Monday, July 28, 2008
Windows Home Server Power Pack 1: This Thing Rocks!
Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Talk" @ 01:00 PM
One of the biggest changes that the Power Pack 1 update ushered in was the way Windows Home Server deals with file duplication. Prior to the Power Pack 1 update, a few seconds after a file was copied over to the server, it would kick off the duplication process, copying the file to multiple locations. Seems good for protecting your data right? It is, but it had the nasty side-effect of dragging down the overall server performance. I'm running Gigabit Ethernet to and from my Windows Home Server, yet I'd often see read/write file speeds in the realm of 4 MB/s, which is brutally slow. After applying Power Pack 1, I've been seeing performance 10x faster - the screen shot below shows performance in the 40 MB/s range.
I've also seen improvements in the integrity of the backup database; I used to have a problem with the backup database getting corrupted, and my backups would cease to function properly. That problem hasn't recurred, and it's also fixed a user name/password login problem I was having. So, overall I'm quite happy with the performance of the update.
The one thing that hasn't gone smoothly is the Connector software update: there's a new version of the Connector software with the Power Pack 1 update, but the version of the software in the Home Server Connector Folder is still the old version. I've spent some time trying to sort the issue out, but no solution so far. Anyone else applied the Power Pack 1 update and seen this issue?
