Guide To Building A Media Storage Server - Page 141

You just perform a server recovery. I moved from an HP MediaSmart Server to a DIY build. The key is to make sure you have all the drivers squared away for any controller cards while doing the server recovery. You can see my writeup here (http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2009...s-home-server/)

Do yourself a huge favor. If you're going the DIY WHS route, before installing WHS setup 2 identical discs in a raid 1 mirror using the onboard raid 1 function. Then install WHS. This way you'll avoid lots of issues if your system drive fails and it's as easy as just inserting another disc and it'll rebuild the mirror automatically. Very simple.

Either that, or create a backup image of the OS once everything is configured, and stick it in a drawer until you need it -- you can probably even fit it on a thumb drive. Why waste a precious SATA port and another hard drive just for an OS install?

It may take a few extra minutes to restore the OS, but it's not very difficult at all. SATA ports are like gold in a media server.

I read you can't image a whs disk. Something about the files/pool information always changing?

This won't work. The system creates pointers called tombstones pointing to everyfile in the aggregated storage pool in real time and updates them each time the drive ballancer does it's thing.

You can imagine what would happen if you restored the system to a previous image.

The best way to protect from a WHS system drive failure is a raid 1 mirror. It's very easy and it 'just works'.

I've done about 10 systems this way and 2 of them have had a system drives fail (told them not to use Seagates).
Nothing happened, the system continued working away. New drive was inserted into the failed bay and it just rebuilt the mirror, exactly as it's supposed to

I've do that on all my desktops. I suppose I shouldn't break tradition lol ill have to read up on my mobo and see how I can monitor the raid from windows.

So there's no way to offload those tombstones to another location, and then point to them with a fresh WHS build? lameness... seriously, you'd think they'd mitigate that issue somehow. An OS build should never be "live," so to speak. Oh well...

Sorry about that. I had no clue.

What happens in most OEM WHS builds where there is only one OS drive, and that OS drive fails? Does it defeat the entire system?!

The system goes down. You insert their system restore CD which is really the WHS installation disc. If you're lucky it recognizes that it's already an existing build and offers to reinstall the OS without wiping out the data in the pool. Afterwhich you have to resetup all users and passwords and reinstall and reconfigure any add-ons and apps you had previously installed all over again. It's a major PITA.

In other words, take full benefit of the flexibility of a DIY build and Raid 1 the OS disc

sadly, though, that means one less SATA port.

That pretty much narrows it down to mobos with 6 SATA ports or the addition of another SATA controller. Ouch.

So be it... a full tower it is then!

hello all,

Sorry if it's been addressed already, but is there any advantage/disadvantage to choosing a MB with 10 - 12 SATA ports versus seperate controller cards? I plan to create a dedicated media server with a variety of HD's I've got laying around and am trying to decide between:

8 port controllers
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815121009
(SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ketRAID%202320
HighPoint RocketRAID 2320

or

MB w/ 12 SATA ports
(http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128403)
(GA-P55-UD6)

Either way, I'd like to RAID 2 drives for the O/S (W7), another 2 for critical data (music, pictures, documents, etc) and JBOD the rest (mainly BD images than can be reripped). Not really concerned w/ speed for the media and be able to use the case I've already got (CoolerMaster Elite) which can physically hold 10 drives, but I may have to upgrade to one that can hold more. My ultimate goal is an all in one system.


Thx

I know alot of people are getting the new Norco RPC-4220 case and over at www.mediasmartserver.net

There is a link for getting a new fan board for his Norco RPC-4220 case that accommodates 3 x 120mm fans instead of the stock 4 x 80mm fans
Forum member makes 120mm fan board available for Norco RPC-4220 server case

from article:


Scat

Will WHS boot-up directly (into the mirrored drive) with a failed OS drive if you just change the boot drive in the BIOS? If it does then the RAID should just recreate with the new replacement disk. If that's not possible what's the process?

When you create a raid 1 mirror using the onboard ICH, the bios sees it as a single raid set drive. You set this raidset as your primary boot device in the bios. When one of the drives fail, this raidset is still active and will still boot into the OS as usual. You wouldn't need to make any changes in the bios to boot.

You just unplug the failed drive and replace it with a new one and it rebuilds while the OS is running. It's really very simple and painless.

Too bad I didn't know about that before I custom-modified my own

The 120mm fans make an unacceptable screamer into a living-room-friendly PC.

Excellent, let's hope it goes smoothly with the WHS install!

I installed the Asus board yesterday and had the exact same problem with my USB wireless keyboard being completely ignored by Windows.

Not wanting to try yet another board (it's so much fun to swap the Zalman CPU heatsink around...), I decided to do something I should have done in the first place - go through my pile of old stuff and see if I can come up with a solution to the problem. It turns out that I had an IOGear PCI USB card (4 external, 1 internal) that wasn't in use. So I swapped the Intel board back in (it had a feature set closer to what I wanted anyway, including a digital input on the onboard sound) and added the IOGear card to the mix.

Amazingly enough (and fortunate for some random pieces of computer equipment), my USB keyboard is now working in Windows . With all those USB ports on the rear of the motherboard, I really didn't want to use up an expansion slot to add even more USB ports, but so be it. Clearly something in the P55 chipset (or the current drivers) doesn't like that particular USB keyboard.

Next, I noticed that BeyondTV Link was stuttering BADLY playing recordings. After looking around at various possible culprits, I noticed the network card was only negotiating a 10Mbps connection with my gigabit switch. That seemed like a likely candidate for the stuttering and a quick Google search found the culprit - a bug in the Intel network drivers and fortunately a newer version was released this week that solved the problem. I'm back to a gigabit connection and the stuttering is gone.

