WHS - System Drive Backup/Production Strategy

[matterw]

With the new WHS system on its way, I am wondering how to backup and/or protect the system drive. I would like to understand how people have planned to deal with the situation of a failed system drive (i.e., the WHS o/s). My thought is I can RAID 1 the drive, but is expensive. My other thought, from what I have read, is that you can re-install the WHS o/s and it will re-build the tombstones -- is this even correct?

I appreciate all experience and information!

Thanks,
Matt

[sic0048]

Under normal conditions, you should be able to reinstall (or perhaps it is called recover) the WHS OS and it should rebuild the tombstones without loss of pooled drive data. However, there are lots of failure stories too. Not sure if it is OS failures or user errors - probably both have occured (not necessarily together in the same event).

The big complaint is the WHS v1 does not backup the OS drive. So any updates, other software (like SageTV), settings, and user preferences, will all be lost if/when the OS drive goes bad. Therefore, even if your data is safely rebuilt, it can be a long uphill road to bring the machine back to pre-crash condition.

I run WHS and definitely see the advantage to utilize the WHS machine to the fullest by running other software/ systems on it. This way, you might only have one computer that stays on 24/7 and run WHS, SageTV, and other software. But this can make it harder to recover from a crash. Personally, I'm exploring running everything else on virtual machines and running nothing else in the actual WHS OS. This way, the virtual machines appear as normal computers that it can back up. So even if the OS drive goes bad, after recovering the WHS machine, I can recover the VM machines with all my other software without any hassle.

Ultimately, it is hoped that WHS v2 addresses this self back-up issue, but only time will tell.

PS - using RAID 1 will certainly help if one of the OS drives dies. However, there are plenty of other situations where the OS crashes that a RAID 1 would not protect you in. So while it is probably a good idea, don't think of it as the ultimate safety net, because you can be burned even when using RAID 1.

[farscapesg1]

I had similar concerns and after experiencing a crash, which would not allow me to do a reinstall, I decided to use the motherboard SATA ports to RAID 1 my OS drive (two 250 GB drives). At the time I was really irritated after spending 3 days getting the system running again and all the files moved back into the drive pool. Not to mention the frustration of my 3 year old not being able to watch her Dora at night

Since then, I've wondered if it was the best move. Every couple days my server starts alerting me there is a problem with the OS drive. Rebooting clears the error every time. Honestly, I had this problem before I started using RAID, but I don't think it was as often (more like every week or 2). The errors don't actually do anything, but they are a little annoying when they start popping up on all the computers in the house that are being backed up by WHS.

[matterw]

Originally Posted by sic0048

Under normal conditions, you should be able to reinstall (or perhaps it is called recover) the WHS OS and it should rebuild the tombstones without loss of pooled drive data. However, there are lots of failure stories too. Not sure if it is OS failures or user errors - probably both have occured (not necessarily together in the same event).

The big complaint is the WHS v1 does not backup the OS drive. So any updates, other software (like SageTV), settings, and user preferences, will all be lost if/when the OS drive goes bad. Therefore, even if your data is safely rebuilt, it can be a long uphill road to bring the machine back to pre-crash condition.

I run WHS and definitely see the advantage to utilize the WHS machine to the fullest by running other software/ systems on it. This way, you might only have one computer that stays on 24/7 and run WHS, SageTV, and other software. But this can make it harder to recover from a crash. Personally, I'm exploring running everything else on virtual machines and running nothing else in the actual WHS OS. This way, the virtual machines appear as normal computers that it can back up. So even if the OS drive goes bad, after recovering the WHS machine, I can recover the VM machines with all my other software without any hassle.

Ultimately, it is hoped that WHS v2 addresses this self back-up issue, but only time will tell.

PS - using RAID 1 will certainly help if one of the OS drives dies. However, there are plenty of other situations where the OS crashes that a RAID 1 would not protect you in. So while it is probably a good idea, don't think of it as the ultimate safety net, because you can be burned even when using RAID 1.

So, in your case if the WHS OS fails such as harddrive failure, what is your recovery strategy? For example: re-install WHS OS, re-install software (e.g., Sage), and restore storage pool from backup?

Thanks,
Matt

[sic0048]

That is how I would have to do it currently: install WHS OS, update it to the lastest version, attempt to recover pooled drives without loss of data, then reinstall all other software (including SageTV, and CQC my automation system). But those softwares would be installed from scratch - meaning inportant stuff like my wiz.bin and other important data would be lost forever. That is why I am exploring putting SageTV and CQC on a virtual machine. Then I could recover those systems without any data loss.

While I love WHS and SageTV (and my other software), I think running them together is like playing the lottery. Odds are you number isn't going to come up, but if it does, you are going to be screwed (ok, it isn't exactly like playing the lottery ), but hopefully you get the point.

I think the best solution to protect yourself is to run WHS by itself, without any other software installed on it - like it was designed to be used. Put all other software on other machines (could be VM) and have WHS back those other machines up like it is designed to do.

[Skirge01]

What I do is plan for the worst. I assume that my WHS system drive will eventually die on me and I will lose anything that isn't a standard part of WHS during the reinstall. (I look forward to WHS2 when the system drive will be backed up.) I also have SageTV installed, comskip, among other programs and WHS add-ins on the OS drive. In order to preserve those programs, I use Cobian Backup to automatically back up each program's entire directory on a nightly basis, using incremental backups I keep for several months, so I can pick and choose which "version" to restore from. It may not be an ideal solution, but it's the simplest one I could come up with until WHS2 comes out, which is rumored to be this year.

