The Package

Software installation and Setup

The first issue I ran into was the software that came up after putting the disk in the drive.  It had some sort of an issues with display drivers and would not display the text in the buttons.  As you can see the writing on the button was blank forcing me to guess as to which button I was supposed to press and what it said.  Once I got past this ridiculous screen, things got much better as it went into more of a standard install.

After the utility came up, it immediately found the second device.  It allowed me to rename it as well as enter in the password which by default is on the device itself.

Performance Testing

Same Room

I used a very crude but realistic method of testing to replicate what I could expect in terms of performance.  I did three things, viewed the utility for the connected bandwidth, file copy performance, and various videos for playback performance.

The first test was in the same room.  As you can see it hooked up at 190 Mbps.  Large file copy was about 5.85 MB/sec. 1080P video stuttered badly however a 4.4 Gig  720P MP4 played perfectly.

Same floor and opposite side of the house

Second test was on the same floor put at two furthest points in the house.  Utility stated a much lower connection speed and large file copy dropped to 4.19 MB/sec.  Video playback was about the same same and the 720P MP4 played just fine.

Furthest point in the house and the lower floor

The final check was to go at the extreme sides of the house from one end of the top floor to the opposite side of the lower floor.  The utility did not show much of a change however the file copy dropped again this time to 3.33 MB/sec.  Video playback of the MP4 was still smooth and seam to play without any stutter.

Conclusion

I am not sure whether or not to consider these a success.  I guess that depends on what you want to do with them.  They are the easiest and most robust units I have tested and worked where no others would.  Other than the silly initial screen where you can not read the text, their software worked extremely well and was very easy to use.  When connected, the connection was very consistent.  Since you can hook 4 devices to one adapter, they are well suited for an AV rack where you can stream your VOD, update your guide data, or update firmware on your AV devices.

On the negative side, the performance was not very good for HD video streaming.  If all you want is to connect to the internet or stream lower resolution content, these will work out very well since the signal is more consistent than wireless.  However if you are looking to stream Blu-Ray content, crawl in the attic and start running Cat 6 as these are not going to work for you.  They market these for streaming HD and I would say that is a bit of stretch.  If you consider HD to be 720P with low to mid bit rates than yes, but if your version of HD (as mine is) is 1080P with a 20+ Mbs bit rate than no, these will not stream HD.  Don’t get me wrong, these are best powerline adapter I have tested but you should know in advance what you are going to use them for.  To me the powerline adapter technology is still inconsistent and is very dependent on your house wiring.  There are newer more powerful units that may be worth trying but as far as these go, be clear on what your needs are before you shop.  If you need multiple devices on one adapter then there is value to these, but if you want blazing speed, look elsewhere.

Sony demos working DLNA.  First DLNA demo I have seen that seems to work as well as Air Play.

Samsun shows off their super OLED displays.  You have to see these in person to believe the color and to see how thin these are.  Amazing.

3D Printing.  Technology for creating and printing a physical 3D picture.

2012 CES show awards.  (a bit of glare on these photos)

Car companies where there in force.  Ford, Kia, and Audi where there in a big way.  Here is an Audi concept car.

This was pretty cool.  Earphone that can be connected together (up to 4) via a magnet connector.  Very effective and cool.  If you have kids and your traveling, you will want these.

This is a pretty cool product.  A mobile cloud hotspot that utilizes an SD card for encrypted wireless access to content from your IOS device (app) and others using the browser.

Look like ARM and nVidia are not the only phone chip makers.  Intel comes out strong.  Long battery life and impressive power.  RAN games, 360 video, and HD video without breathing hard.  Keep an eye on this one.

Thunderbolt for the PC is coming.  Spoke to an Intel rep and he stated there will be Ivy Bridge motherboards coming out with Thunderbolt but it is not specked in.  Look forward to testing it.

This caught my attention.  Turned out to be an Iomega NAS unit.

