Hi, I've been looking at some alternatives to WHS. Because WHS just seems like a dumbed/stripped down version of windows 2003 (which I already run on my server box) with very little features, and a really big price tag for what it is.

The only thing going for it is it's a ready-to-use system (appliance).

Then there's the "pointless" stuff... SIS [Single Instance Storage] is kinda pointless, unless you're going to backup many PCs (one only has so many at home) which are extremely redundant to start with... At 6 PCs with a couple GB of space saved by it, that's still only like 12GB saved, which works out to something like 3$ worth of HD space at today's HD prices (24 cents per GB or so). Hotswap seems kinda nice I guess, but I think a home user can afford the 5 minute downtime to swap or add a drive once a year (not like enterprise customers where the system CAN'T go down, or at least not without costing them $$$).

Downsides? Looks like a pretty long list too. For many of the features you must install the client software on all the workstations (no thanks). Administration is done via that mainly (or so it seems -- no web interface that I know of). The list of features is EXTREMELY short IMO. 600$USD for a box with 500GB of space? That works out to ~750$CAD or so after taxes & ship -- so about 1.5$/GB for the basic box (yes, I know they'll sell the software alone, but it will likely cost too much for what it is as well, around 200$ seemingly).

Then you start to think about having to use updates (windows/microsoft update, or automatic updates?) and the reboots going with it (again, so much for hot swap eh?), probably WGA (and activation of some sort if it's sold without the hardware too -- just like any version of windows they sell nowadays). I just see no reason to put up with it. And I wouldn't be surprised if it was a total flop: I just cant see much of a market for it. Their customer base is situated between the basic home users who mostly have no need for it or just plain don't see the point (think "grandma" here) and the more knowledgeable who would rather roll their own (something better, more suited to their needs, more features, etc - for much less $ too) -- not at those prices anyways.

So long story short, I've been looking at some alternatives:

First one: FreeNAS. Nice web-based interface. REALLY nice for sharing files (supports samba, iSCSI, FTP, software RAID, etc). Takes very little resources to run. But no major other features, just a real nice NAS.

Second one: SME Server. That's more like it. Also runs on outdated/life-cycled hardware just fine (min is 400MHz/256MB RAM). Has a nice web-based GUI too. Much more features:

-file sharing (supports quotas, works for all platforms)
-printer sharing (even the USB ones)
-internet sharing gateway (NAT/firewall, has everything you'd expect like port forwarding, DHCP and all, wireless G/N using the right cards)
-VPN (that's a must have in my book, and my WRT54GL doesn't have enough memory)
-can be used as a domain controller (real nice)
-LAMP stack (and Tomcat, and even runs things like ROR [RubyOnRails])
-"traditional" mail and webmail (has spamassassin and all built-in, ClamAV for virus scanning, can block various extensions, etc)
-supports many filesystems and RAID levels (hardware and software)
and TONS of other featuress, like squid (web proxy), an address book, i-bays, syslog server, DNS server, SSH access, FTP/SCP, SNMP, time server, etc.

And that's just what comes already installed. It's based off CentOS 4 (which is based on RHEL, linux w/ 2.6.9 kernel). You can add ANYTHING you so please to that box, as long as it's powerful enough to support it... (use yum or RPMs) So really sky's the limit here. Loads of ideas:

-run your favorite P2P apps (BT and ED2K/KAD based clients) and let it do your large downloads (less load on your other computers)
-network backup (using bacula or amanda or rsync or rsnapshot or or backuppc or or rdiff-backup or whatever you want)
-iSCSI target (using Ardis or UNH or IET or whatever you like) or even AoE [ATA over Ethernet]
-Asterisk (VOIP PBX)
-MythTV server (add DVB cards or TV tuners to record stuff, and watch via various front ends/clients)
-Streaming AV
-SVN repository
-PostgreSQL
and countless other ideas, like keeping your dynnamic dns account updated, running MRTG/RRDTool, TFTP/BOOTP server, etc.

Just reuse any old box, just buy plenty of disk space for it. More work, but WAY more features, more powerful, and WAY more disk space for the money. Free, open source, small-ish download (515MB iso for current install), secure, stable, no hassle updating (usually no reboots either), all the upcoming new versions/upgrades/fixes for free too. No worrying about viruses/worms and such. No activation, no WGA, no vendor/platform lock-in, no DRM or any of that stuff either.

Any ideas or suggestions? Other alternatives? I'm all ears...

This post has been edited by crahak: Sep 4 2007, 08:01 PM

You haven't really given any criteria on which to base an opinion for an OS. What are you looking for? I'm assuming centralized storage but what about backups? I've worked with freenas and I like it a lot, both as a file server and as an iscsi target.