Dragging my server up to date!!!!

[slaveofconvention]

So late last week I got a health warning on one of the ten drives in my Windows home server. WHS allows you to pull potentially faulty drives and replace them without any data loss UNLESS it's the primary drive with the O/S installed on it.

Guess which drive it was......

So I started the LONG (longer than I expected) process of backing up the 5-6TB of data on there so I could do a full reinstall on a new primary drive. I think one of the main reasons it's taken so long (apart of the sheer volume of data) is the fact that all 8 SATA ports on the motherboard are SATA-I ports with a 150mb speed cap but it's finally about done - I set the final TB to backup before I went to work this morning and as of now, there's about 3 hours to go (specifically movies O-Y - for some reason the move did Z first, then started with A-B-C etc)

While at work I popped into my local computer store and decided, pretty much on the spur of the moment, that now was as good as time as any to upgrade so here we go - wish me luck.

Current Specs:
Asus K8N4-E Deluxe
754 pin AMD Sempron 2800+ CPU (1.6 Ghz)
3x 512MB DDR400 (Total 1.5GB)
Multiple Hard Disks & Single Optical Drive
Nvidia 8400 PCI-e Graphics Card
Microsoft Windows Home Server (v1)
Coolermaster 600W PSU
Lian Li 343-b Cube case (4 years after buying this hugely expensive case I still love it to bits and can't get up the courage to take a dremel to it heh)

The drives and video card are staying the same - as is the case and PSU but pretty much everything else needed to be changed for anything substantial to be changed. As I've had 8 years of flawless service from the Board and CPU, the replacements are the same brand heh - who says there's no loyalty....

New hardware
Asus M5A78L Motherboard
AMD Athlon II 250 (Dual Core 3Ghz)
8 GB PNY DDR3 1333
Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011

Yup - new software to go with the new hardware - WHS v1 is a 32bit system so wouldn't have a clue what to do with 8GB Ram heh - and there are a load of other reasons to move on to the new 64bit Server 2008 based system.

I'm actually losing 2 SATA ports with this upgrade but I can live with that - as I've upgraded the drives over the years, I've ended up with a huge chunk of spare space (no complaints here) so I'm thinking I'll remove all of the sub-1TB drives, leaving me with a little under 8TB instead of the 9 I had before - as I have about 6TB data max, hopefully this'll keep me going until drive prices start heading back to more sensible levels! I can always add additional controllers if needbe - I have a single 2port PCI SATA card already but it's a 150mb thing so I'm not going to use it unless I have to.

AAAAAAANYway - even my wife is now complaining that I'm writing too much so I'll shut up and let you guys know how things end up heh...

Oh and yes there'll be some pics soon too before anyone starts with the smilies :P

[Airbozo]

Be aware that drive extender is no longer in WHS v2... The good news is that you can now use raid controllers. I have not switched to the new version due to the drive extender issue. Yet.

[slaveofconvention]

A little colour to break up all that text heh

The server as it stands (admittedly partially stripped - I've been on with this a few days now)


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/03.jpg

And a closer look at the motherboard side of the case - there's actually a single hard disk in this side too as I ran out of space on the other side....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/02.jpg

I know the cable management is horrible, but there's a limit to how much you can do when you have 10 sata data cables as well as the usual other ones heh (and I havent actually ever tried to improve it yet)

The case has a whole second section too and this is where the PSU and the majority of the drives live....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/01.jpg

And finally the best bit heh - the new toys....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/04.jpg

And now just to wait for the backup to complete..... More soon (hopefully)

[slaveofconvention]

Be aware that drive extender is no longer in WHS v2... The good news is that you can now use raid controllers. I have not switched to the new version due to the drive extender issue. Yet.

To be honest, this is the only reason I didn't upgrade a while back. Really I'm not too concerned about this although, I admit, the exclusion of DE initially annoyed me to the point where I swore I'd never do it. I can imagine me doing this all again in a couple weeks and going back to v1 but I figured I should at least give it a go. I originally ran my server on XP so I'm long used to the "hassle" of manually managing drives - it isn't the end of the world, but I do still think it was a major dropping of the ball by Microsoft.

[Airbozo]

To be honest, this is the only reason I didn't upgrade a while back. Really I'm not too concerned about this although, I admit, the exclusion of DE initially annoyed me to the point where I swore I'd never do it. I can imagine me doing this all again in a couple weeks and going back to v1 but I figured I should at least give it a go. I originally ran my server on XP so I'm long used to the "hassle" of manually managing drives - it isn't the end of the world, but I do still think it was a major dropping of the ball by Microsoft.