Thunderbolt.  WD showed off their 6T x 4 (24T) Thunderbolt setup.  Each box is configured in a RAID 0, and all 4 boxes are RAIDED via Thunderbolt.  Check out the benchmarks.  Video editors take note.  The product is not out yet out but should be out shortly.  Pricing is not yet released.  Initially it will only be for MACs but will be firmware upgradeable for PCs once MFG release PC host controllers.

New Synology 8 bay unit, removable fans and a new version of their Disk Station program.  They are claiming this unit will saturate a gigabit connection.  MSRP is $999.

Zotac video card self contained water cooling systems for the nVidia cards. (GTX 580)

Gamers take note.  The ultimate addition to your gaming PC.

USB Dual Controller.  This is available in different configurations.  PC or MAC versions and either a 4 port controller with 4 external ports or 2 external ports and one internal header.  What makes this unique is that every port has a dedicated controller and is capable of 10 gig/s of performance.

SSD Caching for RAID!  Stay tuned for this one.  Mix and match spindle and SSDs in any configuration you want.  How about 1 SSD and 3 spindle drives in a RAID 5, or how about 2 SSD in a RAID 0 caching 2 spindle drives in a RAID 0/1.  Brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.  This has real potential for increased performance.  We where promised a review unit so stay tuned.

This one is pretty interesting.  Can you say HPTC or firewall router?

The Fractal cases on display where not new models but I got the chance to see their stuff up close and was very impressed.  Great design, quality, and price.  New models will be released mid year and we may get some test units.

Just to clarify, this talks only about SkyDrive however AllwaySync also supports the following formats and services.

• FTP
• Standard Windows Folder
• Archive or Encrypted Volume
• Amazon S3
• WebDav
• MS ActiveSync
• Google Docs
• Windows Azure
• SkyDrive
• iKeepinClould

As many of you have seen, this is the main screen that comes up for AllwaySync.  It shows the tabs across the top which indicate a specific folder or job.

Click here for additional information on using Allwaysync.

To test SkyDrive, I added a new job tab.  Once you add the new tab, you have to establish the drives/folders to sync.   When you select your first location, you are prompted with a choice of services to pick from from a regular folder to one of many services they support (see the image below).

Once you select “SkyDrive”, you are prompted for your live ID.  I would suggest not using compression so you can access the files directly via another computer or using a mobile app (see below).

Once you input your credentials, select the folder you want to sync with, click “Synchronize” and sit back and relax.  Below is what you should end up with.  Of course you can modify the default folder assignment on the SkyDrive.

As we mentioned in BYOB 71, Microsoft has a SkyDrive app for IOS and Windows Phone 7 which allows quick access to the files you sync’d with AllwaySync.  Very useful if you are synching say a photos folder.

Conclusion

This is a great feature which is basically free.  Since AllwaySync is free for personal use, and SkyDrive is also free there is no real cost to this.  It offers you the flexibility and power of AllwaySync and Microsoft’s generous 25 Gigs of online storage.  I do not see many downsides to using this but I do have one caution.  Typically online backup programs encrypt the data on your local machine and send the encrypted data over a secure connection to the cloud.  This works much like copying the data to a cloud drive directly.  The data is not encrypted and remains in its native format but it is however sent over a secure connection (https).  Overall this is an excellent solution if you need some sort of cloud storage for things like photos, spreadsheets, or documents.  There are some file size constraints on SkyDrive so you can not use this for everything. Give it a try and see if it work for your needs as the price is sure right…

Given that a single 7970 wasn’t going to cut it for my 20|30|20 PLP monitor setup. I decided to try out 2 R6970’s in crossfire. I only used SLi once before quite awhile back….I wasn’t impressed with the economic : performance ratio. Lately I’ve seen much better scaling of performance with multiple GPU setups and was willing to give it another go. And wow what difference.

Primarily testing with Battlefield 3 the current GPU KO champ. Performance improved at least 60% in BF3 alone. Frame rates went from a barely playable 35-40 avg to well over 80fps. turning up the eyecandy brought it back down to around 58fps, but its gorgeous and still very playable, for this mediocre gamer. Heat output isn’t too bad as these were fairly cool and quiet cards especially when you consider the level of performance you get. My system is coping quite well. Full system idle wattage isn’t crazy 200w @ the wall, up from 145w with the single card. Full bore gaming skyrocketed up to 545w, up from 350w. Neither are overclocked. While I did tinker with the settings and was able to achieve over 1GHz on both, my now smallish 750w PSU is going to prevent any overclocking for now. Honestly with the numbers I’m getting, stock is just fine.

