[natopotato]

I have a win2k3 server here is what i have setup with DFS in win2k3



Share\\Moviesdisk1

Share\\Moviesdisk2

Share\\Moviesdisk3

Share\\Moviesdisk4

Share\\Moviesdisk5



I can insure there will be no name conflicts but i would like 1 share folder to contain all of my movies it to look like this


Share\\Movies\\



for example


Share\\movies\\se7en (actual location \\moviesdisk1\\se7en\\)

Share\\Movies\\8mm (actual location \\moviesdisk4\\8mm\\)



for the life of me i cant figure out how to do this without manually adding each Movie directory all 1000 of them into the DFS system. ARG cant find a batch file and import command NOTHING. Plus if i did it manually it would not update when i added new movies.

 

[MikeSM]

I don't think there is an automated way of doing this, and I don't think you'd want it to, since everytime you added a movie you'd have to update the DFS config.


Why don't pool the disks together into 1 logical volume and then just export it?

 

[natopotato]



Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeSM /forum/post/14166017


Why don't pool the disks together into 1 logical volume and then just export it?

you are saying create a raid configuration? I dont want to do that due to the data loss possibilities. Maby i dont understand what you mean by pool them together.

 

[kapone]

I think what Mike's trying to say is that, since your underlying volumes are RAID protected, even if you combine them in Windows as a single volume, you should be fine, since the underlying volumes are redundant.

 

[MikeSM]



Quote:
Originally Posted by natopotato /forum/post/14166048


you are saying create a raid configuration? I dont want to do that due to the data loss possibilities. Maby i dont understand what you mean by pool them together.

I was talking about a spanned volume, and not raid0. But yes, that would end up with one storage volume and the whole volume would go if you lost a member.


I don't believe there is an easy way of doing what you want with windows.

 

[natopotato]

Does linux offer somthing like this?..


PS thx for the response

 

[lanstrom]

Thats how unRAID works so I guess it must be possible in standard Linux distros ?

 

[natopotato]



Quote:
Originally Posted by lanstrom /forum/post/14175341


Thats how unRAID works so I guess it must be possible in standard Linux distros ?

I was under the impression that UNRAID resulted in multiple drive shares on the network. or at least \\\\share\\drive1, 2, 3 and so on IE movies from dif. drives are not in 1 folder

 

[bdmac97]

Then your impression is wrong. I use unraid and have \\\ ower\\disk1\\Movies and \\\ ower\\disk2\\Movies both accessible as a single share under \\\ ower\\Movies. They call it User Shares I believe. Quite nice.

 

[natopotato]



Quote:
Originally Posted by bdmac97 /forum/post/14182487


Then your impression is wrong. I use unraid and have \\\ ower\\disk1\\Movies and \\\ ower\\disk2\\Movies both accessible as a single share under \\\ ower\\Movies. They call it User Shares I believe. Quite nice.

DAMN! LOL..... if you can do this with linux why not WINDOWS.... there must be something... maby a 3rd party app.

 

[lanstrom]

I belive there is a third party open source DFS system being developed that could possibly be used with flexRAID to give a sort of unRAID system in windows.


That would be nice

 

[archer75]

DFS should do it, you shouldn't have to have multiple shares, it should look like one storage pool from what I understand. Then you can put flexraid on top. Or setup a server. I personally run Windows Home Server on a seperate machine and it pools all my storage together so it shows up as a single drive and has redundency.

 

[lanstrom]

So you are running Windows Home Server with flexRAID to get the redundancy (parity type protection) ?

 

[archer75]



Quote:
Originally Posted by lanstrom /forum/post/14189788


So you are running Windows Home Server with flexRAID to get the redundancy (parity type protection) ?

No, i'm just running WHS. No flexraid. Though others have used WHS with flexraid.

 

[Outsider787]



Quote:
Originally Posted by natopotato /forum/post/14182634


DAMN! LOL..... if you can do this with linux why not WINDOWS.... there must be something... maby a 3rd party app.

