File Server OS

[panteragstk]

I know this has been beaten into the ground before, but I'll ask anyway.

My original plan was to build an unRAID server, but I honestly just don't want to mess with RAID of any kind. I get that you have parity that can protect you from a drive failure, but I'd rather not have the hassle.

My first thought after removing unRAID was to use the new WHS 2011, but after looking at it (pretty cool) I found that there is a new Windows Server 2012 Essentials that is pretty much the same, but with more features.

It's been a VERY long time since I've been a server admin and the last Windows Server OS I've used regularly was 2003. Needless to say it's a bit different. Storage spaces is interesting, but I've read a few horror stories.

So, before I commit to one OS or the other, I'd like some feedback with those that have experience with the three I've mentioned.

The duties I have planned for it are as follows:

Automatic backups of connected PCs (all can do this one way or another)
Host my files (all can do this as well)
Be able to run a few of the apps that are making my current server slow (plex, subsonic, squeezeserver, etc)
Headless
Reliable
Cheap (I have a technet subscription so unRAID is the only one that will cost anything)
Expandable (unRAID is limited to 21 drives. I'll get there eventually)
Drives able to be read by a standard windows machine if there is some sort of failure (unRAID can't do this without a linux boot cd (correct me if I'm wrong)

I lean toward server 2012 due to the fact that it will help me get familiarized with MS server OS again since I'm possibly going to get back into server administration at work, but that isn't that important since I can use another machine for that.

This server will run alongside my current Sage server so this is totally separate from sage.

Thoughts?

[Skirge01]

I've been down this road before, so maybe my experience will be of use. It may not be one of the options you were looking at, but I went with W7 Pro. I did consider Essentials and WHS2011, as well. Home Premium would have worked, but you don't get RDP access through WHS2011 with it. I went with W7 in general because Essentials simply had far more features and complexities than I wanted in my home file server and WHS2011 is a poor excuse for a WHSv1 "upgrade". For one thing, WHS2011 doesn't even allow you to back up your computers to a network share and second, the storage pool is gone. As such, I've relegated it to an RDP gateway for my home machines. I use FlexRAID's RAID-F for storage pooling and I'll be moving to FlexRAID's Transparent Raid (tRAID) when it's released in a couple of weeks for parity protection. tRAID will meet all the requirements you listed for storage pooling, as well. Finally, I'm about to start using EaseUS Todo Backup for backing up all of my home computers and my VM's.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I know this has been beaten into the ground before, but I'll ask anyway.

My original plan was to build an unRAID server, but I honestly just don't want to mess with RAID of any kind. I get that you have parity that can protect you from a drive failure, but I'd rather not have the hassle.

What sort of hassle(s) are you trying to avoid? unRAID really isn't "RAID"

Expandable (unRAID is limited to 21 drives. I'll get there eventually)

Will you? Seriously, before long, new drives get so much larger than the old ones that it really doesn't make sense to keep the old ones in the machine.

For an example of what I mean, my original server had 8, 250GB drives in it (RAID-5), it doesn't make any sense to run 250GB drives anymore when a single 3TB drive is twice the size (almost). At some point it makes more sense to replace many small drives with one larger one.

Drives able to be read by a standard windows machine if there is some sort of failure (unRAID can't do this without a linux boot cd (correct me if I'm wrong)

A quick google:
http://yareg.akucom.de/

[BobPhoenix]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Expandable (unRAID is limited to 21 drives. I'll get there eventually)

The latest 5.0RCs allow 24 drives and 5.0 will be final soon if you believe the developer. With the number of problems with RC13 I have my doubts but RC10 is quite stable for me so I just don't care if 5.0 goes final or not.

Drives able to be read by a standard windows machine if there is some sort of failure (unRAID can't do this without a linux boot cd (correct me if I'm wrong)

Install this on Windows and you can read them without a linux boot cd.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by stanger89

What sort of hassle(s) are you trying to avoid? unRAID really isn't "RAID"




Will you? Seriously, before long, new drives get so much larger than the old ones that it really doesn't make sense to keep the old ones in the machine.

For an example of what I mean, my original server had 8, 250GB drives in it (RAID-5), it doesn't make any sense to run 250GB drives anymore when a single 3TB drive is twice the size (almost). At some point it makes more sense to replace many small drives with one larger one.