Happy Gaming in 2012!

The 13” long beasts

Prepping the system for the second card…

ohhh the trigger finger was getting’ antsy

All done ready to let it loose!

Okay let me set up the background of the experiment for you. Since I had set up the beta version, I’ve been using the IcyDock dual laptop drive enclosure with two 250 Gig Western Digital Caviar Black drives. Over the past year I noticed the system was getting extremely slow. Opening and closing the console took way too much time and I was pretty frustrated every time I had to do it. I’ve been toying with the idea of using SSD drive, however buying an SSD drive larger than 160 GB is very pricey. The first thing I wanted to try was to utilize an existing 60 GB drive I had just bought on sale, and use Acronis which I recently installed to restore the backed up partition onto a smaller drive. I used the restore from Acronis and was able to get the WHS OS onto a 60 gig SSD. Since I did not have anything on the “D” drive anyway, everything booted and worked perfectly with no errors. Since this was a Sata 3 drive, it was never my intention to leave it as I have a different plan for that, I just merely wanted to attempt to try it and to make sure that this is actually possible. Many have talked about the idea in the forums and have used various hacks to install the OS on an SSD.  I found this option easier, safer, and worked extremely well for me.

Once I confirmed that it would restore correctly, and I fell in love with the performance of using an SSD on WHS, I opted to repeat the process this time using the cloning feature in Acronis to clone the IcyDock mirror onto an extra OCZ 240 Gig Vertex 2 that I had recently removed from my main system to replace with a faster drive. My plan was to use the extra space for something that did not need much protection such as iTunes where I could benefit from the speed.

The actual cloning process to go from the IcyDock mirror to the OCZ 240 SSD took about 8 to 9 min. The process was very simple, though I did have to manually adjust the partition sizes in Acronis so that there was 60 gig on the “C” drive and the balance on the “D”. The process went through with no errors. When it was done I was very pleased with the results. Everything I now do from loading the console to using apps from the desktop are much quicker. Even the actual boot time of the server itself is greatly improved. Granted you don’t boot your server very often, however for me it was a very painfully and slow process. I am very happy with the results and although it’s not something that I would recommend you go off and purchase, if you do have an extra SSD kicking around that 60+ Gigs, it is certainly worth considering. For me it also establishes the value of using Acronis on my WHS as it demonstrates the versatility that it provides as well as a quick way recovering your OS drive. I attached a quick benchmark of the result. It’s a tad slower running on Windows Home Server than on my Core I7, however the performance is still extremely fast giving you extra flexibility for your WHS. Overall I’m extremely pleased with the project and I am glad I could prove that Acronis would restore to a smaller drive and allow me to install an SSD into my system.

Kindle Fire Is it Hot or Cold?

Tim reviews his new kindle fire

Kindle Fire

WD Sentinel DX4000

Tim Reviews the Western Digital DX4000 which provides Windows Storage Server 2011 R2 Essentials, GigE, USB 3, and 4-8TB of storage in an enterprise package.

WD Sentinel DX4000

Acronis True Image Home 2012 on WHS2011

Check Acronis’ new product. Mike tested it with WHS2011 listen to the show to hear his thoughts.

Acronis True Image Home 2012

WDTV+ Live Hub Revisited

Although Michael reviewed a WDTV Live Hub about a year ago, Mike decided to revisit it. It sports new updates, more services, better integration and a lower price point.

WDTV Live Hub

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Does SSD caching, as enabled by the Intel Z68 chipset, speed up operations in a Hyper-V (virtualized) client on a Server 2008R2 host?

