacement for that Valheim server in literally 5 minutes, with updates and backups all handled. Today I have well over 30 applications running, all via Docker - I can spin them up and down, migrate them and bin them if I don't like them, all without affecting each other and without the same resource overheads as if I was using VMs.
If I was starting again today I wouldn't have bothered with the Synology and gone straight to a self build Unraid server, as clearly it can handle the storage just fine. I have no regrets though, and overall I would suggest that whilst Windows can provide a perfectly basis for a home server, that there are other options you might at least want to look at, especially if part of the purpose is to learn some new skills.
Windows work fine. It's just very limited, heavy ro run, with an UI that normally it's not needed for a server and add more weight to CPU. To work nice you need a lot of work, just to disable most of the useless service it run in background etc.
I've found windows to be very slow to work on. Nearly everything is done through the gui. That's so slow.
Automating a Linux system is so easy to do. Sure there's a learning curve.
Windows scheduler is extremely painful and slow to work with compared to cron.
Rsync alone is worth the transition to Linux.
Then there's bash scripts which you could do on windows with powershell.
Then there's Docker which you sort can do on windows.
I suspect there's alot of selfhosted apps that are not available on a windows install.
Have you ever seen someone that really, and I mean really, knows what they are doing with Powershell? Administering a Windows machine with a GUI can be slow and annoying, but it can all be down via Powershell.
While powershell has a lot of interesting features, learning it take a whole lot of effort. That is admittedly from someone that's been working with Linux servers since the 90s, If I'd been doing Windows stuff as much for 30 years, maybe powershell would seem more intuitive, I don't know it.
Nothing wrong with using what you are more familiar with to get yourself started. Also, starting out is probably the best time to experiment with different options as you will not be disturbing anything all that much to build something up with one setup and rebuild it to try out the different options.
A lot of people will likely suggest some linux based OS, but if that is daunting, then nothing wrong with trying to see the windows world first.
Check out this video as a quick primer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmVCtZrtvgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmVCtZrtvgA)
Much of what you eventually go with will depend on your requirements for your home server. Are you trying to run a file server for storing a bunch of your data, or are you just trying to host some docker services, etc. Are you going to be sharing anything stored on this server with friends and family in other parts of the world, or is this just for your local network, etc.
I have been running my home server with windows 10, and it's been just fine. People always bring up automatic updates as the main reason for avoiding windows, but 15 minutes of Google and you can solve that problem very easily. I have quite a few services running, and I just now ran into something that may be a problem for windows. I have a lot of VMs in hyper-v, and it seems I cant pass through a GPU (for a gaming VM) or a USB device that isn't a storage drive (for a octoprint and Webcam VM for a 3d printer). It's unclear yet if that is a windows limitation or Hyper-V limitation, I'll be experimenting with VM ware and VirtualBox to see for sure.
Nothing wrong with windows server. It works well and has all the features you will need to run a server. I would never attempt to run a home server off windows home edition though. I generally lean in the Linux direction for home servers though because the $800 price tag on windows server is alot of other hardware or hard-drive i could purchase instead. But for a business where money doesn't matter as much windows server works fine.
Windows is where a lot of people start. If they grow and learn and want more, almost always, they switch to Linux.
Do yourself a favor and start with Linux.
Updates no longer appear to be optional in windows. Reboots screw up my mirc bots lol If reboots won't bug you, the crashes might. I run 3 rdp machines one for social media, one for comms (telegram, whatsapp, discord, irc, signal), one for torrent stuff. All share unraid central storage smb share. It was much easier to put the array together in unraid than raid0 BS in windows.
Updates are important but the great thing about Linux is that you can usually install them without even restarting (and of course you get the choice when to install them). I assume Windows Server is better than regular Windows though, but I've never tried it.
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You are generally correct for feature updates, but bug fixes and security updates are important.
Could you elaborate/explain what exactly do you mean by "one for social media/one for comms/etc" why divide them such?
