Windows Home Server (WHS)

[Stevech]

Any comments on these items gleaned from other forums? Mistakes?

WHS is Win 2003 server at the core.

WHS disk pools are like JBOD, no protection from drive failure unless you arrange for software file dupes, this being impractical for large (multimedia) files

WHS boot partition is oddball and cannot be backed up with common partition backup software such as Acronis.

WHS sucks - a lot of server-only family heirloom photos/movies will be lost due to drive failures or file system glitches.

[Pete]

Personally I like the idea of a hardware Raid-1, Raid-5 or Raid-10.

[sdesbles]

Yes, WHS is using Window Server 2003 as the core. In fact, you can get to the standard server console (bypassing the pretty WHS one) but you may break some WHS functions if you mess around with things.

No, WHS is not JBOD in that drives are not protected. The configuration would vary depending on the hardware configuration you have, but WHS will use Windows built-in software RAID to protect drives using either mirroring (RAID 1) or striping (RAID 5). If you have only two drives, it will mirror them. If you have more, it will stripe.

Not sure what people find odd about the boot partition. I run it and it seems that same as any other boot partition. Yes, it can be backed up, although I am not familiar with the software you mentioned.

I actually really like WHS. Certainly makes backing up all your desktops/laptops very easy. The media sharing is simplified over the standard server product, and the integration with media center is nice (but could be better).

Believe it or not, I run WHS as a virtual machine on my server without any issue.

[TeleFragger]

well once again things went sour for me...

I just built a whs...

http://forums.homeseer.com/showthread.php?t=138567


and I like the idea of the backups and all... however... I just had a drive go bad... and that is where it went sour...
I was copying all my data to the drive pool.... well i left the duplicates on which is default....well seems one of my hard drives I got were ready to kick... well it died and I lost some stuff..now mind you I did get to save most of my stuff..but not all..

I lost all of my mp3's, (have the cd's still), some documents (this one isnt good as I dont have them backed up...) and a few other things...

now the data pool sounded great for the hd's... but now im wondering what happens if your machine dies.. then you are hosed...

so im thinking of buying a 1.5tb hd... do not add it... and do a robo copy to it.... so if the O/S drive fails...and I loose everything... I still have a drive I can put into another machine to get my data back...

you can read about my crash here..
http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.p...iled-now-what/

[Pete]

Jeff,

Do a Google search on this methodology relating to MS data spanning, etc. Most recently I've taken a different route relating to building a storage NAS using BSD (FreeNas). I am still learning but so far my conclusions are leaning towards either HW SATA Raid or software FreeNas raid. Initially using Raid-5 but now using Raid-1. As I have the data duplicated I am also looking at different Linux style NAS servers. In addition to the mix I also have a Windows MS 2003 embedded NAS box with HW Raid-1 on it. Been working fine for the last 2 years or so but only had 4 150GB IDE drives in it in a Raid5 array.

I had a similiar issue with two Raid-1 arrays with 4 1TB drives setup. FreeNas started to alert me relating to an early failure (Smartdrive) on one of the drives. The drive was less than 1 year old. I took the drive out of the array for about a week and replaced it with a new one without losing any data copied over to it. Still being paranoid relating to my pictures and music (about music - 95 GB worth and pictures about 37.5 ). I am in the process of DiVxing my old home movies (that I put on DVD a few years ago) and want to store these too. I duplicate both on three separate servers but am starting to feel more confortable with the new NAS multidrive box that I have been testing. This box now has three SATA Raid cards, two RAID-SATA ports on the MB and I've added another two IDE drives to it. I looking to actually move the box into the GB world as I have now hit the limits in file transfers to 100Mb. I've removed and added drives to the array with no ill affects so far. This box though is only being used for backup purposes and not used to stream any music / video but I have tested it to function fine for streaming.

- pete

[sdesbles]

Even thought WHS and may other operating systems have built-in or what is typically called software level RAID (and some OSes do it much better than others), it is always best to implement a hardware RAID controller. Hardware RAID devices are independent of the OS, so mirror a boot volume is a no brainer.

[drozwood90]

No, WHS is not JBOD in that drives are not protected. The configuration would vary depending on the hardware configuration you have, but WHS will use Windows built-in software RAID to protect drives using either mirroring (RAID 1) or striping (RAID 5). If you have only two drives, it will mirror them. If you have more, it will stripe.

You mean you have to SET that as running. I do not think WHS defaults to any of the RAID level dynamic partitions. I believe it just uses as the OP mentioned, a drive pool, which is only redundent on things you set. If you loose a drive, you loose everything in there, except what you have protected through duplication. That's the point of it.

