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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:14 pm 
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So I've got S3 sleep working well again, there's about a 5sec delay when accessing the server from a client while the drives spin up.
But I no longer need to wallk into the next room to turn it on.
File xfer performance is outstanding, I forgot how much quicker a non DE system was.
Movie playback with five streams going full HD, no stutters.
I even have my xboxes and SageTV connecting to my media shares again, now I need to figure out how to hook my tuner card up to my Directv reciever and I will have my DVR function back too.
I still let my MSS handle my Itunes/music/photos as well as web, I just got that WOL add-in very cool.
So I can wake the beast from work and move files without having to actually hit the server or using the KVM.

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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:50 pm 
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I fell your joy. I am building a Win7 system also and i could not be more happy. I am going to go with RAID 5. Dont get me wrong i love my MSS. :sanjuan:

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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:58 pm 
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The MSS/WHS combo has a permenent home in my house.
And should Vail develop into more than a shadow of Win2008 Server I will give it a shot too.
I have a EX490 that is prime ground for it, but I think the Beast will remain a Win7 Box for the foreseeable future.
The playback performance alone and the flexability of available apps just made too strong a case.
I could have used 2008 as well however I wanted Media Center integration, with my Tuner cards, and an HDMI port right off my server for when Im working I can have a movie playing on a secondary extended monitor YEAH!!!!!
Not to mention I use it as my workstation now so only two systems on instead of three.
MSS+fileServer+workstation.

And now that HP is out of the WHS branding market and vanilla Vail will be the only option, I may decide to run Vail in a VM just to handle the web functions and remote access but doubt that.
I like having the power hungry monster sleep all day while the MSS does the light work.

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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 1:42 pm 
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Yeah with this system i am combining two because i have the MSS, an iMac, a torrent pc and a low end win7 with WMC set up so the xbox can be the externder. The new system will be the local server for streming movies and tv shows, a torrent pc and a WMC set up. Maybe i can make room in my office for a soffa in case i have a fight with my wife i can go sleep with my other wifes (computers) :cheers:

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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 2:05 pm 
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Ya know I have found my electronic mistresses make less noise! :rofl:

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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 2:09 pm 
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Chasrobin wrote:
Ya know I have found my electronic mistresses make less noise! :rofl:


And dont talk back.

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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 03, 2011 11:00 am 
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HAHAHA! A hard drive I had fail and was dead and gone for two weeks came back to life this weekend long enough for me to recover my movies from it YEAH!!!
I was looking at some long nights re-ripping from originals.
I have almost finished sorting and re-configuring my drives to work from Win7.
I have found a couple of bugs more from hardware than anything.

1st, Areca controllers unmount all hard drives on S3 sleep and don't come ready fast enough for the os.
This forces me to use S1 sleep which realy doesn't save a lot of juice, so I wrote a script that runs when the system enters S1 sleep ping my client systems and if it does not find any alive shuts the system down.
I also sched this to run at 10pm every night even if the system is not in idle just in case a system process is faking.
I have a popup that allows me to cancel the shutdown if necesarry, after I have tested it well I will share it here.

2nd Win7 has some bugs in it's sched task tool, looks to be related to UAC/Contextual issues.
Programs launched directly from the tool fail, however if you use a CMD /K command to launch them via a bat file they seem ok.

3rd, No good intel drivers for my quad port pro/1000 card, so no teaming, hardly an issue though.

All in all it's going very well, and if Vail continues down the path I think it will, then I should be well positioned for an easy upgrade/migration should I choose to go that route.

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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Tue Jan 04, 2011 8:37 pm 
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Ok as far as controlled sleep and yet staying alive while streaming.
Here's what I've got so far.
You will need sleep.exe for this in your c:\
Setup a task or two if you wish, it must say "Only when logged in" if you select any other it won't run.
Set either when idle or for a particular time.
Action = "c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe"
Option = "/C C:\sleepkeeper.cmd"
Copy the following and save as C:\Sleepkeeper.cmd

Begin script
********************************************************
@echo off

:time
Rem sets downtime attempt for 10

Set DownTime=10

Rem (Determines if it's day time or night)

time /t > c:\tock.txt
For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=: " %%a in (C:\tock.txt) do (
set HR=%%a
set MN=%%b
set AMPM=%%c
)

if %AMPM%==PM (@echo Next test) Else (Goto exit)
if %HR% GEQ %DownTime% (goto start) Else (Goto exit)