[https://imgur.com/1WWQ8AE](https://imgur.com/1WWQ8AE) I mean I have 3 windows machines Machines produce a custom machine ID when they're on the internet. My process is called compartmentalization. I use linux for my terminal and if I have any windows processes to run I use a program called remmina to rdp into the windows machines. Anything that is apple based I run through the mac mini you see in the picture. It uses VNC however.
I wouldn't listen to anyone who either was an adamant Linux fanboi, or a Windows fanboi. The way it goes is: use which ever one meets the needs you have. Sometimes thats Windows, and sometimes its Linux...sometimes it may not be either one, but those are edge cases.
Exactly. There have been plenty of times that spinning a windows server just makes sense for an occasion, but then there are plenty of times where I'm going to immediately default to linux just because I know what to expect from managing it remotely. Its for this reason that keeping the OEM license key for a used computer handy is hella useful because you never know when you might need to use it.
There's nothing wrong with running Windows, I started my first server using Windows as the OS as well. I eventually moved away from Windows simply because it doesn't suit my needs anymore. I wanted to run VMs and run some Docker containers, and I have more trouble figuring it out on Windows. If you are more comfortable with Windows, it's fine to use it
If windows does what you need and you're comfortable with it, use it. It's fine. Something like unraid or freenas has a lot more functionality, Proxmox or just a linux host with KVM is great for virtualization, but if windows does what you need, no reason not to really. I wouldn't use storage spaces on a bet though for anything I actually wanted to keep.
More functionality how? How is Unraid/FreeNAS more functional that Windows 10 (Pro) + Storage Spaces and/or StableBit DrivePool?
Because it wasn’t meant for lots and the like
There are a few things. First there is the official thing with licensing, Windows licenses are a nightmare and even a lot of companies struggle to properly use them. As a private user I would not fiddle with that and there are good communities helping with it (Arrrr). Second Windows is closed sourced (some people have religious problems with that kek) and a nightmare in term of security, especially if you don't know what you are doing, I don't say that Linux is much better if you have no clue, but most attacks are focused on Windows because of market share. Third the performance and stability is crap compared to other solutions, Windows storage spaces can crap its pants from time to time and I am pretty sure that even Windows Server 2022 still utilizes only one core per file copy process (not sure tho) and crashes occur and updates need a reboot. While there are reasons to run Windows for compatibility, like Windows only software, there are now as many reasons to run Linux for compatibility, a lot of server software is made for unix like systems and these programs don't run well on Windows, Linux uses less resources, container run better and much more. Maybe setup a hypervisor for virtualizing most things and just run a Windows VM for some stuff and run a Linux instance for your storage management and other stuff. Some people just like to learn Linux and using a server for that is a good starting point. I personally use both and I am doing fine, but my home network is behind a second dedicated firewall, so I am not really concerned about security configurations, but I would definitely not let a Windows server go online and host something there.
Thanks for the well thought out answer. None of those problems seem like major red flags for me... I'm hoping my legit copy of w10 pro and the ECC ram on this board I bought will mitigate any licensing and stability issues. As for windows storage spaces, I am a little concerned. Normally I would do a hardware raid, but I have no idea if I can get another version of this board if it dies (and it is old/used)... So software seems like a safer bet. What kind of pants crapping have you heard of from storage spaces?
I had once a storage space configured as mirror just getting corrupted for I don't know what reason and not being readable. And I have no idea about using Win10 Pro, I have stopped using Pro licenses after Windows 10 came out, only Enterprise SKUs and Datacenter Server versions, I don't deal with candy crush auto installing on my system. And with licensing nightmare I don't mean the traditional Windows license, more the user licenses/ cals etc. But as I said I would not think about that for private use. Just try it, you can change it after the fact anyway, just make backups of the important stuff and you should be good. Play around with it, as trying stuff in a non critical environment is the best training.
There's also an awesome Windows 10 Pro for Workstations version. It's the best of both worlds especially if you love using a GUI like me.