A quick google:
http://yareg.akucom.de/

I know it isn't RAID in the traditional sense, but rebuilding the array is what I want to avoid. Thanks for correcting me on the ability to read drives with windows machines.

I do realize that storage is cheap and that drives are huge now, but if I already have quite a few drives and would like to use them all until I replace them with larger drives. You are probably correct in saying I won't go over the limit, but I'd be pretty pissed if I did and couldn't expand. Plus, v5 isn't final and I'd rather not trust my data to beta software.

I would go with an additional w7 machine, but the WHS and Server Essentials has all the backup capability that I'm looking for built in instead of using 3rd party software I'd have to purchase.

Now, if the built in backup features don't work well, or there is something that works better (acronis, ghost (no), second copy, crash plan) that I haven't used then I'm all ears.

As for the storage pool, I'm looking at Drive Bender. It has the pooling options and SMART integration with HD sentinel (thanks skirge).

Thanks for the responses so far.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I know it isn't RAID in the traditional sense, but rebuilding the array is what I want to avoid. Thanks for correcting me on the ability to read drives with windows machines.

About the only thing that gets "built" in an unRAID system is the parity, or in the event of a drive failure, the drive that was replaced. All the drives are separate and the data is separate, there's no striping going on. If I drive dies, you can only ever be out that drive's data, though the parity will protect it.

I do realize that storage is cheap and that drives are huge now, but if I already have quite a few drives and would like to use them all until I replace them with larger drives.

My unRAID is built off a Supermicro X7SPA and an 8 port Supermicro card so I can support a max of 14 drives, and I don't think I'll have a problem with that, I've already replaced some smaller drives.

I guess personally I find the idea of even 20 drives impractical and potentially costly (power) to run. 20 drives is about the most that's practical in a single case and it can get costly to get a case for that many drives.

You are probably correct in saying I won't go over the limit, but I'd be pretty pissed if I did and couldn't expand.

Just remember, you can always replace a drive with a larger one, so you can always expand, unless you've already got 20 4TB (or whatever the largest at the time is) drives configured.

Plus, v5 isn't final and I'd rather not trust my data to beta software.

Unless you already need the extra 3-4 drives (or whatever it is) you can use 4.7 which is production software.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I would go with an additional w7 machine, but the WHS and Server Essentials has all the backup capability that I'm looking for built in instead of using 3rd party software I'd have to purchase.

Now, if the built in backup features don't work well, or there is something that works better (acronis, ghost (no), second copy, crash plan) that I haven't used then I'm all ears.

As long as you're aware of the backup limitations and are fine with them, go for it. I found too many I wasn't willing to live with. If you go with a 3rd party backup option, keep us posted, since I felt that EaseUS seemed to have the best pricing/feature ratio.

[newyankee]

FYI, I recently replaced a win 2008 R2 standard to a win 2012 standard server. Was much easier than expected, and I am quite happy with 2012 server.
This was a general home network server, but I stuck in and extra disk and dedicated it to Sage. Everything works fine. The only issue was that the Intel NIC on an Asus P9X79 board was not recognized by Win 2012 Server, but Google came to the rescue with a fix.

[AtariJeff]

To share my recent experience. A couple of months ago I was faced with my WHS2011 setup running out of space, no more capacity for backups, and old hard drives that were starting to fail. I bit the bullet and did a complete overhaul with virtualization and a Norco 20 bay 4U case.

-Esxi as the master OS (free)
-unRaid for all storage (moderate cost)
-WHS2011 for PC backups and SageTV (already purchased)
-Multiple Linux machines for mySQL, newsgroup programs, etc. (free)

Because I consolidated all my hardware I was able to go for a more premium build. Supermicro mobo, Xeon CPU, lots of RAM. It took awhile to tweak the setup but I couldn't be happier.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

To share my recent experience. A couple of months ago I was faced with my WHS2011 setup running out of space, no more capacity for backups, and old hard drives that were starting to fail. I bit the bullet and did a complete overhaul with virtualization and a Norco 20 bay 4U case.

