Best setup for WHS in a separate box from sage box?

[btrcp2000]

Having just gotten burned badly by a dead WHS sys drive (didn't lose files, but about a week of my life, and things still are nowhere near back to normal), I am looking for a more reliable setup. Before this disaster, I was already thinking about having to move away from WHS when the cablecard stuff comes out, so this just hurried the process along.

Here are my thoughts:

WHS in a low power box, like the Acer h340, and maybe including the Tranquil SSM to protect the sys drive. Few if any add-ons to avoid another complete rebuild scenario, no transcoding/comskip/etc to be done on it. I like the h340 because it is Atom-based and 64-bit ready for WHS2, whenever that comes.

Convert my existing whs/sage server (see sig) into a dedicated Win7 sage machine

Questions:
Where do I store the sage recordings? On the WHS or keep them on the sage server? They would not need to be duplicated. Only reason I can see to put them on the sage server is to take advantage of the drive pooling feature instead of individual directories. Is this something that I can accomplish on the win7 box with RAID?

This would also leave me with a useless copy of WHS since I would be buying a prebuilt box. Has anyone built an atom-based WHS box like the h340? Any issues?

[mr_lore]

I run a similar setup to your proposed idea, My Sage server started its life as a sub $300 pc that I built as a standalone windows media center HTPC, and it has now grown into the sage server you see in my sig. I have always felt that WHS should be separate both for reliability and sheer horsepower reasons, I didnt build my WHS box with any sort of functionality in mind other than sharing files. My WHS simply does that, along with running itunes for library sharing, thats it. Also, I just cant leave things alone and I constantly tweak the hell out of sage and the server, but I leave WHS alone since it contains my digital life.

For bandwidth concerns I have 2TB in my Sage box for recorded shows so that comskip doesnt have to do any heavy lifting across the network, and so far so good, 2TB is enough for me for recorded TV, Sage hits the WHS shares for ripped DVD and blu ray, and I can routinely watch a ripped blu ray on a HD200 while ripping another one from Sage server to WHS without issue.

[sic0048]

Personally I keep my SageTV drives out of the WHS storage pool. Like you I don't care about duplicating these files. It also makes it easier because I don't have to convert all the storage pool drives to 64k. I just keep the Sage drives as JBOD. Afterall, Sage effectively pools all the drives together for GUI purposes. I don't need to know that the American Chopper show I am watching is on the E: drive while my Lost show is on the F: drive. I simply play the show, video, music I want, and Sage handles what drive it needs to read from.

Therefore, if the SageTV server is going to be running 24/7 and it has the drive capacity that you need, personally I would record everything on the SageTV server. Leave the WHS alone to do its own thing.

All this should work on a RAID setup in the SageTV server, but I would have to ask why run a RAID. If the WHS is backing up the OS drive of the Sage server, you are protected there. If you didn't (or don't) care about the duplication of recorded TV shows on the WHS, then why the need to add it to the SageTV server? Personally I would keep it simple and let WHS backup the OS drive. If I loose the recordings, I loose them. There isn't anything there that I have to keep.

But that is just my 2 cents. Everyone will feel differently. In the end, you have to be happy with the setup.

[stanger89]

1) I'd just record to local drives, don't even bother with RAID unless you want redundancy. Sage makes it seamless where it puts files so it doesn't matter if you've got a couple recording directories or not IMO.

2) Does WHS have some functionality you require? Any particular reason you're sticking with WHS? Vs a NAS or something like unRAID or even maybe DAS like Drobo? Or why not just keep running Sage on your server, just with Win7 and storage?

[btrcp2000]

Sorry, should have given more detail. Yes, WHS has things I like, specifically folder dupe for music/pics/dvds and nightly backups of the other three pcs in the house. WHS made that stuff so easy. I was coming from Acronis, which wasn't bad but just never ran stable, and I could never quite get my head around incremental vs full backups, plus having to run a separate instance on each computer. Automatic drive balancing seems like a good idea too, although I believe sage is smart enough to keep things in balance when adding a new recording.