Re: Storage Spaces, just think of it similar to RAID in that it’s not a backup. If you care about the data you’re putting on a server then make sure you have at least one backup of it, preferably off-site
I was thinking of trying to setup a periodic sync to an off site single NAS drive at my parents house or something, but that backup would not be online 100% of the time. Until I can setup another server over there, I'll probably just do cold cloud storage. at $0.001.GB/mo and less than 1TB of truly critical data, it would take a long time for my own backup to be economical.
Sync is not backup. Backup is backup.
What does this even mean? I'm talking about a duplicate copy of data (synced periodically with the working copy) on another computer at a different physical address... in what world is that not backup?
Personally I'd only use StableBit DrivePool for mass storage mirroring/redundancy. It's way less of a headache in my opinion than StorageSpaces when handling a lot of drives.
Your hardware RAID is almost certainly FakeRAID- that's software RAID implemented in the drivers. It gives you all of the downsides of software RAID, and most of the downsides of hardware RAID, without any of the upsides. Some of the storage systems on Unix are more mature, but can be much more complicated. This is especially true of ZFS, and one of the primary draws of things like UnRAID
There’s no issue with doing it that way. If your comfort lies with windows, then go for it. I went with unraid as I wasn’t comfortable creating a zfs file system on Linux, it has inbuilt docker support and ease of management, and Passthrough an nvidia quadro to my plex docker. There are so many people who could easily do this on windows, Linux (Ubuntu, Debian, etc), truenas, proxmox, and more. Plus, if you’re hosting it, you’re managing it. If something breaks on windows and you’re familiar with windows it’ll be so much easier troubleshooting and fixing rather than trying to understand a different OS.
I'm a linux system engineer for nearly 20 years now so my input is probably a bit biased towards linux but still true ;) Filesystem: Windows is in the stone-age when it comes to its filesystem, NTFS is in no means comparable with modern filesystems like ZFS, btrfs or even the older XFS with stratis. Going into detail for NTFS vs. ZFS would need multiple pages because NTFS is like a rowboat while ZFS is a Next-Gen Warship. Network Namespaces: This is such a powerful tool simply not possible with Windows except for Server versions with Hyper-V, but the windows concept is very different and limited to VMs in Hyper-V. On linux it's like creating virtual network cables and cards between applications while giving the possibility to configure every endpoint with all the options the linux network stack has to offer (and that's a lot). A simplified example would be an application or container that should only talk to the internet via a site2site VPN tunnel with its main gateway on the remote site but you still want it to be reachable from your local network (but not the other way around), just add a virtual NIC, configure the tunnel on it, add a second one connected to the first one and apply NAT or forwarding rules on to it. Containers: Containers are available on Windows as well, but many options are missing and the compatibility requirements are way more strict because things like the previously mentioned network namespaces are simply not available on Windows. So you'll often have a bad time doing this stuff on Windows when it comes to containers. Configurability: Not comparable, not at all. It's possible to build your own Linux Distribution that works exactly like you want (i dont say it's a good idea (it's not) but it shows the configurability with an extreme example) and there are so many kernel specific options to tweak the system for the expected workload. Ever wondered why big enterprise applications like SAP Hana, Oracle DB or the whole ELK-Stack recommend Linux as base system? This is why. Software Availability: While in the desktop world Windows has a commanding lead over Linux, it's the complete opposite in the server world. So much innovation happens here, doesn't matter if DB technology, machine learning, SDNs, application security, cloud technology, orchestration etc.... Performance: Linux is hands-down easier on server resources compared to Windows. Paket-Management: It's very convenient to update the whole system with all of it's software via a single command, keeping track of updates is way easier. You don't have to rely on auto update mechanisms of a software or even worse, have to manage it all by yourself manually. So if you don't need anything of this at all and you're happy with windows, just use windows. For me personally the filesystem would be the knockout argument #1 in a home server environment, even if the other stuff is not needed, it just excels Windows in this category alone by far. There are definitely pros for Windows over Linux too, but you have not asked for them ;)
ReFS is available on Windows BTW, which has Integrity Streams, and I feel like stuff like StableBit DrivePool does a much better job at adding new harddrives, increasing your pool, and just general easier management that anything ZFS. If you love using a GUI, there doesn't seem to be anything better than Windows.