The "User shares" are a feature of UnRAID, not a feature of linux in general (as far as I know).

 

[kapone]

You guys have to understand, doing these funky "share" things is easy, it's not rocket science. Unix and Linux have had Symbolic Links for decades and that's exactly what almost all of these implementations do. Use symlinks. Hell, you can even mount a new raid array/hdd in Windows as a directory instead of a drive. For e.g.:


\\\\Movies\\Share1 - can be one raid array, and

\\\\Movies\\Share2 can be another raid array or hdd etc.


The problem isn't so much while "reading" off of let's say this share "\\\\Movies" in the above example, it's WRITING. When you write, you have to remember to write things in the "right" sub folder, which has space. This of course assumes you do not want to stripe things across different arrays or HDDs but "aggregate" them in one place.


WHS is the ONLY implementation that can hide this complexity, and the reason it can do so, is because of the Drive Extender and the delayed writes. WHS can do it, because when you write to a WHS share, it ALWAYS ends up in the data partition of the primary drive, and then the disk extender kicks in and moves it to an appropriate hdd based on it's algorithm, which includes managing free space, drive status etc. And then WHS also creates sym links to all of the folders on EVERY single drive in the pool and makes them sub directories of the main shares.


Nope, not Linux, not Solaris with ZFS, not Unix or any other flavor, NONE of them can do this. They always stripe when you add things to the pool.

 

[lanstrom]

It sounds like WHS might be at the top of my list now you have confirmed its DFS type abilities but how do you go about parity protection within WHS ?

 

[archer75]



Quote:
Originally Posted by lanstrom /forum/post/14200492


It sounds like WHS might be at the top of my list now you have confirmed its DFS type abilities but how do you go about parity protection within WHS ?

WHS doesn't have parity. What it does is more closely releated to mirroring. You have the option of turning on duplication on each share. When enabled it ensures that every file in that share exists on two hard drives so if one fails your data is still safe on the second drive.

I think it envolves 2 clicks to enable. One to select properties and one to check the box.

 

[MikeSM]



Quote:
Originally Posted by lanstrom /forum/post/14200492


It sounds like WHS might be at the top of my list now you have confirmed its DFS type abilities but how do you go about parity protection within WHS ?

I don't believe that exists under windows, though some folks think the proprietary flexraid stuff would would do this.


Personally, when it comes to storage, you want wine not milk. That is, I prefer more mature solutions that have had the tires kicked on them for some time rather than the latest code that's in beta from a brand new vendor. Losing data is just too much of a problem to trust this stuff.


It sounds like folks have had very good luck over time with unraid. I would put WHS and Flexraid both in the "milk" camp.

 

[kapone]

There's NO parity with WHS. WHS does not do parity. All you can do is "folder duplication", which ensures that when the disk extender moves data for one of these duplicated folders, to the actual drives, it will move it to two physically different drives.


The disk extender does not even support software raid, since WHS is based on 20003 Server, you "can" create a software RAID array, but disk extender won't see it or use it.


Now, WHS with hardware RAID is a gobblygook of technologies. Technicaly it isn't supported, but it CAN be made to work. You install WHS on a physical HDD that is not on your RAID controller, and add the data drives to the RAID controller. The only restriction is that the RAID controller must be able to create RAID (5/6/whatever) arrays BEFORE Windows loads, i.e. it has to have a RAID BIOS and a XOR engine. Having said that, I did manage to make the Silicon Image cards (which don't have a XOR chip onboard) work with WHS and do hardware RAID (well..kind of...it's complicated), but I wouldn't advise it.


Now, that being said, there's some downsides to WHS as well. Your network performance is gonna be lousy, in one word. However, lousy is subjective, WHS can certainly do about 25-30MBps sustained (over hardwired gigabit), but that's what I call lousy, others may not.


If you really really want the folder flexbility in WHS but still want parity, get a good RAID card. Then it makes "some" sense. But don't expect blazing performance. Your performance is gonna be worse than a single drive.