WHS and lots of storage options?

[S_M_E]

I think that I'm going to buy that Norco case next week so I made a wireframe for the WHS Disk Management add-in. I'll upload it if anyone who has the case and WHS wants it. It doesn't exactly look like the case but it has the drives in the right place and that's all that's needed for the add-in anyway.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I think that I'm going to buy that Norco case next week so I made a wireframe for the WHS Disk Management add-in. I'll upload it if anyone who has the case and WHS wants it. It doesn't exactly look like the case but it has the drives in the right place and that's all that's needed for the add-in anyway.

S_M_E,
Thanks for uploading it. If I do decide to upgrade my case, it will probably be that case.

Thanks for the work,
Chuck

[S_M_E]

I haven't uploaded it yet but I'm willing. I'm not sure anyone here with WHS has that case yet or maybe they've already made their own wireframe. I should probably upload it to the Disk Management website, they have a dozen or so cases already made and not everyone with WHS runs SageTV...

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I haven't uploaded it yet but I'm willing. I'm not sure anyone here with WHS has that case yet or maybe they've already made their own wireframe. I should probably upload it to the Disk Management website, they have a dozen or so cases already made and not everyone with WHS runs SageTV...

S_M_E,
I figured that was where you were planning on uploading it too. I'm sure others will find it useful.

Chuck

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

S_M_E,
I figured that was where you were planning on uploading it too. I'm sure others will find it useful.

The add-in author wants to add it to his list of pre-made cases. I guess he liked it.

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.p...59&#entry39459

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

The add-in author wants to add it to his list of pre-made cases. I guess he liked it.

http://forum.wegotserved.com/index.p...59&#entry39459

S_M_E,
I just looked at it and it looks good. However, I just wanted to point out that based on the following URL from Norco's site: http://www.norcotek.com/RPC4020.php, it has a hidden hard drive bay in between the CD bay and floppy bay to give you 20 hot-swappable 3.5" hard drives plus 1 3.5" hard drive. I may be wrong but it doesn't look like that it's there. Also, I'm sure that there are conversions out there to use the floppy and/or CD drive bays for 2 additional hard drives but it's not the standard case though. I'm thinking personally if I go with this case in the future to put my 2 system hard drives in the hidden location and the floppy bay location since I don't think I would want to make them hot-swappable and use the remaining 20 hot-swappable bays for pool drives only. Anyway, nice wireframe.

Chuck

[S_M_E]

I didn't know about the internal bay (Newegg doesn't list it in the specs) but the CD/DVD bay is a slim drive bay so it can't be used although the floppy bay could be usable.

EDIT:
I added the internal bay and uploaded it...

[IVB]

I have WHS for my Sage/CQC/db server, I got an Antec 1200 which has room for 9 HDs sitting behind 3 120mm fans, plus two rear 120mm fans, and a top 200mm fan. Damn thing runs cool.

I plopped a Highpoint RocketRAID 3540 16channel card in, and used 7 Enterprise level Seagate ES2 1TB drives at $180 each into it. 5 are in a RAID5 config (for TV & DVDs), 2 are in a RAID1 config (for mission critical data). I used a 1TB for the boot disc, so out of 8 raw terabytes of space, i have about 5.8 usable (4TB in the RAID5, 1 in the RAID1, .8 in the boot disk).

I have room for another few HDs, online expansion is relatively simple with the highpoint card, and given that I used enterprise level hard disks, should be relatively safe.

If anyone is contemplating a case and can live with 9-12 HDs, i'd certainly advise looking at the Antec 1200. It's got tons of room, very nicely laid out.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I didn't know about the internal bay (Newegg doesn't list it in the specs) but the CD/DVD bay is a slim drive bay so it can't be used although the floppy bay could be usable.

EDIT:
I added the internal bay and uploaded it...

I didn't know about it either until I went to Norco's site. I was surprised newegg didn't have it listed. I wasn't sure about the CD bay being able to be used but by defualt I wouldn't use it as that anyway because I would want a drive in that bay. I would probably use the floppy drive area since I have my system drives in raid 1 and would rather not have them being accessible on the front.