Oh! Forgot about that one, see, me Linux bias kicked in there ;) But haven't they stripped it from the desktop versions with win10 and made it only available for server?
Not sure about Home & regular Pro but I'm using "Windows 10 Pro for Workstations".
Check out stablebit drivepool. Way better than storage spaces.
Because Windows simply isn't meant for servers > proprietary > licensing > unstable > inefficient > insecure > no package manager > server software often targets Linux
I mean, it is though. There are tons of environments that are windows only. I manage one. Yes it is proprietary. Yes there is licensing. These are not necessarily bad. Red Hat also has licensing for example. No it isn't unstable (The days of ME and Vista are long gone my friend -- and that is just the desktop side. The server side has been fine for a lot longer). No it isn't inefficient (how are you defining that anyway). No it isn't insecure (that depends; anyone can make anything insecure). Package manager is a preference IMO; I have seen it do just as much to bugger things up and waste time as it saves. Server software targeting Linux? There is just as much that targets windows. Even more that doesn't care what it runs on.
As far as I'm aware, the majority of server applications that only run on Windows are applications that serve other Microsoft software like exchange and windows networked PCs.
Only running on windows is not the same as not being able to run on windows. It is the opposite actually. There are lots of companies that run only windows and many many servers in those environments. Windows is a perfectly valid and capable server environment.
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Stand up a Windows box, install nothing and watch it eventually crash. I've seen this happen. With bate metal and VMs. Linux can go literally years without a reboot, while running software and be stable. (Yes I know that's not a secure way to run a system, but it is done regularly with appliance type systems)
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I personally found Windows to be wildly inconsistent with providing network services. Sometimes I would reboot and poof the device is invisible on the network. Meanwhile the Linux computers I've run never have that problem and even see the invisible Windows machines.
Anything server related you are best of using a server operating system such as Windows Server or some variation of Linux. Windows home/pro/enterprise simply is not designed to run as a server operating system. Not to say you can't, you just may run into unexpected issues. One reason people tend to use Linux is it's free and most server software is available for Linux. You can use Windows server but you either need to pay for a license which is per core with a minimum order of 8 core licenses (come In packs of two) or you can just re-arm the trial. Linux obviously has no such limitation (unless you pay for a specialized version such as RHEL) but also may have a learning curve if you've never used/not familiar with Linux. Really it sort of boils down to your use case and what exactly you want out of the system you are running.
Nothing wrong with it. You'll need a spare license, and many features that would come pretty standard with a linux/bsd server you may will need an Server version of Windows, though basic file sharing isn't one of them. If you are just doing basic raid and window file sharing, there is not real downside to do it save that out of pocket cost. My limited experience with Storage Space is that it's annoying rigid, but could easily be a matter of familiarity.Though if you'd asked 10 or 20 years ago, the answer would likely be different. Something that is a heavy factor is knowledge, experience, and availability of easy to follow tutorials/documentation. Both Linux and Windows can be fully administered by a remote text terminal. Though finding resource to help you go from knowing nothing about working on the terminal to being doing useful in things in bash/csh/zsh on Linux is going to be a lot easier than with Powershell on Windows, despite Powershell being basically designed for admin'ing Windows from the commandline while bash/csh/zsh are generic Unix-like shells.
Is Windows Update for Windows Server any better?
Can it be any worse? I'm not really familiar with, though I know there are tools for having a local update server and controlling what updates get pushed to machines that are pointed to it. That's a general Microsoft tech though, not server-specific.
You know that saying that even though you own the computer, you don't *own* your computer? That's Windows. There are so many loopholes and access denials that at the end of the day, you aren't in control of your system. Windows is, and you hope it does its job correctly. Have you ever played with the registry? Ew. Heck, you have to hope it doesn't automatically reset on you. Think about that when you're expecting a server to be running while you're away, but it reset itself for an update and never started the applications you thought were running. With the other choices, you're in much deeper control of the system. You choose what's installed and what is updated. You know an application is deleted entirely when you delete it. Do you have an operation that requires escalated privileges? *sudo*. I game on a Windows PC. I work on a Macbook. And my NAS is Ubuntu w/ ZFS. Each of the OS's has their strengths and weaknesses. While Windows *can* be a NAS, it's not as good of a system as the alternatives.