The argument against using an SSD as a cache when using a motherboard with Intel’s new Z68 chipset is difficult to rebut. If you are using the system as a workstation, why not just install the OS to the SSD and reap the full speed benefits of the drive all the time? You can choose what additional programs you want on the SSD as well – certainly you know what programs you use most often, whether it be Photoshop or a game – and you’d want them to stay on that SSD so you can use the speed you shelled out the big bucks for, right? Intel will tell you that is why they set the minimum cache at only 20GB so you can use a cheap, small SSD. Well, one, they don’t really exist at this time. Two, the smaller the cache the less likely what you want cached is going to be actually, well, cached. And three, the Intel example 20GB SSDs are hardly inexpensive. So when would this be a benefit?

How about if you could use that single SSD for speed across multiple OS’s/systems? Instead of getting SSD speed benefits on one system, if you could share that cache across four, five, or more PCs? The speed benefit shared by them all. Sure, none of them would have full SSD speed, but all of them could have the significant improvements claimed by Intel when caching is used. Magic? No. The way to this computing nirvana is using the cache on a drive that holds multiple virtual hard drives on a Z68 chipset enabled host. In this case, Windows Server 2008R2 with Hyper-V enabled.

Environment:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68A-D3H-B3

CPU: Intel 2500K

RAM: 16GB G.SKILL Ripjaws F3-12800CL9D

OS drive: 2x Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9160412AS 160GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s in a RAID1 config (enclosed in IcyDock 2-in-1 RAID enclosure)

Data drive(s): 5x 2TB Samsung EcoGreen F4 HD2040UI in RAID 5 attached to HighPoint RocketRaid 2720 (6Gb/sec PCI-E 2.0 x8)

VHD drive: 600GB WD6000BLHX 10K RPM 2.5” Velociraptor

SSD: 60GB OCZ Vertex 2

OS: (Host): Windows Server 2008R2 with Hyper-V enabled

(Guests): -Windows Home Server 2011 (4GB RAM allocated static)

-Windows 7 Ultimate x 3 (one for HTPC/TV recording, one for Minecraft server, one for editing)

A little background on the Z68 caching as implemented currently. You have the option of using one SSD of 20GB or more (up to 64GB max for cache, although you can use any size SSD) as a cache for any onboard Intel SATA port. As I am using a 60GB SSD, I had the option of the caching program partitioning it into a 20 GB cache leaving 40GB usable as an additional hard drive, but I chose to use the entire SSD for caching.

An obvious limitation is that the SSD cache can be used to cache the drive attached to one SATA port only. In a workstation environment typically this would be used with a large drive as the boot and storage drive and the SSD caching that drive. The question then is why not just install the OS on the SSD? In theory, if a smaller SSD is used, it could allow for better use than just the OS. But how would this be used in a server environment – especially a virtual host?

I originally thought to cache the host OS drive, thinking the Hyper-V manager would see increased speeds, as well as the OS itself of course. Below I have some Crystal Disk Mark speed tests that show the results of caching the server OS drive (only using 20GB cache during these tests): The blue (first test) is no caching; the green is with caching:

The laptop drives are a few years old, but they are 7200 RPM and no slouch, however the speed increases are quite impressive – not full GEN2 SSD speeds certainly but very fast. Especially interesting are the exponential increases in 4K read and write speeds.

But what good is this really? The whole reason I used the laptop drives in RAID 1 as the host OS is because drive access for the host shouldn’t impact the virtual OS use; really the host OS is rarely used except for host maintenance which should be very rare. Is the speed increase cool – yes. Does it help? I did some empirical and subjective testing for virtual OS boot up and access times and found that it did indeed speed up access to the Hyper-V Manager, even when remotely managed from a separate workstation, but had little measurable and no noticeable impact on actual OS use or speeds.

The second round of tests were where I hoped, and found, the results to be substantial and worthwhile for virtual OS use. This was accomplished by caching the virtual OS host drive, in this case the Velociraptor, with the hope/intent that the SSD would then be effectively caching all the virtual OS’s. This is also the reason I went with the full 60GB on the SSD (along with some concerns about TRIM, which I will address later.)

Of course, the Velociraptor is a speedy little drive in its own right. If I had to do it over again, I’d not spend the money on the Velociraptor as it’s speed is wasted when used with caching. It is much more cost effective to use a standard SATA drive and the SSD caching as shown by the benchmarks. Again the blue is no caching and the green is with caching.