-Esxi as the master OS (free)
-unRaid for all storage (moderate cost)
-WHS2011 for PC backups and SageTV (already purchased)
-Multiple Linux machines for mySQL, newsgroup programs, etc. (free)

Because I consolidated all my hardware I was able to go for a more premium build. Supermicro mobo, Xeon CPU, lots of RAM. It took awhile to tweak the setup but I couldn't be happier.

I had considered going that route, but my current board is out of slots for expansion. I'm going to have a sage server (w7, or 8 if I'm feeling like messing with what's working) individual client pc's and the new server for file serving and whatever else I decide to make it do. Server 2012 and w8 have some interesting features I may decide to play around with.

I think I've eliminated WHS 2011 since Server essentials is basically a better/newer version (sorta). So the decision will come to whether or not I feel like messing with RAID (I don't). unRAID is still pretty tempting.

[AtariJeff]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

...So the decision will come to whether or not I feel like messing with RAID (I don't). unRAID is still pretty tempting.

This was my first attempt at unRaid. There was a little bit of a learning curve to decide what the best config would be and figuring out which add-in's I needed. It does work right out the box but of course I have to 'optimize' the heck out of everything.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by AtariJeff

This was my first attempt at unRaid. There was a little bit of a learning curve to decide what the best config would be and figuring out which add-in's I needed. It does work right out the box but of course I have to 'optimize' the heck out of everything.

"Optimize" eh?

[wayner]

I just upgraded my file server from WHS v1 to WHS2011. I also use StableBit DrivePool to give the drive redundancies. This is also my backup SageTV server.

My strategy is to have a PC running Win7 Pro as my main SageTV server and also have a secondary WHS file server. The file server also has backups of all of the SageTV content that I want to archive (essentially everything except unarchived TV recodings) and runs SageTV. If my SageTV server fails for any reason I can just point my extenders at the backup server and have everything working, except for LiveTV and TV recording capabilities. And I can use the daily backups on my WHS box to restore my SageTV server.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by wayner

I just upgraded my file server from WHS v1 to WHS2011. I also use StableBit DrivePool to give the drive redundancies. This is also my backup SageTV server.

My strategy is to have a PC running Win7 Pro as my main SageTV server and also have a secondary WHS file server. The file server also has backups of all of the SageTV content that I want to archive (essentially everything except unarchived TV recodings) and runs SageTV. If my SageTV server fails for any reason I can just point my extenders at the backup server and have everything working, except for LiveTV and TV recording capabilities. And I can use the daily backups on my WHS box to restore my SageTV server.

That is similar to what I plan to do. I'm still leaning to either WHS 2011 or WSE 2012. They have the same features, with Server Essentials having quite a bit more. Once I have time to set it up I'll make sure it can do everything I want.

Hopefully I'll be able to get everything (backups, storage, drive pool, etc.) working properly that way I don't have to manually make backups of all the clients and the sage server.

[jdc]

I went the ESXI route like AtariJeff. You should consider it. I've been using it for about 2 months now with unRAID. The esxi and unRAID setup is well worth it. Very simple to configure and provides a reasonable level of fault tolerance.

I bought premium components so I wouldn't have to tinker with my server anymore. My original SageTV server worked great, but I no longer like maintaining a bunch of individual laptops and desktops running all kinds of things. So I found myself installing this or that on my Sage box, which is a bad practice.

I currently have a dedicated Win7 virtual machine for just SageTV. I set it up to record to 3 dedicated drives, and then move the recordings to my Media folder on unRAID.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by jdc

I went the ESXI route like AtariJeff. You should consider it. I've been using it for about 2 months now with unRAID. The esxi and unRAID setup is well worth it. Very simple to configure and provides a reasonable level of fault tolerance.

I bought premium components so I wouldn't have to tinker with my server anymore. My original SageTV server worked great, but I no longer like maintaining a bunch of individual laptops and desktops running all kinds of things. So I found myself installing this or that on my Sage box, which is a bad practice.

I currently have a dedicated Win7 virtual machine for just SageTV. I set it up to record to 3 dedicated drives, and then move the recordings to my Media folder on unRAID.

I would go the VM route, but my current board is out of expansion slots. I have to have a dedicated file server box. No way around it.