Thanks for uploading the new wire frame. I will download it after work.

Chuck

[bjp999]

I would recommend looking at unRAID. unRAID provides redundancy for ALL data stored on the array using a single parity disk. Each disk is formatted with an ordinary Linux file system (RFS). If any one disk fails, it can rebuild it. But if more than one disk fail, the other disks are usable directly - no special RAID tools are needed. And "broken" disks are recoverable using conventional single disk recovery methods. It does not suffer from "stripe kill." Although Linux based, unRAID is packaged as an appliance so requires little if any Linux knowledge.

Although unRAID is not a backup solution, many users realize that true backup of a giant media server is not practical. It's hard to imagine complete loss short of fire, theft, or major hardware malfunction.

unRAID allows you to add storage incrementally (much like WHS). Disks do not have to be the same size. You can remove a smaller disk and replace it with a larger one and unRAID will "upsize" the disk.

There are a number of SageTV users that use unRAID. Most don't use unRAID as the direct recording directory, but instead copy data to unRAID once it is recorded. So you could have a couple smaller drives in WHS (with or without redundancy) for recording, and then move recordings you want to save to unRAID. You'd save a ton on hard disks!

I am not affiliated in any way - just a user that got hooked and is active on their forum. unRAID has a "free" version limited to 3 disks (2 data + parity). No time trial or anything. Many users that have an old computer and a few spare drives will give it a try. Many get hooked. I did.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by bjp999

Although Linux based

That's enough reason to keep me away from it. I'd much rather just use the WHS pool.

[prostuff1]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

That's enough reason to keep me away from it. I'd much rather just use the WHS pool.

That's a little short sited don't you think. I am another unRAID user and I knew basically nothing about linux going in. Granted I know some now and am better for it, but the only reason I learned anything was because I wanted to. If your just setting up the unRaid server and don't feel like making any modifications then you don't need to know anything about linux. As a NAS/file server unRAID does a good job and does not require you to "see" linux at all.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by prostuff1

That's a little short sited don't you think. I am another unRAID user and I knew basically nothing about linux going in.

Fortunately I do know about linux so, no, it's not short sighted.

[prostuff1]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

Fortunately I do know about linux so, no, it's not short sighted.

OK, that's fine.

I guess my point was to ask:
Why you preferred using the WHS pool? and
Why you would avoid using unRAID because it is based on Linux?

The way WHS handles the protection of data is similar to a RAID 1 from my understanding. This means that if you wanted to protect the entire contents of one disk you need need another disk of exactly the same size. This, while is works, seems inefficient to me.

[bjp999]

What inspired my post was crarbo1 that was considering mirroring 10 1.5T drives - which would require 10 EXTRA hard disks (+~$1200) along with huge case, PSU, fans, controller cards, etc (+~$300). (not to mention extra electricity to run the thing 24x7). And with twice as many drives he is looking at twice as many drive failures over time.

I'd try VERY hard to avoid that!

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by prostuff1

OK, that's fine.

I guess my point was to ask:
Why you preferred using the WHS pool?

Because I like how it works and with WHS I don't need another NAS/file server, WHS *is* my file server now.

and
Why you would avoid using unRAID because it is based on Linux?

You answered your own question. That IS why.

The way WHS handles the protection of data is similar to a RAID 1 from my understanding. This means that if you wanted to protect the entire contents of one disk you need need another disk of exactly the same size.

Not exactly true. You could also "duplicate" a 500g drive with two 250G drives.

This, while is works, seems inefficient to me.

Mirroring (or duplication in WHS lingo) may not be the most efficient but I can live with that. The good points of DE outweighs the bad for me.

Originally Posted by bjp999

What inspired my post was crarbo1 that was considering mirroring 10 1.5T drives - which would require 10 EXTRA hard disks (+~$1200) along with huge case, PSU, fans, controller cards, etc (+~$300). (not to mention extra electricity to run the thing 24x7). And with twice as many drives he is looking at twice as many drive failures over time.

