Windows Home Server Install

[spacefighter]

Hey Guys,

So I am new to Proxmox and was trying to get some guests installed but for some reason I can’t seem to get Windows Home Server 11 RC installed. Iam pretty sure it’s based of server 2008 r2. First try it was a corrupted ISO,re downloaded and now it stops at the hard drive part. That is the part whereit says to verify all discs are loaded and then check the box saying that Iagree that files will be deleted. Next window is an error with a link to viewlogs. Says something about the disk size is too large for a partition(I dont really want to type out the whole messege but if it would let just ask). Am Ijust doing it wrong or does Proxmox not support this?

I installed it as
Image format : Raw
Disk: IDE
Guest: other

Thanks!

 

[fnu]

@spacefighter

Windows Home Server 2011 (RTM), formally known as codename Vail, does run pretty good on Proxmox 1.7 (Kernel: 2.6.35-1-pve). I do run one instance on my test server and in my opinion it does run even better as itself on the bare metal, with the opportunity to run further virtual machines on the Proxmox VE Server ...

But looking at your error, I would say you haven't read any documentation for Windows Home Server at all, whereas your virtual machine does not meet the requirements needed for WHS2011 (RTM).

The target machine does need 1 CPU á 1.4GHz or 2 CPUs á 1.3GHz, 2048MB memory and a HDD not below 160GB, if your virtual machine does not meet all (!) of these requirements, it won't install in any way. And yes, it is a Windows Server 2008 R2 based system.

For the future I would recommend: RTFM.

Regards
fnu

 

[spacefighter]

Sigh... I can’t even claim that it was hidden deep in the release notes. It’s right there in bullets. System requirements, 1.4 CPU, 2gbRam, 160gb Hd. Probably should have paid more attention to that part huh. Well Thanks for pointing that out fnu!! I was right about to give up. I guess I just assumed that since I had already ran WHS on the same system that it would work. I am interested to see how it performs now. I only really used WHS to store music and movies to stream to an Xbox 360 so I always felt a little bad having the system on 24/7 for maybe two movies a week.

Thanks again Fnu!
I am a MAN I don’t read manuals or ask for directions. ha would have helped tho

 

[fnu]

I am a MAN I don’t read manuals or ask for directions. ha would have helped tho

Well, I would think about a change regarding this mindset ... ... I do also hate to read hundreds of useless documentation pages, unfortunately often produced by open source developers. But whatever your opinion regarding M$ is, the documentation ist usefull and worth to read, at least the quick sheets.

Btw. a recommandation regarding drivers for storage and network. In my installation the recommended virtio network device & driver showed up pretty unstable. I couldn't finish any first backup of my test client (60GB), the virtio network adapter did prior pass away. Now I use a emulated e1000 NIC with the builtin WHS2011/W2008R2 driver, very good, fast and reliable.

Contrary to the network, the recommended usage of emulated standard IDE adapters has been quite slow, so I did a reinstallation with virtio storage adapter and drives, much faster and rock solid.

How to manage this? Just define 2 CD-ROM drives for the machine, in the first one you mount WHS2011 DVD to boot and install, in the second you mount the RedHat virtio driver ISO. At installation time you need to install virtio storage driver to detect your disk, there choose VirtIO/amd64/wlh version from the second CD drive ...

Regards
fnu

 

[marke]

fnu,

Thanks for the detail, I'm having difficulty access a newly built WIN2008R2 server - the server has picked up a DHCP IP address, but I am unable to ping the server from another regular networked PC. In your experience is this an issue with the way I've installed the WIN server, or the KVM configuration I've setup?

Thanks,
Mark

 

[udo]

fnu,

Thanks for the detail, I'm having difficulty access a newly built WIN2008R2 server - the server has picked up a DHCP IP address, but I am unable to ping the server from another regular networked PC. In your experience is this an issue with the way I've installed the WIN server, or the KVM configuration I've setup?

Thanks,
Mark

Hi,
windows firewall??

 

[fnu]

fnu,
... - the server has picked up a DHCP IP address, but I am unable to ping the server from another regular networked PC. ...

Well, I get instantly 10 different causes in my mind, what could be going wrong in your installation.

• You have access to your server thru builtin vnc console?
• Did the machine get a address from the correct DHCP pool? Can you double check it on your DHCP server?
• Can the server ping other hosts?

Cheers
fnu

 

[spacefighter]

Hey,
Just a quick update.
Finally got some more ram and reinstalled WHS11.
3gb RAM
200gb Hard drive
2 cores

Installed the Hard drive as raw, VIRTIO along with adding another NTFS disk I had all my media on. Set the NIC to e1000.

So far after a few test transfers of about 1gb files It has been able to stay around 500-600mbs speeds to another box. I knew I was going to lose some performance but I was thinking it would only hit 300mbs so I’m happy it’s much better. Plus the CPU load has been pretty decent.

Thanks for the recommendations and the help!