When I suggested RAID, I meant for the sage sys drive. If I understand RAID correctly, couldn't I set it up where the sys drive is mirrored to an identical drive in an ongoing manner so that there is no downtime if one fails, kind of like of 747 can land on one engine? This is my hesitation with RAID, and the amount of info on the net is overwhelming. Does my mb do it, or a separate controller card, which flavor, on and on. RAID 101 info would be greatly appreciated, or at least what aspects of RAID should I focus on for sage purposes? I don't care about speed, mainly just redundancy. Downtime itself is not a big deal but it usually results in massive uptime for me putting things back together, so that's where the RAID thoughts come in. Am I off base here?

Also, if I eliminate WHS, I will need a separate solution for the pics/music duplicates. Would this be a separate RAID array, as I don't want those files on the sys drive? I know there are plenty of ways to backup and I do occasional backups offsite, but I want a level that is automated like WHS file dupe.

thansk for your attention!

[sic0048]

I'll throw out another solution that I am currently exploring....

Run SageTV on a virtual machine running on your WHS hardware. According to your signature, all your tuners are either network or USB based and you do not have any PCI tuners. I have similar hardware and have loaded up VirtualBox on my WHS machine and it is currently running a Vista OS. I'm still in the learning mode and haven't tried loading SageTV on it, but I can clearly assign specific USB plugs/devices to the VM machine. WHS is already automatically backing up this VM OS without problems.

EDIT - I looked at your signature again and realized that you do have PCI slot tuners. That will certainly make running a VM harder. I'm not sure any VM software out there will reliably assign a PCI slot to the VM. It seems like there is progress in this area, but nothing bullet proof yet.

[JetreL]

I have noticed that keeping my sage videos directory on the WHS drive has on several occasions caused Disk IO read and write issues. This on a quad core system with 4 gigs of ram and 4 disks in the virtual array. I really don't care about duplications of video either so I have split my video storage out to assure no recording or playback issues. Like mentioned above Sage does a good job of splitting up what recording drives to use.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

When I suggested RAID, I meant for the sage sys drive. If I understand RAID correctly, couldn't I set it up where the sys drive is mirrored to an identical drive in an ongoing manner so that there is no downtime if one fails, kind of like of 747 can land on one engine? This is my hesitation with RAID, and the amount of info on the net is overwhelming. Does my mb do it, or a separate controller card, which flavor, on and on. RAID 101 info would be greatly appreciated, or at least what aspects of RAID should I focus on for sage purposes? I don't care about speed, mainly just redundancy. Downtime itself is not a big deal but it usually results in massive uptime for me putting things back together, so that's where the RAID thoughts come in. Am I off base here?

I was a little leery or RAID at first, but it sounds like I had similar goals: 1) SIMPLE, and 2) that the system stays up if a drive fails. I bought an Intel DG965WH motherboard because it had everything on board and built-in RAID with the ICH8R chipset, (and all 6 SATA ports that it provides). I don't have experience with other RAID solutions except for the old type of software RAID on Linux systems and insanely expensive stuff at work. However, I think you'll find that the Intel stuff "just works" and is well supported. (No knock to other RAID solutions--I just don't know.) If you're running XP or WHS, you'll need a floppy for the drivers when you install, but Vista and Win7 have the Intel stuff built-in.

What you probably want is RAID-1. Get two identical drives and when you first turn on the computer when it gets to the Intel RAID stuff, I think you press CTRL-I to configure it. Set those drives to RAID-1. Then just install your OS as usual, (the two drives will show up as a single drive). Also install the Intel Matrix software when the OS is installed.

(As a side note, I've had trouble with the last two releases of the Intel software when I had "write back caching" enabled. It would drop a drive in the array even though it was fine according to the WD diagnostic software. I've read to revert to an older version of the Intel stuff, or turn off the caching. I did the latter and haven't had this problem since. There's been no noticable performance issue with that, although synthetic benchmarks would probably disagree.)