The write speeds really threw me off. Certainly the read speeds are impressively fast, even given the Velociraptors impressive showing by itself, but why are the write speeds so low? In multiple tests I saw the write speeds as high as 145MB/sec in Sequential and around 90 MB/sec in 512K. On average the speeds were higher, but even so, only the speeds you’d get natively from the Velociraptor. However the 4K speeds are still much better, and lets remember this is completely random data – not exactly the point of caching. So how else to measure improvements, if any?

There are many different benchmarking suites; none are universally accepted. More challenging is all the full suite Windows OS benchmarks require video capabilities that a virtual machine/OS just doesn’t have. So how does one test empirically the advantage of a cache? A common test is boot up time. What defines the complete boot process is debatable, but for my test I chose the Minecraft server. It automatically starts the Minecraft server Java program upon logon (auto-logon). I also wait for all system tray icons to complete: Splashtop Streamer, MS Security Essentials, and network connectivity. Times are as follows:

No Cache: 39.50 sec 38.41sec 38.45sec average: 38.77 seconds

Cache: 31.96sec 29.90sec 28.83sec average: 30.23 seconds

May not seem significant, but that is a 22% decrease in boot time.

Another example is file transfer time – this is a real world example of why the Crystal Disk Mark synthetic speeds aren’t indicative of how much faster the systems are with the caching enabled.. While moving a WHS V1 ISO (a PP3 plus updated version I have) that was about 2.2GB from my RAID drive to the V (cache enabled) drive to use as an install for a new virtual machine, I averaged 320 MB/sec speeds! Obviously it was writing from the RAID directly to the cache, but it was instantly usable.

TRIM. The bane of SSDs is the garbage that collects on them slowing them down over time. Bad enough on a dedicated OS drive where there is relatively little change, but a cache? Isn’t that exactly the type of use that will quickly kill a non-TRIM enabled SSD? And the SATA port has to be RAID enabled to use it, which has been a no-go for TRIM. Fear not. Server 2008R2 reports DisableDeleteNotify=0 which means TRIM is enabled, even though the SATA ports must be set to a RAID state. OCZ’s Toolbox after all the testing showed just over 520GB of data written to and over 480GB of data read from the SSD with 100% life remaining. I saw no decrease in speeds during the testing. Admittedly I haven’t had the system in use long enough to say for sure it is working, but I have every reason to believe it is. Time will tell. However as I am using the full 60GB for cache it is only a matter of disabling the acceleration using the IRST software in the host OS and running an SSD cleaning tool to bring it back to new. We’re talking less than 10 minutes of time. I don’t believe that will be necessary.

Ultimately it still comes down to whether you want to spend the money on an SSD to use it for caching. The argument still stands that if you are buying it for a workstation, you’d be better off just installing the OS on the SSD and getting the full speed benefits of the drive. However, I think a virtual environment such as the one tested is the perfect use. Rather than getting great speed on one OS and normal speed on the others, now multiple OS’s can benefit and see speed improvements from one relatively low-cost SSD. Worth it? Yes.

In November 2010, Microsoft announced that it would remove Drive Extender (DE) from the WHS product.  This as already been covered completely here at the Home Server Show site.  Since then, 3 software developers have stepped up to produce software that fills in where DE left off.  The challenge has been just how to test those builds in beta and do it in an efficient manner.

The testing requirements for DE are a box that preferably has 3 or hard drives attached to it.  When the Window Home Server 2011 platform first became available a few months ago, I was short on testing hardware (esp boxes with multiple drives) and had to get creative on how to set it up.  This post is a summary of that testing.

While the configuration is unique for these requirements, it could be changed to fit an assorted situations.  Certainly, one could just use the Drobo as one large drive or another attached storage device could be substituted in its place.

For this review, I am using a home built system that contains a Gigabyte GA-H55M-USB3 board, a Core i3 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a 1TB System Drive running Windows 7 SP 1.