Originally I was bummed about drive extender, but mainly because I spent weeks trying to force WHS v1 to use a raid controller and ended up giving in. Now I guess I have to dig out my raid controller again and bite the bullet. My buddy switched over right after release and loves the new version despite the missing SW. One thing he mentioned that was easier, was the remote media options. He can use his WHS like a jukebox from work for audio and videos.

[Fuganater]

RAID controller works just fine for me with WHS V1. The only problem is that it doesn't recognize drives over 2TB...

[slaveofconvention]

I always used a basic JBOD setup with WHS looking after everything. I kinda figured that as MS had gone out of its way to make disk management simple, it made sense to just let it do it's thang heh

[Airbozo]

RAID controller works just fine for me with WHS V1. The only problem is that it doesn't recognize drives over 2TB...

What raid controller? I tried so many cards and procedures to get raid working and never could. If your raid controller is working (in raid) in WHS1 you are in the minority. I even escalated this to Microsoft and was told it is not possible.

The 2TB limit is the OS btw.

[Fuganater]

Intel RAID Controller SRCSAS018E. Kaylin told me he had it. It was $150 on Ebay BNIB and I offered $75 and got it.

[slaveofconvention]

So I got a lil impatient waiting for the last of the backup to go through.....

One CPU installed.....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/05.jpg

Followed by a pair of 4GB sticks of RAM.....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/06.jpg

And (temporarily until I find something better) the stock cooler installed too...


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/07.jpg

That's all I could do until the backups were done but I just got in from the store and hey presto.....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/08.jpg

Time to grab me a screwdriver I think.... The only thing left on here now is a little over 1TB of backups - which is a testament to the efficiency of WHS v1's backup system - that's nearly 18 months of backups on three desktops, one media center, two laptops and two netbooks plus an OLD backup of my desktop when I switched from Vista to Windows 7 - I kept the old vista pc images just in case....

In case you're curious, the 5 full hard disks are the drives I've been using for backup - the top 5 are the drives which are still installed in the server....

Time to shift some dust bunnies heh - probably tomorrow before I come back to this - I get on ok with my neighbours but 9.20pm is a little late to start up my compressor for some dust blasting heh

[slaveofconvention]

Ok one last bit before I go to bed - as I mentioned, it's too late for compressor but screwdrivers are much more quiet heh!!!


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/09.jpg

That'd be a pile of stuff taken out of the server!! From left to right we have the caddy and Thermaltake iCages I used to convert the 5.25" bays into 3.5" ones, a small pile of SATA cables, the possibly faulty but probably ok 320GB former C: Drive, a Pioneer DVDRW (IDE to keep the SATA ports free for HDDs), a 2 port SATA card, a Geforce 6200 video card (yeah I got it wrong earlier - it isn't a 8400 *shrug*), the six drives which are now "spare" and can be used in the rebuilt server or not depending on capacity (1 x 500GB Maxtor, 1x 500GB Samsung, 2x 750GB Samsungs, 1x 1TB Samsung and 1x 2TB Samsung) then the 5 Drives I ended up using to back up the contents of the Server itself (2x 500GB Samsungs, 1x 750GB Samsung and 2x 2TB samsung) and finally the Coolermaster Greenpower 600W PSU.

I mentioned to Cale Hagan the other day that I tended to prefer Samsung Hard Drives - I didn't realise it was quite this overwhelming lol...


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/10.jpgLots of Samsung Hard Disks and one lil Maxtor

And that leaves me with one almost empty case - just the motherboard left on this side....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/11.jpg

Not a drive bay in use anywhere....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/12.jpg

And nothing but dust on this side....


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/13.jpg

This is actually quite worrying - I DO clean out my computers semi-regularly - this goes to show that even if you do try, you really should do the occasional stripdown and deep clean if you want to stay on top of things....

This is the area where the PSU used to live, and it's NASTY!!!!


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/14.jpg

This time tomorrow, it'll all be nice n shiny again heh - ready for the rebuild to start.....

[AmEv]

D:

[slaveofconvention]

Ok so I dragged this thread over from my computer aint workin to works in progress as well, it seems to fit a lil better lol

She's all clean again :D


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/15.jpg

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/16.jpg

Can't beat a blast of air from a 3HP compressor and a micro-fibre cloth. I didn't spend a lot of time on the fans as they may be getting replaced fairly soon with something even quieter than the Akasa Amber ones in there now (when I built this server - those fans we THE BOMB for quietness - how things have changed lol)

I did notice one other thing though once all the grime was gone...