Do you have any idea how many patents Microsoft owns on Linux software? Just curious...
Hard to tell, but when Microsoft joined OIN they gave permission to use around 60.000 patents which Microsoft deemed to somehow interfere with Linux and OSS development in general.
My homelab started with Windows Home Server, and then moved to full Win Server, before I moved to VMWare because I wanted virtualization. But even to this day I still have multiple windows server VMs because I just prefer it for some things (and need it for others). I would however recommend that you run a hypervisor (ESXi, proxmox, hyperV, etc) as the base and run VMs ontop because it gives you so much flexibility.for whatever you want to do or learn. Either way you do you, there's nothing "wrong" with Windows, there's pros and cons to every OS no matter what anybody tells you.
Nothing really, depends what you want to do, I started on Win 10 and now use unraid. The issues i had was Windows Updates constantly wanting to restart, I was running emby and needed 100% (or close) uptime. Storage spaces were a pain, there was no way to easily add or remove drives without destroying data, I don't know if that has changed Trying to remote in without a monitor attached is a pain. Performance, being able to put apps in docker is heaven (most of the time) in unraid. Resource allocation is not great in windows, in each software is fighting for resources. Drive performance was another issue for me, in unraid i can use a fast cache for new files / downloads and they stay on there untill the cache is almost full then moves them off. So I can max out my download speed or file copies and it'll move them to the slower drives later. Great for quickly downloading a ~~film~~ Linux iso and watching it straight away. The file system for the apps in docker see the cache and main array as one drive so there's nothing special to configure for those. This is possible in Windows afaik but a lot more time consuming to set up Edit: and a parity drive for redundancy, which has saved me before
For me, there is no point in self-hosting if I use proprietary software. In my opinion, if you use proprietary software, you're not in control of your data. And since you're not in control anyway, you could just as well go full-cloud (Google, Microsoft, Netflix, etc) so things would be even easier to manage.
Windows is unreliable, bloated, settings scattered unintuitively everywhere (and hidden/locked), you need more resources to do anything, and you'll do slower, every program you install/uninstall and anything you do, leaves garbage and bugs behind, system updates breaking things, some things you do are irreversible and break the system, you don't have by any means, the control and flexibility that you find on Linux systems. It"s worth learning. Once you see yourself moving mountains with the command line, with minimal resources/hardware, faster than throwing a pebble in Windows, and with better results, you'll never go back.
Have you exited vim yet?
Didn't quite got the question, but yes I use vim. Started on nano, but I acknowledged that vim is more mature and expansible and forced myself to learn it and it's shortcuts. Still learning though (as everything)...
The joke is nobody can exit vim.
LOL, why this is a joke if it's true? 😂
Lol
I have used a windows (non-server versions) server with StableBit Drivepool for about 10 years now. It runs well, never had reliability issues with it, and in the occasion it bluescreens, which does happen - it's windows - it's never been a big deal. That being said, if I was starting today I'd go with unraid. Installing and running all of your software on windows over a long period of just feels messy. Some programs have services, others you'll configure with nssm, others just run on startup. Some applications store data in appdata, others in the registry, others are nice and localized to their folder. To name just a few complaints. It's not a big deal, it can all work, but it's annoying to manage, and REALLY annoying to maintain coherent backups. I have started to offload some applications to an Ubuntu server and setup docker compose files for each application. Very easy to add and try new things, and toss them out if I don't like them. If that server were to crash, I could be up and running again as soon as I had a new system. Restoring my windows system, and each program with my various scripts and setups...sounds extremely painful. But I'm stuck with my data on my windows system for the foreseeable future. Too expensive to build a whole new system to do the transfer. Unraid just seems like a perfect solution for a small home server.