[btrcp2000]

This might be worth a read for the OP. It's my very recent experience with WHS OS drive failure. Didn't lose anything, but it certainly wasn't because of WHS. I did lose about two weeks of my life though

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=46715

[chrisc983]

You can try the method recommended here for now until WHS v2 comes out http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39124. It talks about using a hardware RAID on the System Drive. I'm thinking about doing this myself for now once I get some extra funds for another hard drive and RAID controller.

[Fuzzy]

Honestly, WHS only makes sense if you have a definate need for WHS specific features. If the auto-backup of all your other computers is important, that's great. However, there are other ways to acomplish this. I don't think sageTV ON WHS is an ideal solution, I think it's more of a 'well, I have WHS already running, so I might as well run sage on it' sort of reasoning. As for the Drive pool, The only real advantage I think this brings is the easy addition of more storage, and it being presented as the same big drive. Personally, I don't think that's important at ALL with sage, as 1. Sage handles multiple drives fairly well, and 2. Do you really need to duplicate all your recordings? This would seiously cut down on capacity.

[davephan]

I agree with Fuzzy that WHS may not be the best operating system for SageTV. I think it really depends on how much downtime and recovery work is acceptable to you if there is a system drive failure. There are many stories of recovery times in days, sometimes weeks. With disk imaging, the recovery time is about 30 minutes. Most of the 30 minutes is unattended waiting time. Imaging can be scheduled to occur every day with full, differential, and incremental imaging. The system drive could even be imaged more frequently, although I think daily imaging is good enough.

WHS does offer ease of drive expansion and the drives don't have to match. While not as flexible, disk space can be expanded with RAID 1 drive pairs. WHS can protect data, but I think the risk of data loss is higher than using RAID 1. Perhaps the risk of data loss with WHS is closer to RAID 5, where if you loose any two drives, all your data is lost. Since setting up my new system, I have already lost one of my two TB drives, an early drive failure after about a week. I returned the drive for a new replacement two TB drive, and no data was lost. Only a few minutes downtime while the drive was replaced.

My system drive is not protected by RAID, only by images. The images are stored on two separate RAID 1 drive pairs plus another SATA secondary drive in another computer. RAID 1 on the system drive will give you some protection, but it won't let you roll your system drive back to a point in time when your system was working perfectly.

Maybe the next version of WHS will solve the system drive recovery problems. It could be another year or more before the next WHS is released and is proven to resolve the WHS system drive recovery problems. Until then, you might want to reconsider if the risk of a longer recovery time and SageTV outage time is acceptable to you.

Dave

[farscapesg1]

Hmm, as someone who has experienced the pain of a system drive crash with WHS... I'd still do it all over again. Honestly, SageTV on the WHS system has been nothing but stable for me as a server for my extenders/placeshifter. The desktop backup feature has come in handy twice (no need to purchase additional imaging backup software). The drive pool has been very nice for me by accepting a mixture of 8 different size/model drives. I don't duplicate my recording folder, but documents, software, pictures, and my daughters converted videos do get duplicated. Some people would argue RAID 5 is better for disk-to-space ratios, but to me it all depends on what you are duplicating... and whether you want to spend money on a decent RAID card.

Compared to some other NAS applications (FreeNas for example), the performance on my WHS box spanks them and leaves them crying Not to mention that I can run Utorrent, SageTV, host my pictures/documents/etc. for family/friends, and only use one system to do it. And yes, I know a lot of this can be done on Linux... but I don't have the time to figure it all out and WHS pretty much just works out of the box.

I am hoping they include a way to back up/image the system drive in WHS2 though. Just that one feature and I'll run out and buy a copy on release day (even though I got my current copy through Technet at work )

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by farscapesg1

Hmm, as someone who has experienced the pain of a system drive crash with WHS... I'd still do it all over again. Honestly, SageTV on the WHS system has been nothing but stable for me as a server for my extenders/placeshifter. The desktop backup feature has come in handy twice (no need to purchase additional imaging backup software). The drive pool has been very nice for me by accepting a mixture of 8 different size/model drives. I don't duplicate my recording folder, but documents, software, pictures, and my daughters converted videos do get duplicated. Some people would argue RAID 5 is better for disk-to-space ratios, but to me it all depends on what you are duplicating... and whether you want to spend money on a decent RAID card.

Compared to some other NAS applications (FreeNas for example), the performance on my WHS box spanks them and leaves them crying Not to mention that I can run Utorrent, SageTV, host my pictures/documents/etc. for family/friends, and only use one system to do it. And yes, I know a lot of this can be done on Linux... but I don't have the time to figure it all out and WHS pretty much just works out of the box.

The thing is, this can all be done with WinXP as well... With the exception of desktop backup, the only thing WHS really adds is the drive pooling, and the fact that it's designed for headless use.

Now, obviously, since I use my sage server as my primary playback client as well, WHS isn't even an option for me, however, I can't see how it would be even if this situation was changed.

[Skirge01]

If we discount the features that WHS offers in a single package, completely integrated, then the biggest benefit to using WHS is it's stability. I had numerous problems running SageTV under XP. I can't recall a single OS-related issue with SageTV and WHS.