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/17.jpg

There are some nasty marks n scratches on the case now - I still dont have the courage, time, or inspiration to truly mod this case - but I may well have to throw a coat of paint on it in the relatively near future (well ok, this is me, so a coat of paint means a couple primer, 3 or 4 colour and a few clear but you know what I mean - those scratches are toast!!!)

Time to go actually build the thing back up :)

[Aldersan]

Much better!

[slaveofconvention]

DOH!!! Anyone care to guess where I keep the .ISO file for the Install Disk for WHS2011..... Yup, on the server - which is in pieces.......

Ah well it's "only" a 4GB download..... 30 mins remaining grrrr

[AmEv]

I was gonna suggest just plugging the HDD on a dock...


Unless it's on a RAID....

[slaveofconvention]

I considered that, but I used a total of 5 HD's for the backup - and they aren't particularly well organised - 4GB over USB when I find it - I figured downloading it wouldn't take much longer and as a bonus, I know it's the newest version so.....

On top of that i just got home from picking the wife up from work so I knew I was going to be AFK for about 20 mins - I got back to 2 mins remaining so it's all good....

[Kayin]

I've still got my SRCSAS18E here if you need a RAID card. I'm currently in sorting all my stuff so I can sell everything that doesn't go into my new workstation. I have too much stuff and we're building a new house, so all the stuff I held onto "just in case" has to go. I'd be glad to part with it if you want to buy it. Can do 8 drives before extenders. 256MB cache installed, as well.

[Fuganater]

Looks very very clean SOC. Can't wait to see the new hardware in it.


PS. You should watercool it :) All the cool kids are doing it.

[slaveofconvention]

Thanks Kayin - that sounds almost ideal - I'll see how I go with the onboard ports at first - that's probably way more card than I'd need as I tend to just JBOD everything but you never know.

Shane - behave!!! I don't DO watercooling (well not yet anyway) - I've always found air to be more than sufficient and it gets better every year - I won't be overclocking and it sits in the office out of the way, and it's loaded with quiet fans so noise isn't really an issue either :P

[Fuganater]

Who cares about noise! It's all about looks. + my new motto is "It's not cooled till it's watercooled!"

[AmEv]

Some kids don't HAVE that kind of money...:unhappy:

[si-skyline]

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/slaveofconvention/imagestore/serverupgrade/01.jpg

can i ask what that beige looking device is on top of your case?

P.s dust bunnys are always fun :bunny::bunny:

[Fuganater]

Some kids don't HAVE that kind of money...:unhappy:

You can watercool a system for just over $100. That's really not that much when you add it to you $2000+ computer.

[AmEv]

-_-

[slaveofconvention]

Ok so I have lots of pics of a nice (relatively) smooth WHS 2011 installation but....

After a couple hours or so of moving stuff around and trying to get a sensible balance of free space on each drive and easy access, I came to the conclusion that the lack of DE is actually a deal-breaker for me.

I looked into (and installed) one of the DE replacement add-ins and while it seemed to work it was a time-limited Beta (none of them are "complete" that I know of) and there was no way I was going to have all my data at the whim of someone running a Beta test - I have no idea what would have happened when the beta ended.

As of now I'm in the process of installing WHS v1 all over again - I will post up some pics of the 2011 install process but for now, I want my server up an running again. The 8GB of RAM is now utter overkill as WHS v1 is based on a 32bit O/S so chances are it'll only see about 3.2 GB of it, but it's still a good upgrade - more than double the ram, easily treble the CPU power and faster SATA ports - I may well go back to 2011 if and when there's a decent, finalised DE replacement out.

At the end of the day, everyone has to make their own call about the DE issue - I thought I could deal with it because I used to have an XP based server and deal with it I did but I'm older and lazier now - I don't have a server because it's cool and geeky - I have one because it's useful and I'm lazy. I want to be able to just throw all my stuff in one place, and be able to get it back from that one place - WHS v1 with DE does that for me. To be honest the killer moment for 2011 came when I went to watch a Video on my Xbox (the main use for the server, truth be told) and instead of picking up the shares as I'd created them (Movies A-L, Movies M-Z, TV A-L etc) I got a pile of drive letters - once I opened the drive letter, I then got the Movies A-L etc but that means I have to memorise which drive contains which stuff etc and with the best part of a dozen drives - that's utterly impractical....

Microsoft, I'd like to take this opportunity to publically declare you utterly crap for removing DE from WHS2011 - it may well have made sense to push people towards RAID for business use, but the whole main selling point of WHS was how easy it was for a non-technical person to run it. This is no longer the case, and as a result, I can pretty much guarantee that 2011 will be the last version. The OS is now so devoid of what made it attractive to non-technical home users that it is not going to sell in quantity so it wont be worth supporting.