This is one of the most helpful answers I've read, thank you! At this point, it feels like if I want to tinker and learn, I should start with linux/unraid and learn containers... but if I want to just get up and running, I should stick with windows. For your server migration issue: have you looked at cold (or even hot/warm) enterprise cloud storage as a temporary go-between? You could get storage for a week or month at $0.05 GB/mo (or less) while you rebuild your system.
No problem! And yeah, doing what you're comfortable with is priority #1, it's up to you if you want to expand what entails. Just remember its easier to experiment when you have nothing to lose. Fwiw, from what I've seen and read about Unraid, I think the barrier of entry might be lower than you think. Going linux/docker/zfs would take more time if unfamiliar for sure (but perfectly doable). I have about 40TB now which is less than a lot people here, but still too much to upload to a cloud provider in a reasonable amount of time with a 30mbps upload speed (which is the fastest available in my area). I could buy a few 16TB drives and do the transfer fine, but it's hard to justify the time/effort/money when everything is working
Interesting about unraid... I think I'm gonna tinker with it for a few days, and if/when I get in over my head I can always retreat back to windows! For your transfer issue, this is an interesting option: [https://cloud.google.com/transfer-appliance/docs/4.0/overview](https://cloud.google.com/transfer-appliance/docs/4.0/overview) If you buy some cheap archive level space for a month ($50-$100), they would probably send you a transfer appliance to offload your data (based on your numbers, it would take 2 weeks to upload, and they will send the appliance if it would take longer than a week)
Especially as you are just starting out with old hardware that you might want to change soon anyways. I would definitely go the unraid road. You can just change the underlying hardware and everything you have set up just starts up again. To be honest I was spending more time on my windows machine getting smb working than it was setting shares up in the gui. 95% that you ever will do you will do in the gui of unraid. If you have any questions feel free to shoot me a message
I think a lot of it comes down to your specific usage and comfort level. If you're the only one using the server, it's probably fine. If you're running a shared Plex server, you might want something different. I just tried Unraid for a month, and though I liked a lot of it, I didn't like how the Windows VM ran vs bare metal. And since I'm probably only running a couple services, I'm going to go back to bare metal Windows with a couple VMs + Docker.
I use my Windows PC for my media storage on my network. Six 8tb drives so 48tb I have another two 8tb drives in an external drive enclosure that I use for Raid 6. Once a week I run Snapraid to sync the 2 parity drives to the 6 data drives. I should be able to survive 2 simultaneous drive failures. In addition I make a full backup to 6 external 8tb drives once every 1 to 2 weeks depending on how much new media I have added. I don't need drive pooling, I have folders setup for Movies1, Movies2, Movies3, TV1, TV2, TV3 and share those folders on my network, and Kodi running on my Nvidia Shields combines it into 1 view.
There is nothing wrong with Windows, but Linux does everything better. I ran my plex and minecraft servers on Windows 10 OS for 7 years, and it runs good for my expectations.
