Guide To Building A Media Storage Server - Page 234

So here is where I am confused. Do I just install on the 2TB drive and then it makes its own partition? And I can use the rest of the drive as the Shared Folder Directory like regular storage?

Can you explain #2 a little more? Should I move the data from the 2 other drives onto something else and then do all of this?

I am moving 1.2TB of data off one of my drives as we speak to get it empty for the WHS install. This is the same drive that has my 120GB Win7 partition.

Preinstallation is used by OEM companies to package WHS.

Client Computer Retore is a boot disc that allows you to re image client PC from the backups on the WHS server.

Server installation is WHS 2011 installation disk.

Well, here goes nothing. Installing WHS over Win7 Ultimate on my new server. Backed up everything off of it first.

Assassin, I am pretty sure you can't point it to a partition to install so you're doing the right thing. I creates two partitions: C: for the OS and D: for the shares. You can't prevent that. You can only fix it afterwords.

Just complementing StardogChampion, seems WHSv1 (as WHS2011) wont allow you to chose a partition, it will create two partitions by default, one is for OS (on WHS is 20gb) and 2nd parition with the rest of the hdd space for shares, and it warns you that all will be deleted before, so it removes old partitions and creates the new ones, so i would use a new disk if you dont want to lose win7 on your other disk, i do think you can use 3rd party software to re partition the hdd and then install win 7 on the other partition, but my guess is you need to do WHS first as that's the OS that doesn't allow any options.

But if you are going to use the small ssd you bought, you will need to the hack that stratog posted a few pages before.

assassin,
The most frequent install problem people encounter is having more than one drive plugged in, aside from that it is usually a breeze.

I got it all working now. Its working well so far.

Only issue is remote (web) interface is slow. Any way around this???

I haven't been able to get the remote web access to work.

I did notice that since I cloned my WHS2011 OS to an SSD, remote desktop and the dashboard is WAY faster. Otherwise, it was the same old slow like v1.

I have gotten it to work. But the interface is slow and it took me over an hour to download a 180MB file from my server.

I guess there is no way to speed this up?

I also access it via remote desktop (super fast over local network), from the outside i haven't been able to use the default web app. But i did manage to control it from the outside with Logmein, but now i just access it via remote desktop over a logmein pc inside my local network.. kinda confusing, but this way the server doesn't run anything extra.

Silly question, but did you forward the appropriate ports in your router for RDP access?

Where the heck is .33 per Kwh ????

Mine is 0.069 per Kwh used here in MA.

Your really paying .33 ? Or did you mean .013 ?

On Long Island, I'm paying .19 per KWH, residential. Commercial rates are probably higher and could be .33/KWH.

Holycrap that is expensive.

I would imagine you can probably shop for another supplier for a much better price.

Makes no sense rates are that high.. only a few hundred miles from me.

Natural gas is trading very low right now.. your power should be cheap.

We are still paying for the Shoreham nuclear power plant that never went into action. There are no alternative suppliers on LI which is why they get away with these rates.

Maybe if I blow up my neighbors house and trees so i can install solar panels

Needless to say, I really appreciate the low power usage of the sandy bridge cpus

assassin,
Try this - try to disable the Large Send Offload IPv4 AND IPv6, see if it helps your speeds.

Thanks. I tried this. Still very slow internet interface.

Any other ideas?

Edit: Download speeds are about 20x as fast though!!!!!!! Thanks!

LOL, the good ole Shoreham Power Plant, I live right by it!

