Re: Re: WHS Reliable Hardware?

[Phil Harris <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry - it was UnRAID and not FlexRAID that I had considered and
rejected because of the 20 drive limitation and I have 32 bays in my server
... Shame because it seemed to do most of what I wanted. :-(

I get hit with the bloody demigrator issue when streaming DVD and BluRay
media so had high hopes for 'Vail' as it cures that but given what I see
them doing with the storage subsystem on there I don't think I can
realistically anticipate moving over to it. :-(

Phil

Sent from another bloody fruit-based portable device...

On 30 Aug 2010, at 16:03, "keyvan2r" <k1@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> I switched to unRaid for my storage as I had severe issues with data
streaming speeds, this proved to be particularly annoying when viewing
bluray movies. I was also not too impressed by the way storage pooling
& management is setup on WHS - I still kept WHS as a database server
for MyMovies and also for backup of lan pc's and other services. and
because I already paid for the OS!
> I moved it to an old pentium box with 2x 500Gb sata drives. I know
many (here and on other forums) have been using WHS with no issues like
mine, but it was just not worth the effort (lazy :-))to try and sort out my
issues on WHS.
> I am very happy unRaid - main advantages (for me)are:
> Some level of protection without too much space sacrifice (1 parity
drive) - OS on USB is good too
> Disks spin down to conserve power/keep cool and only disks needed spin
up when viewing.
> Good hardware support - big choice of sata/esata controllers
> Easy addition & replacement of drives
> Simple but effective browser based management
> Good control of how files/folders are spanned across drives/shares.
> I now have a midi-tower box with 13 slots with 6x 2Tb (Hitachi) and 1x
1.5Tb (WD) which gives me 11.5Tb of usable space for ripped DVDs &
BD's. With 6 free bays, I can add another 12Tb which should keep me going
for a while.
> The OS support 20 drives so 38Tb is the limted per box. I am also
thinking this gives some degree of future flexibilty to have my 600 plus
ripped DVD/BD available on a simple storage appliance to use with various
client/front end devices
> K
> --- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx, Phil Harris <phil@...> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Mark,
>>
>> I have the same mobo as you and the nForce controllers on there
are very badly supported under MS server OSs of any flavour. I currently
use Silicon Image controllers for all my drives (both internal and
external) and have had minimal problems with drives 'failing' since then -
in fact I did have one drive which persistently failed but eventually
turned out to be a dodgy SATA cable. Since replacing that I've had no
troubles at all.
>>
>> Currently looking at 'Vail' (the new version of WHS due out Q1
2011) and that has some 'interesting' functionality including that they are
trying to encourage you to duplicate everything (so effectively you need
twice the storage capacity) but on top of that you also have a roughly 12%
CRC overhead as well!!!! So basically for 14Tb of usable space you need
32Tb of disc space.
>>
>> If you don't duplicate shares ... Well it seems that Vail splits
large files into 1Gb chunks and stripes them across multiple drives so if
you don't have shares duplicated then it looks like it exposes your data to
being even more vulnerable as a 5Gb DVD ISO could be split across up to 5
drives any of which could fail!
>>
>> Have to say I'm in a bit of a quandary what to use next ... Need
something that supports pooling of drives and on the fly expansion of
storage it has to support 30 or so drives (so that's FlexRAID out of the
running).
>>
>> :-(
>>
>> Phi
>>
>> Sent from another bloody fruit-based portable device...
>>
>> On 30 Aug 2010, at 08:12, "mwgardner2000"
<groups@...> wrote:
>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I have a home built Windows Home Server V1 box. I'm very happy
with the functionality of WHS (the PC backup feature has saved the day on
more than one occasion!), but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the
reliability of the system and the hardware in particular. WHS often reports
disk failures, but when I go in and have a look, everything seems fine. By
often, I mean several times a day.....
>>>
>>> The box has an 8.2TB storage pool and comprises:
>>> - Asus M2N32 WS Professional mobo
>>> - 2.40 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core
>>> - 4 GB RAM,
>>> - Highpoint 1820 PCI disk controller
>>> - Highpoint 2320 PCI disk controller
>>> - WD 500 GB disks (4 WD5000YS)
>>> - WD 1TB disks (3 x WD10EACS)
>>> - WD 2TB disks (2 x WD20EADS)
>>>
>>> The reliability problem has been over an extended period
(including when the box was previously running Windows 2003 SBS), and over
time changes have been made to improve things. I have had at least 3 disks
exchanged by WD (can't fault their service on that) but my suspicions as to
the root cause of the problems have for a long time centred on the
controllers. The controllers on the mobo in particular seem to be flakey
(NVIDIA nForce 590/570/550 Serial ATA Controller and Marvell 614x SATA2
Controller) and installing the Highpoint controllers seems to have helped.
>>>
>>> However, the latest problems being reported by the system
relate to the 1TB drives which are all on the Highpoint 1820 controller.
WHS reports a disk failure; the console show the disks as missing, but
without intervention the console updates and everything looks normal again.
>>>
>>> There have been some postings on here about enormous WHS
servers (Phil!) and I'm wondering if anyone else sees reliability issues?
What hardware do others use in their WHS home built boxes?
>>>
>>> Whilst I like the functionality, I'm reluctant to invest in
new PC hardware and am thinking of going for a large NAS instead. I will
keep a WHS in some form for the PC backup functionality if nothing else.
>>>
>>> Any ideas / comments / suggestions welcome!
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Mark
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>> Yahoo! Groups Links
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
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