Rem (Test if your clients are awake)
:Start
del c:\pingtest.txt
Del c:\tick.txt
del c:\tock.txt
Ping 192.168.100.199 >> C:\pingtest.txt
Ping 192.168.100.198 >> C:\pingtest.txt
Ping 192.168.100.197 >> C:\pingtest.txt
Ping 192.168.100.196 >> C:\pingtest.txt


Find /c /i "Time" C:\pingtest.txt > c:\tick.txt

Rem (Shuts down your server if no active clients are found)
For /F "tokens=3 delims= " %%A in (c:\tick.txt) do (
cls
if %%A LSS 2 shutdown.exe /F /P
if %%A GTR 2 @echo System will stay awake.
)
Rem (If clients found wait five minutes and retest only if it's past 10pm else stays in standby)
c:\sleep.exe 300
cls
goto start
:exit
************************************************* End Script

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30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram


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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Tue Jan 04, 2011 8:39 pm 
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granted this is still a work in progress, and I welcome any input from other scriptors out there.
I know some prefer VB but I'm old school and like my stuff easily understandable by novices.

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30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram


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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 2:55 pm 
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Had to make a small change to the script file.

There was a timeline where it would run at 12 noon vs 12 midnight
By setting this to EQU instead of GEQ it will start at 11pm and test the condition every few minutes until it successfully shutsdown.
But will not sutdown as long as your client pc responds.
So if your streaming a movie or even just browsing files it won't allow the server to shutdown.
But if you turn off your client your server will power down.

Begin script
********************************************************
@echo off

:time
Rem sets downtime attempt for 10

Set DownTime=10

Rem (Determines if it's day time or night)

time /t > c:\tock.txt
For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=: " %%a in (C:\tock.txt) do (
set HR=%%a
set MN=%%b
set AMPM=%%c
)

if %AMPM%==PM (@echo Next test) Else (Goto exit)
if %HR% EQU %DownTime% (goto start) Else (Goto exit)

Rem (Test if your clients are awake)
:Start
del c:\pingtest.txt
Del c:\tick.txt
del c:\tock.txt
Ping 192.168.100.199 >> C:\pingtest.txt
Ping 192.168.100.198 >> C:\pingtest.txt
Ping 192.168.100.197 >> C:\pingtest.txt
Ping 192.168.100.196 >> C:\pingtest.txt


Find /c /i "Time" C:\pingtest.txt > c:\tick.txt

Rem (Shuts down your server if no active clients are found)
For /F "tokens=3 delims= " %%A in (c:\tick.txt) do (
cls
if %%A LSS 2 shutdown.exe /F /P
if %%A GTR 2 @echo System will stay awake.
)
Rem (If clients found wait five minutes and retest only if it's past 10pm else stays in standby)
c:\sleep.exe 300
cls
goto start
:exit
************************************************* End Script

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Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram


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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 10, 2011 9:24 pm 
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OK so I finally completed the move to Win7 64bit.
Here's what my drive setup now looks like.

I have two mirrored volumes of 2X1.5TB each labeled "Vault" and "Vault1"
this gives me approx 2.7TB of redundant storage for Music,Photo's, and non-replacable software.

I then have several spanned GPT volumes that can be extended but I have tried to keep them around 4TB each
these are filled with ripps of my movie collection which I can replace if necesary so no redundancy needed here.


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As you can see The "V" drive is virtual and does not physically exist this is so client PC's and software see one logical drive to search or play movies from.
On my client PC's I mount the V drive, on the server I use it for MyMovies to monitor so all video mappings stay accurate.

I do the same for the "S" drive just to make it easy on myself.

This show what the Logical mount point looks like.
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This is what the Logical mount for the Software looks like.
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Super easy and expandable, this technique should be usable in Vail as released without DE.
If I had raid based controllers it would be a bit faster too, but I must say performance is much better than WHSv1 on this same hardware.
Not really a good comparison though as WHS is 32bit and this is 64bit.