The new Lian Li PC-C32B case was a pleasure to work with (typical Lian Li - everything fits together properly) and has a lot more room inside than my old case so the angled SATA connections are no longer a pain. I realize it isn't likely for people in this thread to use this case, but do not put the extra travel screws in the hard drives unless absolutely needed as it makes a huge difference on the noise levels from the drives.

Sorry to sound like a noob, but can you explain how to do this? Or is there a tutorial out there to help? I tried using google, but really didn't find anything except a bunch of hits stating not to do it with a WHS because of drive extender.

If you have steps or a tutorial, that would be great!!!

I don't have this setup with my WHS but I have RAID 0 with my desktop PC. Assuming your mobo supports, you would just set up RAID 1 via the BIOS first, then proceed with doing a WHS install

So does that mean all the drives will be mirrored? I would only want the OS drive mirrored. If I set it up in the BIOS and then add say 6 drives, will it use 3 for data and then 3 for mirrored? I would want to just mirror the OS so 2 drives being used by the RAID and then have the other 4 used as the drive pool. Does that make sense?

So in effect I boot the computer once put together, and then get into the bios set up for RAID 1, then reboot and install WHS? That's it? That sounds easy. Sorry for the simple questions, but have never worked with RAID before.

You would specify which Mobo sata ports are to be used in RAID mode (the ports with the O/S drives). All other drives (connected via the other mobo sata ports or controller card(s)) would not be under raid and you could add to the pool outside of RAID

Do issues of AHCI and slipstreaming of drivers only come into play for moving/restoring a WHS to a new server or can they arise on a new build as well? That's the only other thing that could see potentially being an issue with the install.

So I installed WHS, I spent the night transfering all my media over to it. I was getting about 45MB/sec going to WHS.

What I noticed today is the speed coming from the WHS machine is abour 3-4MB! Whats up with that? I had linux on this same hardware and I got about 50MB both ways.

Ideas? I have Jumbo frames enabled on both sides.

Do you have duplication enabled? If you moved all your data over to the WHS at once there could be an initial performance lag as WHS duplicates/rebalances. I average between 20-80MB/sec when moving files to/from my WHS now.

You would need to set up AHCI on a new build anyhow. The drivers for a controller card could be added after the new install is done, so you won't have to worry about loading those during the new install.

Good! Was hoping that was the case... thanks for the info.

Try without. I see little performance gain, and in quite a few situations (all of them involving Windows...), some serious regression. Not that bad, but 90MB/s goes to 20MB/s sort of thing.

Below is what Microsoft says in its technical brief for Windows Home Server Drive Extender.


I still think MiBz idea of mirroring the OS drive is a good idea though. Could save a lot of hassle.

It's actually a very straight forward procedure.
There are different ways to achieve the same end result - but for a new user this is the simplest way.

1. First thing is to create an ISO image of the original WHS install disc. Use UltraISO or another similar program.

2. Next download the raid chipset drivers from the Intel web site (or nVidia if applcable). You want the just drivers in zipped format only. Not the installable exe version.

3. Unzip the drivers into a folder called Raid Drivers your desktop.

4. Open the WHS ISO you created earlier with UltaISO, and drag and drop the Raid Drivers folder into the root directory.

5. Burn the ISO to a disc.

6. Boot the WHS computer and access the system bios (usually by pressing DEL or F12 or whatever key depending on your bios type. Check on screen during boot or the mobo manual.

7. Go into the drive config and set the onboard controller to RAID and save settings.
Choices are usualy IDE, AHCI or RAID. Not all boards support raid configs so check before buying. ICH8R/9R/10R all support raid (note the R at the end).

Have only 1 drive connected to SATA port 0 (first port) to install the OS onto.

8. Insert your WHS install and boot the server. WHS setup begins. press F6 to load specific drivers when prompted (this will happend twice during the install). Just point to the Raid Drivers folder you created earlier.
Install will proceed to finalize.

9. Once it's finished log onto the remote desktop of the WHS server. Fireup IE and go to the Intel site, this time download the latest installable Intel Matrix Storage Manager (IMSM) currently at v8.9.

Double click and install IMSM. After install is completed shutdown the system.

10. Install a 2nd identical disc on SATA port 1 for the OS mirroring and start up the server.

11. Remote desktop into the WHS server and in programs look for Intel Matrix Storage manager. Run the program, select Advanced mode. Use the GUI to create a mirrored raid 1 pair using the drives on ports 0 & 1. You'll see the progress shown in the GUI in % complete.

In a few hours the OS system drive will be mirrored and protected against a single drive failure.

You're done. Now just add storage drives to the system and then add them into the storage pool using the WHS console.

Keep the ISO you created earlier in a safe place. You'll need it in case you ever need to reinstall the server since it contains the raid drivers you'll need.

Here's a link to the Intel IMSM drivers for WHS which is based on Server 2003 (32bit).

1st on that list is the 32bit Floppy Config utility (zipped format). It's the one you'll need to unzip and add into your WHS ISO.

2nd is the Intel Matrix storage manager (IMSM) exe. You install this later directly on WHS to install IMSM.

No only the 2 system drives should be setup as mirrored. This will show up as a single drive to the system under whatever name you give the volume. Ex: OS_Raid1.

The rest of the connected drives would each be independent drives you add to the pool individually as needed.

The goal here is to protect ONLY the OS drive/install against failure which is the only area WHS's folder duplication can't do.

MiBz,

Thanks so much for the great write-up. It even made sense to me!!! Thanks. One more question though: I was initially planning on purchasing 2 1.5TB drives, one for the OS/System and one for the storage pool. Should I use these 2 1.5TB as the array? Or should I get something a little smaller, such as 2 1TB or 2 750GB drives for the pool?

Again, I can't thank you enough!!!