The annoying thing here is someone at MS will be saying "There's no point pushing this, look at the sales figures" when they really should be asking "Maybe we went too far by removing this long-promised feature at the last minute - gotta wonder if we'd have sold more if we didn't rip it out"

If I wasn't so anti-apple and too lazy to go the linux route......

[Kayin]

Wait, since when was drive extender easier than RAID? (or safer, for that matter...) I wouldn't take such a major leap back OS wise (especially going on a network) for that. I looked it up to make sure I knew what you were talking about. I have to say, most better RAID cards offer that feature too. We just call it JBOD, but that's a pretty wild trick with file journaling. You might be better served with some flavor of Linux if that feature is a deal breaker, but I would rather have the security of the newer kernel and RAID over a feature I'm really not sure I trust. Something like a ZFS system would probably work rather well for you.

[slaveofconvention]

I wouldn't say the drive extender is safer than RAID but I think it's hard to argue against the fact that it's easier.

It's the drive pooling feature which is the "killer feature" for me - I love the fact that when I start to run short of space, I just drop in another drive and the storage drive "grows". File duplication is fully automated insofar as I simply tell the server what folders I want duplicated and it'll automatically make sure there's a copy of those files on more than one drive. It isn't efficient from an overhead point of view but with the relatively cheap cost of storage (well it was cheap last time I bought a couple of drives) I can live with the overhead. It's the ability to combine all different sizes (and interfaces) of drives which makes it so "simple". According to every other device on my network, my server has a 20GB C: Drive for the O/S and a Multi Terabyte D: Drive for storage, made up of 3 2TB drives (less the 20GB C Partition) 1 1TB Drive, 3 750GB drives and a 500GB drive. When I run out of space, I can just drop in another drive and it'll add it to the pool.

In my experience, in order to have a stable reliable RAID solution (probably RAID 5) all of the drives have to be of the same capacity and I don't want to throw out terabytes of hard disks just because they aren't all 2TB drives.

Add to this the automatic single instance storage method of backing up every PC on my network on a daily basis - it means that WHS v1 simply does everything I need in a server at the moment. If there was a working reliable pooling solution available for WHS 2011 I'd switch in a heartbeat.

I will have a look at this ZFS system you mentioned - it's all new to me admittedly.

[Kayin]

Work in servers, you come to distrust the "simple" way of doing things. But I can see how it would be attractive-drive spanning is a lot like a JBOD, which most RAID cards will do. I'll have to look further into this. And I agree on not tossing drives just to get matching ones.

[SXRguyinMA]

download ultimate windows tweaker and it'll get your 32-bit OS to see all 8 GB :D

[Fuganater]

download ultimate windows tweaker and it'll get your 32-bit OS to see all 8 GB :D

oO?

[SXRguyinMA]

http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista :D

[slaveofconvention]

Hmm, idn about this - the reason that 32bit windows can't see over 4gb of ram is a limit in the literal number of addresses - I can't help but wonder if this ACTUALLY allows access to 8GB of ram or if it'll just make the system properties show 8gb but only actually access 4gb heh

[Kayin]

It's an implementation of PAL code, which employs shifting registers to allow access to the memory with a small code hit in speed. Yes, it actually sees the memory. It's been used in servers for a long time.

[Fuganater]

When you gonna put it together SOC?



http://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-v2-a-tweak-ui-for-windows-7-vista :D
I see where its supposed to be but when I run the program that option isn't there on WHS V1.

[slaveofconvention]

Oh it's back together - all my data is now back on it too - and I have several spare drives as there was a load of spurious stuff on there from pc backups etc....

I still really want to go to WHS 2011 - it was a lot slicker and I liked the interface a lot, but I need that whole drive pool thing - either that or a fairly godmother to hook me up with 2 or 3 more 2tb drives so I can go conventional RAID 5. I have 3 at the moment, but in RAID 5 that'd only give me 3.7TB of usable space - as things stand with all my data back on the server, no duplication, and no backups, I have 4.8TB stored on the server. The main problem would be (potentially) that I'd have to buy at least one more drive, then use 3 2TB drives to start the array, and the 4th for just under half of the backup, plus some of the other 500/750 drives I have lying spare - then add the 4th after restoring it to the RAID array and so on and so forth - it's entirely too much work lol (although, let's face it, I WILL end up doing it at some point - probably if and when HD prices restabilise....)

I'll post some pics soon of the 2011 install along with my opinion (and single grumble) for those of you interested in giving it a try...