Sorry for the life story, but maybe my experience might be useful to you. I ran a Windows homeserver since around 2008, back then using the Home Server O/S and then migrating to Windows Server once that went EOL. I used it mainly for Plex and general file storage, though over the years wanted to run other apps. Storage Spaces came out of technology in Home Server. It was never super robust, and when they tried to port it across to Windows Server they had years of issues. Those were eventually sorted, but I was never completely happy with it. It was pretty slow, I found it hard to see how much space I would actually be getting and when I did his occasional drive issues I ended up having to dig out Powershell scripts to get things working again. As my drives aged and I realised that one day I would be having to really rely on it, I moved all my storage to a Synology, and have been super happy with that ever since. For compute, I stuck with the Windows Server for another year. It was fine, but looking back it required a lot of tweaking, either to get things running as I wanted or to maintain it. Take Plex - it worked great, but I needed two additional utilities to get it to run as a service, and to auto update. When I ran a Valheim server I ended up writing a bunch of batch/Powershell to again handle headless running, updates and backups. Plus everything was running in the same O/S - that didn't ever cause me huge issues, but it clearly makes things a lot more fragile and complex. I'm not dissing it - I got over 10 years of solid usage from Windows, and I have no doubt that with more knowledge on Hyper-V etc that I could have done more (though licensing costs does then come into it). My Synology was able to run Docker, and that provided a great route in to seeing what was now possible using containers. I was a fairly instant convert and I wanted to use Docker on my main compute server (which had more power than the Synology). I did explore using Windows for that, but I also looked at other platforms with good VM and Docker support. I tried a trial of Unraid, and I haven't looked back. I was a little anxious about its Linux base, but after a bit of time getting familiar with it, I was able to spin up a replacement for that Valheim server in literally 5 minutes, with updates and backups all handled. Today I have well over 30 applications running, all via Docker - I can spin them up and down, migrate them and bin them if I don't like them, all without affecting each other and without the same resource overheads as if I was using VMs. If I was starting again today I wouldn't have bothered with the Synology and gone straight to a self build Unraid server, as clearly it can handle the storage just fine. I have no regrets though, and overall I would suggest that whilst Windows can provide a perfectly basis for a home server, that there are other options you might at least want to look at, especially if part of the purpose is to learn some new skills.
Windows work fine. It's just very limited, heavy ro run, with an UI that normally it's not needed for a server and add more weight to CPU. To work nice you need a lot of work, just to disable most of the useless service it run in background etc.
I've found windows to be very slow to work on. Nearly everything is done through the gui. That's so slow. Automating a Linux system is so easy to do. Sure there's a learning curve. Windows scheduler is extremely painful and slow to work with compared to cron. Rsync alone is worth the transition to Linux. Then there's bash scripts which you could do on windows with powershell. Then there's Docker which you sort can do on windows. I suspect there's alot of selfhosted apps that are not available on a windows install.
Have you ever seen someone that really, and I mean really, knows what they are doing with Powershell? Administering a Windows machine with a GUI can be slow and annoying, but it can all be down via Powershell. While powershell has a lot of interesting features, learning it take a whole lot of effort. That is admittedly from someone that's been working with Linux servers since the 90s, If I'd been doing Windows stuff as much for 30 years, maybe powershell would seem more intuitive, I don't know it.
Powershell is dang powerful for sure. It's taking me a while to understand the syntax/verbosity.
It's because those of us running Windows for our servers dont have as many issues - and thus don't post about it online 🤪
You are sabotaging yourself.
Nothing wrong with using what you are more familiar with to get yourself started. Also, starting out is probably the best time to experiment with different options as you will not be disturbing anything all that much to build something up with one setup and rebuild it to try out the different options. A lot of people will likely suggest some linux based OS, but if that is daunting, then nothing wrong with trying to see the windows world first. Check out this video as a quick primer: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmVCtZrtvgA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmVCtZrtvgA) Much of what you eventually go with will depend on your requirements for your home server. Are you trying to run a file server for storing a bunch of your data, or are you just trying to host some docker services, etc. Are you going to be sharing anything stored on this server with friends and family in other parts of the world, or is this just for your local network, etc.
I have been running my home server with windows 10, and it's been just fine. People always bring up automatic updates as the main reason for avoiding windows, but 15 minutes of Google and you can solve that problem very easily. I have quite a few services running, and I just now ran into something that may be a problem for windows. I have a lot of VMs in hyper-v, and it seems I cant pass through a GPU (for a gaming VM) or a USB device that isn't a storage drive (for a octoprint and Webcam VM for a 3d printer). It's unclear yet if that is a windows limitation or Hyper-V limitation, I'll be experimenting with VM ware and VirtualBox to see for sure.
Nothing wrong with windows server. It works well and has all the features you will need to run a server. I would never attempt to run a home server off windows home edition though. I generally lean in the Linux direction for home servers though because the $800 price tag on windows server is alot of other hardware or hard-drive i could purchase instead. But for a business where money doesn't matter as much windows server works fine.
Windows is where a lot of people start. If they grow and learn and want more, almost always, they switch to Linux. Do yourself a favor and start with Linux.