BUT if you can set the RAID-5, then you don't need to set duplication...but all your drives need to match, and you give up the ability to add and remove drives from the drive pool.

--Dan

[drozwood90]

Even thought WHS and may other operating systems have built-in or what is typically called software level RAID (and some OSes do it much better than others), it is always best to implement a hardware RAID controller. Hardware RAID devices are independent of the OS, so mirror a boot volume is a no brainer.

True, but if you can't afford a raid-5 hardware solution...I think a good RAID-5 card will run you close to $300. Yeah a cheapy one will run you less, but if you are going to do that, you may as well run the built in RAID. Then at least if the card dies, you don't need to buy another one of that EXACT card to get your RAID array back up. You can just put the drives in whatever, and as long as the OS can see the drives, it will come up without issue (the drives each hold configuration data to tell the OS what to do and how many drives, etc.).

--Dan


--Dan

[lpitman]

WHS has worked great for me...and I even have a couple of WAR stories about PC restores that restored broken Laptops back to perfect condition in a matter of minutes. I have 7-Terabytes of storage in the server at the moment containing years of documents, music (mp3's), Pictures, Ripped Movies, etc...the only thing that I would change is possibly is limiting the system to (2) Terabyte pooled drives for the WHS system and PC backups...Then creating a non-pooled hardware Raid-6 for the rest of the content like all the movies, mp3's etc.

I regularly backup to an external USB drive all my documents, and pictures, that are irreplaceable. All the movies and CD's can be re-copied even though it would be a pain.

After using WHS for a while now, I have really come to trust and rely on this server, and like I stated earlier I have learned a few things that I would change in the initial setup of the box, but over all you become hooked and the WHS box tends to grow very large (drives and more drives).

I should also mention that I run my SageTV server on this box, and it works great, but as most have mentioned, there is a flaw in running applications on the server, because there is no easy way to back up system volume and running 3rd party software is unsupported by Microsoft. If Microsoft corrects the backup issue in new WHS as it is rumered, then things would be great.

[Moskus]

WHS sucks - a lot of server-only family heirloom photos/movies will be lost due to drive failures or file system glitches.

I'm sorry, but you don't know what you are talking about.


I have nothing but good to say about the way WHS is handling duplication. I have 5 TB of storage and I am duplicating everything. Two weeks ago one of my drives died. No problem, I just removed it from the console, powered down and installed a new one. My system was back and running within minutes.


The backup of home computers is excellent! It's so easy even my mother can use it! And best of all: It works.

use it often when I just test-drive an OS on one of my laptops. Just format and install the OS, if I don't like it I use WHS to restore the previous installation with programs, settings and everything.



Seriously, restoring a RAID setup is much more complicated and painfull than WHSs duplication. Repeat after me: RAID is not backup!

[Pete]

Raid is never a substitute for backup.
Backup in itself is one whole issue.
Storage is another.
Media serving is yet another issue.

If you backup/image your configuration on a non redundant file system then you could theoretically lose that system. That "system" could be a single external drive, a server, etc. Personally its better to backup to DVD or Blueray than an external portable drive.

Software Raid versus HW raid is a totally different topic and really depends on the OS and methodology of writing the data on the disks. The topic of the format of the disk, quickness of access to data and network topology is in a world by itself.

WHS is a good product and serves its purpose. Ideally what you want to do to provide reslience is to have a hot swap style array easy to get back up running. Ideally if you have 4 drives you could do a Raid 1 (cheap) or a raid 5 (more expensive) at a loss of some data storage space but cost is really not significant if you want that redundancy.

[TeleFragger]

WHS has worked great for me...and I even have a couple of WAR stories about PC restores that restored broken Laptops back to perfect condition in a matter of minutes.

i like the idea of that... that is why im going this route..
I think im starting to get it.. I was going to have a non pooled hd to backup stuff to..but you boot off of a cd(or dvd) and do computer repairs...
if a hd goes bad.. remove it from whs, shutdown and replace... got it..

however is it that easy if your o/s drive dies?

I see the restore cd for computers..but what about server side?
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...displaylang=en

[Pete]

Maybe you could separate the OS drive from the data drives. Use two new smaller (even notebook drives) for the OS and then the rest of the drives.

[TeleFragger]

Maybe you could separate the OS drive from the data drives. Use two new smaller (even notebook drives) for the OS and then the rest of the drives.

whs takes the first hd.. and puts a 20gb c: and remaining d:... add drives to the pool just makes D: bigger... so not sure how you would pull that off..

although I did find a pc restore cd on microsofts site labeled RestoreCD_dual.iso

[Pete]

I didn't play with WHS too much - maybe a week or so.

Looks to me that it just does spanning automatically as a plug n play feature.

So does it just span the D drive to new media once you install it?