Comp1962 Thanks for the post and the offered help. I'll hold you to it
So let me address a few questions/issues you raised...
to start with
Comp1962 wrote:
...and if your heart is set on installing WHS2011 on an EX470 and you have thought this through ...
The answer to the fist part is God NO.... far from it... i wish i could stay on the WHS v1 that is working just fine for us...
but there is an EXCEPT
'The
ONLY thing i want is to have more HDD space in the pool. Without running out of space in 4 months and spending a fortune on short term solutions. We have been down to under 20GB since the beginning of the summer... and i have been debating how to 'resolve' the issue.... When the PC backups started screaming at me i knew that i had to stop debating and actually DO something. There are 8 drives in the pool now (4 in the EX470 4 in the eSATA enclosure).
Not counting the network drive i set up over the summer to deal with people not being able to add stuff to the server... with about 1TB waiting to go to the server...
Swapping out 2x1TB drives for 2x2TB will gain me a max of 1TB of space (taking the network drive content into consideration)... and that will be gone by January.
Not to mention that swapping out 1TB for 2TB is just too expensive for the gain..
The next issue is that i just managed to beg, borrow and steal enough drives to move all the data from the server to try to add the 4TB drives (since a backup was needed for playing with something like this)... getting that done again in 6-8 months might not be possible again... plus moving 12TB of data takes foreeeeeeeeeever...
The answer to the second part is: i'm in the 'process' of thinking it through.
i was 'gambling' that the workaround on getting the 4TB drives into WHS v1 would work... well it did not... so now i have a problem
so my options are
1. ignore all, install the 4TB drives as 2TB move everything back to the server and ignore the issue for 6 months (on the outside)
2. get an USB enclosure add those drives as 2TB and have space for a few more in 6 months..
3. install WHS 2011 on the EX470 and pray it works.. and use the 4TB drives
4. build a new server...
so evaluating the options:
1. expensive joke for the HDD's and does not resolve the problem past very short term
2. for the price of the larger enclosure like the 8bay sans digital TR8U-/+B i can almost build a new server plus 400$ is not in the budget now for this... and i'm back to the 2TB limit on HDD and i'm honestly going to take a tape measure and see if anything over a 4 bay will fit height wise in the space...
3. yeah it has an option of not working ideally... in which case i have to switch to option 2 or 4. 4 probably better and the 50$ i'm out for the WHS2011 i'll need for the new server anyways...
4. yeah would love to build one and there are some good DIY lists of components for a MIcroserver for about 500$ since size in this case is somewhat an issue... but we go back to the 500$ is really not in the budget now for this...
Comp1962 wrote:
Back to your server expansion and wanting to replace or upgrade some of your existing storage pool drives. What I would recommend is adding a storage pool drives externally using a USB Port/ This will allow you to tell the server to remove an existing storage pool drive. When WHS removes the drive you can then slide it out and install a 2nd Storage Pool Drive then remove the other drive you want to change out. When that drive is removed you can pull it out and shut the server down. Then you can move the USB Connected Drive to the available bay in the server and you will not have to run USB Connected Drives in the future.
.....
Now USB2 runs about 450mbps on the transfer speed which is slower then eSATA or SATA but if you think about the transfer speeds within your server they never quite get above 40-60mbps well within the speed of USB2. I would agree that having all the storage pool drives within the server enclosure is your best bet but if you max that out you need to expand outside the box which will buy you time to figure out what your next solution will be. Thing is that you will need to copy all your data to the new server and its a huge task.
Not an issue everything is moved off the server and waiting to see where it and how it goes. and an extra enclosure brings me back to above point 2 . not sure it's financially the best long term solution... I think i'm starting to hate 2TB drives
not quite reasonable... i know...
maybe i'm looking at HDD's as a more 'long' term purchase then they are... but i'm tired of having to replace and not have a use for components... I still have 5-6 350-500GB ATA and SATA drives floating around with some various backups or just empty.. they were swapped for larger drives when it was needed.. but they are perfectly fine, working drives... that are now just creating clutter with boxes of other working but upgraded components...
Comp1962 wrote:
Before I go on the one main reason why I opted to take WHS2011 out of my EX470 was because HomeServerSMART2013 did not work properly with the server and I did not investigate the reasons why or attempt to contact Matt to find out if there was a solution. So if keeping an eye on your hard drives is important to you then you may want to contact Matt over at DOJONORTH Software an inquire about it.
Now that does give me pause since from what i was reading WHS 2011 does not monitor the HDD health so HomeServerSMART2013 was a add-in i was looking at to fix this... Any other options for Add-ins for this? What about the Stablebit Scanner?
Not that is really solves the hardware monitoring issue but i was considering installing FlexRAID under the Stablebit Drive Pool for some extra security... it would actually be more than we have now since only the more sensitive Photos, User and such folders are duplicated and a drive failure would actually mean re-ripping a good chunk of stuff.. that while possible i'm not looking forward to.
Comp1962 wrote:
One thing you need to know about the way you go about Server Recoveries with WHS2011 is that you need to have a backup of WHS2011 and there are two options for this. The first is a manual backup which doesn't keep up with your server status and the 2nd and best way is to dedicate a drive for daily backups be it internal or external. Its the server backups which you will use for a recovery and without them you would have to reinstall and configure WHS. Difference in the recovery with WHS2011 is that when you do it everything is recovered including your settings.
You can also clone a WHS2011 drive and pop in the new one and be running which is much better then what you have to do with WHSv1 so that's a big plus.
Does this mean that the server back up on WHS 2011 actually backs up the OS? because WHS v1 from what i know did not.
So this would be solved by just setting the server backup in 2011 to an external USB disk? which i was planing on anyways for some of the more sensitive data... or would the OS backup need a separate drive (which i have if needed)
Or is there some special backup workaround to back up the OS?
Comp1962 wrote:
First it better to do it with a DEBUG board and external DVD Drive with a keyboard and mouse connected to the server. There are ways around it but you really should have a video output to run this OS especially if down the road you chose to perform a recovery which is much different then what you have done in the past with WHSv1.
i was looking at the option to use my desktop to install.. it's back to the $$ issue... i know 80$ is not the end of the world but the 2x4TB drives... the WHS2011.... it's starting to add up at the wrong time (September sucks)... i'm hoping i never need a recovery
but that by the time i unfortunately do it will not be a $$ issue...
Comp1962 wrote:
As for the fans I do not recall this to be a big issue as I think mines turned on full speed and stayed running full speed. I have a dual core processor running in all my EX470's be it a BE2300 or ADD3800 and I only had 2GB of RAM but from monitoring operation of WHS2011 I would recommend 4GB RAM because the server seemed to utilize about 2.2GB on average.
will have to look into that more then, heat is an issue here, lets put it this way... heating is totally turned off in the office in winter (and its NOT a small office 300sq ft at least) and we live in Canada. and the A/C has a hard time maintaining temps under 24C in summer at full blast.
Part of the reason i`m not crazy about another expansion bay... just adds more heat...
Comp1962 wrote:
I will help you in anyway I can if you want to install WHS2011 on your EX470 even though I do not fully agree with it. Point here is that its your server to do with as you chose and if your heart is set on installing WHS2011 on an EX470 and you have thought this through then who am I to disagree?
LOL i don`t fully agree with it... going back to above points 1-4 i`m kinda feeling like i`m out of options... or that this is the least expensive option to try and hope it works...
plus long term if/when the server does need to be replaced with Stablebit Drive Pool i should be able to just move the drives and the pool to the new server if i`m reading everything correctly.
comments all welcome