FYI - I finally got my mini-itx test server up and running with WHS 2011, and was able to get NFS working. Put together a brief writeup here:

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2011...s-in-whs-2011/

The only thing I don't know is whether or not this will work with the drive extender add ins such as Drive Bender or Stablebit

Not sure about Stablebit or Drivebender, NFS does work with Flexraid.

assassin,
You can try these - not sure if they will provide much greater speeds -

For the NIC:
Flow control: on (client and server)
"checksum" or "Offload": Off (client and server)
jumbo frames: off or default (client or server)
run "netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=highlyrestricted" in an elevated console (command prompt) on *all* computers (Vista/Win7/Server 2008(R2)/WHS2011/SBS2011e)

Services/programs:
Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service: Disabled/manual
Windows Search Service: Disabled (and probably a good idea to move it to another drive anyhow, or at least d:\\)
Install the "Remote Differential Compression" feature on the server, or uninstall it from all Win7/WHS2011 computers

I hope experienced Flexraid users can answer a couple of questions about PPUs. Some background: I'm using v2 build 10 with the neat, new Cruise Control UI and snapshot RAID using 22X 2TB as DRUs plus 1X 2TB drive as the PPU. The OS is WHS2011 and this combination has worked well but my reading of the FR forum suggests I should be using at least 2X PPUs given the number of DRUs I have so I tried to add a second one a few days ago. Though the PPU was configured and added to the storage pool without incident, when I tried to do a manual parity update (as I've done for all updates so far) it ran indefinitely with no status update text displayed. My guess is that there is another procedure for adding a second PPU I'm unaware of.

Related question: What am I gaining specifically by adding a second PPU? Is it protection against failure of the other PPU or will it allow recovery from up to 2X DRU's?

Thanks in advance for your help, and note that I also posed these questions on the Flexraid forum as well.

Eric

My bad, NFS did work on Flexraid, will not work with the new driver.

Does anyone have experience with the LSI SAS 9201-16i controller. I bought it because it has 16 ports, supports 6GB SATA III, drives larger than 2TB and TRIM support for SSD's. The problem I am having is once I connect a drive to the 9201-16i it disables all 6 SATA ports on my motherboard, a Gigabyte GA-MA785GT-UDH3 (AM3).

I would like find out what motherboard others have used with this controller and if they have had the same problem with the motherboard SATA ports being disabled.

Thanks John P

Who is your public utility ?

I cant seem to find a answer, but I built a Media Server using Renethx Feb 2011 buyers guide..
Crucial M4 64gb SSD
Biostar 880G+ Mobo
Amd X2 3.2 GHz
Seagate 1tb HDD
650 W PSU

No Disk drive as i already have an HTPC I buillt a few years back...i just need more storage.

How do I install and what do I install on my SSD to become a server. I have Win7 64... but How do i install it(like physically getting it on the SSD) and after this hurdle..do I install WHS.. do i need both... Im confused.

Building a media server, what OS should i go with Linux or WIndows. I really don't have a preference as both can use PS3 Media Server.

Couple probably dumb questions but here they go...

How do I add a second hard drive to the "Videos" folder in WHS?

How do I view the actual files on the hard drives from the WHS server interface?

(1) - you can't. The top level folders in WHS 2011 are unique to a drive - they cannot span drives. If you have more videos/movies than can fit on a drive, you're going to have to set up mutliple folders, e.g.:

\\\\Server\\Videos 1 (on Drive 1)
\\\\Server\\Videos 2 (on Drive 2)

or

\\\\Server\\Movies A-M (on Drive 1)
\\\\Server\\Movies N-Z (on Drive 2)

Your client PCs (if you are running Win 7) can aggregate these into the Libraries, or something like MyMovies can work with multiple drives and aggregate them into a single Movie Library.

(2) RDP into the Administrator's Desktop on your WHS 2011 and use Windows Explorer from there. You'll see things like:

\\\\Server\\Videos is located on Drive:\\ServerFolders\\Videos...

So is adding additional video folders in WHS as simple as right clicking and tagging it as a video folder or something?

Er, no, you're barking up the wrong tree. It's as simple as using the Dashboard, and in the Server Folders tab, clicking on the "Add a folder" task to start the "add a folder" wizard...

You should use the Dashboard wherever you can. Bypassing it and shuffling about in the underlying Windows 2008 Server to *do* things (rather than *look* at things) is usually asking for trouble...