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30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram


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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Sun Jan 16, 2011 6:15 am 
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Chasrobin,
I have been following this thread since I am considering a similar move. I have been frustrated with WHS v1 for some time now and was hoping Vail would be a solution. However, since DE is dead, I'm not sure it will be for what I need. What I like, and want to try to keep in any alternate solution, is the redundancy for specific folders, daily backups of client PC's, spanning multiple hard drives if necessary, and web host. Since WHS v1 had all of that, I wanted to stay with that but I am not sure Vail will provide for me now. So, like you, I am considering a Win7 server but I am really not an IT expert and certainly not setting up Win7 as a server. I like what you found out about mountpoints so that things look like one big drive but I'm not sure if I understand how to do that fully. What you have done seems to act similar to WHS in terms of DE but it really doesn't solve my other desires, which is redundacy, backups and a web host. What do you suggest me to do? I thought that I could create a W7 system like you and setup a Virtual Machine, even though I'm not sure how to do that, to run WHS (v1 first and then Vail later) on to give me my web host and backups but it doesn't give me the redundancy of the drives on the W7 system that is spanned like you have. How are you doing that for your critical data that you want redundant, in my case I would want my software, music and photos this way?
If you could help me out with this that would be great. I'm somewhat computer savy but have never dived into setting up servers or virtual PC's.

Thanks,
Chuck


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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:01 pm 
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For redundancy I have mirrored som drives.
I call them Vault and Vault1, I use a mount point to share them to my client PC's as "Software"
and I use them for my critical data.
I also still have an EX490 MSS that I use for backups and again to replicate this critical data meaning I have it on atleast three seperate physical drives.
You can certainly do a VM on win7 as long as your hardware is robust enough.
When I do this on my I7 940 I don't even see a bump in the load.
There is also some software available for approx $20-100 called replication.
If you go this route make sure it's Bi-Directional it would allow duplicates across many locations even different machines taking the duplication concept to a whole new level.

Where you do your mount points is in the "Disk Manager tool" where you normally setup a new hard drive.
where it sets the drive letter there's an option to "Change or add a path" it's the add a path part.
Read the link in my earlier post for details it's VERY easy to do.

I think Orginizing your data to make it easy to expand later is the hardest part.
Ya don't want to have to move large blocks of data around if you can avoid it.

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30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram


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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 1:48 pm 
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Chasrobin,
Thanks for the info. How do you mirror them? Just using a syncing program? I have Allway Sync that duplicates what I want to where I want, even over the network and to multiple locations. So, it sounds like what you are doing and suggested with the replication software, although I haven't heard about that one.
I should have enough power to do a VM. I have an Intel Quad Core Q9550 @ 2.83GHz with 4 GB Ram now but plan on upping it to 8 GB win I go to Win7. Do you think that would be ok? What do you use to create a VM? Windows Virtual PC that comes on Win7? I have never done that so I'm not sure how I need to set it up to get WHS v1 to work to get my backups and webserver going. Do you have any help on that you could give me?
Creating the mount points seems easy enough, especially with your help in this thread but I have have a question. If you create a shared folder that has several mount point's in them, like you have for your videos, can a client write data to that shared folder? And if so, which mount point does it go to? This may be obvious but I haven't tried this out yet as I am waiting for my copy of W7.

Thanks,
Chuck
Chasrobin wrote:
For redundancy I have mirrored som drives.
I call them Vault and Vault1, I use a mount point to share them to my client PC's as "Software"
and I use them for my critical data.
I also still have an EX490 MSS that I use for backups and again to replicate this critical data meaning I have it on atleast three seperate physical drives.
You can certainly do a VM on win7 as long as your hardware is robust enough.
When I do this on my I7 940 I don't even see a bump in the load.
There is also some software available for approx $20-100 called replication.
If you go this route make sure it's Bi-Directional it would allow duplicates across many locations even different machines taking the duplication concept to a whole new level.

Where you do your mount points is in the "Disk Manager tool" where you normally setup a new hard drive.
where it sets the drive letter there's an option to "Change or add a path" it's the add a path part.
Read the link in my earlier post for details it's VERY easy to do.

I think Orginizing your data to make it easy to expand later is the hardest part.
Ya don't want to have to move large blocks of data around if you can avoid it.


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 Post subject: Re: The Beast is HERE!
PostPosted: Mon Jan 17, 2011 2:05 pm 
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Mirroring is built into the Disk manager, you will need two identical drives for this.
It takes two drives and copies each write to both so in my case I have four 1.5 TB drives mirrored for a total of 3TB of redundant space.
You can see them listed as my A & B drives.
To do it install two blank drives right click one of them select mirror then select it's partner when prompted.
Click finish and wait for it to format.
The all way sync is good if you don't want to have that complexity in one system but then you will need another system on to replicate too with atleast the same amount of storage.

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Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram


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