For Virtualization I am using Oracle’s VirtualBox version 4.0.12

External Storage is on a Drobo S 5 Bay enclosure running the Drobo Dashboard 2.0.3 software and Drobo firmware 2.1.1 [5.29.38828].  The Drobo has 2 – 3TB, 2 -  1.5TB and 1 – 1TB drives and is partitioned into 4 – 2TB volumes.  More on this later in the post.

VirtualBox Install

Installing Oracle’s Virtual Box is as easy as installing any other application like iTunes or Microsoft Office.  One exception is that it does install an additional network adapter that it uses for the VMs.  If you try to install the software using RDP or Microsoft Live Mesh, you will lose connectivity during the install.  The install also works best when your user account is the administrator of the machine.

There is a rather large community that supports VirtualBox.  More information and installation instructions can be found at http://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/

The next step is to install the WHS 2011 Software.  I will include a few basic Oracle VirtualBox screen shots and steps that might be outside the norm of a standard OS install.

The first task is to create a virtual machine and install WHS 2011.  After opening VirtualBox, select New.

Then Select next to start the wizard.  For this installation, I am choosing to name the VM ‘WHS2011, the OS is Microsoft Windows and the Version is Windows 2008 (64 bit).

Allocated 2048 MB to the system memory,create a new virtual hard disk, choose dynamic expanding storage and allocate 160GB to the OS drive.  Finish twice.

Now there a few changes that I make to the settings.  With the VM selected, choose Settings.

In the System – Processor tab, I move CPU from one to two

In Display – Video Tab, I move the Video Memory from 16 to 128 MB

Under Network – Adapter 1, I change the Attached to from NAT to Bridged Adapter.  It automatically finds the name of my network controller.

Click OK to Save.

Now select Start

In most cases, the DVD drive on the local PC will be shown as default.

Next and Finish.

From this point on, the setup will be performed like any other WHS 2011 install.

Installing WHS 2011

Dave McCabe has a great how to article on this process.  http://www.informationweek.com/byte/howto/personal-tech/desktop-os/231000924?queryText=windows+home+server+2011

During the setup, system resources looked some thing like this on the local PC.

After the setup was completed, I applied all the necessary updates to bring the OS to the latest patch set.

Attaching the Drobo (or any other external storage device)

We set up the Drobo in an earlier post in preparation for this review.  In that setup, we created 4 – 2TB volumes.

In order for the VM to see the Drobo, the drives need to configured in VirtualBox.

Select Settings – USB from the Menu.  By default, the USB Controller is enabled.  Select Add a new USB filter and choose the external drive of choice (in this case the Drobo) and click OK.

Select Settings – Storage – SATA Controller and select Add A Hard Disk.

Select Create new disk.

Welcome to the Create New Virtual Disk Wizard!  You have seen this before when fist setting up the VM OS Drive.  Select Next and Dynamically expanding storage.

In this case, I have 2TB volumes but am going to share those volumes with the PC as well.  For the purposes of this review, I will create 1.5TB partitions on each 2 TB volume.  Next and Finish.

That process is completed 2 more times on 2 Drobo Volumes.

Restart the VM of WHS 2011

Login to the Server Desktop and open the Dashboard.

Open the Server Manager and navigate to the Storage – Disk Management Tab

The Server will as to initialize the disks.  Make sure MBR is selected and OK.

Right Click and choose New Simple Volume for each of the new drives.

Next, next, Assign a drive letter, next, next and finish.

Each Drive is formatted exactly the same way.  The drives will now appear as New Volumes in the Hard Drives Tab in the WHS Dashboard.

From this point on, the VM is ready to use as a base for testing.  While a Drobo is not necessarily required to make this work, it does make it very easy to set up.

Over the next couple weeks, I will use this base to test all 3 of the major Drive Extender software offerings.

Datacore’s DriveHarmony

Covecube’s Stablebit Drivepool

Division – M’s DriveBender

About Jim

Jim Collison is a blogger and podcaster for HomeServerShow.com and TheAverageGuy.tv.and a Microsoft Home Server MVP

Full Disclosure – Drobo provided an evaluation unit with drives for this review.