See above, I want WHS, I like how it works. I can live without parity. If parity was the "end all - be all" there wouldn't be stripes and mirrors. Just because parity is more efficient doesn't mean that DE is bad and I'm surely not going to run linux, which I don't like, when I'm happy with what I have. I'd rather run 40 drives with WHS than one drive with linux.

I'd try VERY hard to avoid that!

You can avoid whatever you want just like I avoid what I don't want.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by bjp999

What inspired my post was crarbo1 that was considering mirroring 10 1.5T drives - which would require 10 EXTRA hard disks (+~$1200) along with huge case, PSU, fans, controller cards, etc (+~$300). (not to mention extra electricity to run the thing 24x7). And with twice as many drives he is looking at twice as many drive failures over time.

I'd try VERY hard to avoid that!

bjp999,
I'm not sure where you got that I was going to mirror 10 1.5 TB drives at but that was never my intention. The only thing that I was considering mirroring was my system drive with the port multiplier. I have done that with sucess so far. All other drives that I have will be in the pool.

Just want to clarify that.
Chuck

[bjp999]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

bjp999,
I'm not sure where you got that I was going to mirror 10 1.5 TB drives at but that was never my intention. The only thing that I was considering mirroring was my system drive with the port multiplier. I have done that with sucess so far. All other drives that I have will be in the pool.

Just want to clarify that.
Chuck

Mirroring your system drive makes good sense.

I just went back through the thread - and still not quite sure how many drives you are considering, or how much of the data you are going to duplicate in the pool. But 20 drives were discussed in this thread, and you were looking at a 20 drive case. Sorry if I misunderstood.

WHS seems to be good for people that don't have a need to duplicate huge amounts of data in the pool, as WHS requires that you have 2x the storage space you need (across more than one disk).

If you need to duplicate 1-2 drive's worth of data, the cost is pretty reasonable. 3-4 drives - that's getting more expensive - but the alternative is setting up another server so maybe it still worth it to keep them in the WHS server. But at some point you have to get tired of buying all these extra drives. With a little freshman level mathematics you can replace ALL the duplicate drives with just one. I guess MS just didn't think home users needed that feature in WHS pools. Maybe in the next version.

Explore your options so that you know the pros and cons of the options. Then make your decision of what to buy.

Good luck!

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by bjp999

Mirroring your system drive makes good sense.

I just went back through the thread - and still not quite sure how many drives you are considering, or how much of the data you are going to duplicate in the pool. But 20 drives were discussed in this thread, and you were looking at a 20 drive case. Sorry if I misunderstood.

WHS seems to be good for people that don't have a need to duplicate huge amounts of data in the pool, as WHS requires that you have 2x the storage space you need (across more than one disk).

If you need to duplicate 1-2 drive's worth of data, the cost is pretty reasonable. 3-4 drives - that's getting more expensive - but the alternative is setting up another server so maybe it still worth it to keep them in the WHS server. But at some point you have to get tired of buying all these extra drives. With a little freshman level mathematics you can replace ALL the duplicate drives with just one. I guess MS just didn't think home users needed that feature in WHS pools. Maybe in the next version.

Explore your options so that you know the pros and cons of the options. Then make your decision of what to buy.

Good luck!

Thanks for the info. I still think that WHS is the best option. Right now the main thing that is eating up hard drive space is my ripped DVD's. I keep them in vob format so it takes up a lot of space. I can see myself going to blueray rips in the future so it will be even more space required. I don't plan on every duplicating the ripped dvd's share so the hard drives I would need would be just for the rips. I think the 20 drive case may be more than what I would need but it is better to be safe than sorry. I won't need that much right now but once my current case won't handle any more drives I will have to make a choice as to what new case I would want and I really think the 20 drive case is the most future proof. I don't want to have to get another case. That is why I was considering that case.

Chuck

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by bjp999

WHS seems to be good for people that don't have a need to duplicate huge amounts of data in the pool, as WHS requires that you have 2x the storage space you need (across more than one disk).

I duplicate my entire pool, including archived DVDs, music, photos and all of my recorded TV. You seem to be hung up on parity, I got over it long ago.