If one of the drives in a RAID-1 array fails, the system will still run. You can RMA it or get a new identical drive, slide it in, and tell it to rebuild the array, (no downtime if you use a cage with hot-swap abilities). If you can't get an identical drive, then one the same size or larger should work, but you'll only get the capacity of the smaller drive.

I personally put all of my RAID drives in a "3-in-2" hot-swap cage so I can remove/insert them from the front of the server. I can say that I've had an OS disk fail, pulled it out, sent it to WD for a replacement, and slid the new one in without taking the server down at all. The only manual things I had to do were 1) notice that the drive failed, (the Intel stuff doesn't send you email, so you have to log on to the server every once in a while to see the alert, or install software that will read the event logs and email you), and 2) run the Intel software when I installed the new drive, add it to the "volume" (the RAID array), and click on "rebuild array".

It worked as I expected, which frankly was strange. But even so, I moved to WHS because I wanted to see what it was all about. Even with that, I still keep my OS drive on a RAID-1 array, (and in fact am running on one OS drive now while I wait for yet another WD RMA to arrive--but my WHS has had no downtime).

Also, if I eliminate WHS, I will need a separate solution for the pics/music duplicates. Would this be a separate RAID array, as I don't want those files on the sys drive? I know there are plenty of ways to backup and I do occasional backups offsite, but I want a level that is automated like WHS file dupe.

Before WHS, I had three RAID-1 arrays. One for the OS, one for recorded TV, and one for all other media. It may seem like a waste because you only get one drive's capacity, but it worked well for me. (I've had three drives fail, but no loss of data and no downtime--I should probably stop buying WD "enterprise" drives! But, the RMA process for them has been really smooth.)

With all that said, you still want to keep your offsite backup stuff around! If both drives in a RAID-1 array fail, you will lose everything. Same if your house burns down. I view RAID-1 as more of an availability thing and not a backup solution.

My experience with the Intel RAID stuff has been very positive because it's been simple and hasn't required much effort on my part. In short; try it--I think you'll like it. I even run RAID on my desktop now, (Intel stuff again). It may not be the absolute best performance I can get, but it's been solid and amazingly simple.

[davephan]

If you've been burned by the WHS system drive on a SageTV computer, why would you want to risk being burned again? RAID isn't complicated and it is reliable. However, a large RAID 5 array is more risky than RAID 1 drive pairs. If you loose two drives on a RAID 5 array, everything is lost. You could put your OS on RAID, but I don't bother with RAID for the OS. I just protect the OS with images. My system board has two RAID controllers. I have it setup for five RAID 1 SATA drive pairs, plus an IDE boot and IDE storage drive that are not protected by RAID. However, the images of the boot drive are stored on one of the RAID 1 pairs and copied to a non-RAID USB hard drive for extra redundancy.

Acronis 10 Workstation has Grandfather-Father-Son. It really is pretty simple. One Grandfather full image once a month. Father differential images once a week - the changes from the monthly full image. Daily incremental image - the changes from the previous day. I have mine setup for full images on the 1st of the month, weekly images on Sundays, and the rest are daily images. I can recover to any day in the past. With the Universal Restore option, I can also recover to a different computer system (if need to replace my system board with a different system board). I also image with Ghost 9 which I bought years ago, just for extra redundancy with different imaging software.

You could use the old WHS license just for redundant backup storage. You could copy your image files and more valuable video files to the WHS computer just in case you loose both drives from a RAID 1 pair, which would be very unlikely. When you have to recover a system, it's better to have more redundancy than not enough, to decrease the chance of a failed recovery. It's also a good idea to test your recovery process. You can test a recovery by recovering system system to a spare drive. If the recovery fails, you can fix the weakness of your backup plan. You won't loose anything, since the failure occurred on the spare drive. If the recovery test is successful, then you will have confidence you can recover, and you will know how long it will take to recover.

Dave