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dugn
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Aug 16, 2009
- Messages
- 398
NEED ADVICE ON A WHSv1 REPLACEMENT
Like many folks, my WHSv1 is finally getting long in the tooth and I want to build a replacement before lightning I have to. I’m not rich, I don’t mind spending money to build or buy a solid, reliable solution. So except for a Murderbox-style solution, price is not an object. It’s also not urgent. I’m planning ahead while my WHSv1 is working just fine.
Today’s WHSv1
My WHSv1 is presently fully populated with four full bays in an original HP EX475 (w/2GB RAM and EX495 Software) plus an additional 4-bay enclosure (Sans Digital JBOD connected via eSATA) for a total of 14TB of useable space (8x 2TB). I’m not interested in investing further in a dead (WS2003) platform or the EX475 hardware (2TB drive limit unless you hack it).
I like everything about WHSv1, so if there was simply a modern version that supported 4TB drives and the addition of external drives, I’d just move to that. But alas, there isn’t.
I also use nearly everything about the WHSv1: automatic nightly backups, streaming music/movies, remote access. I don’t use it for photo sharing or transcoding (as HP EX495 software allows) or Apple Time Machine.
I’d like something that’s big now (starts with 12TB) and can expand to 16TB, 24TB and more over time without a complete rebuild (hopefully by adding drive bays/enclosures).
I use my WHS to store backups for 8 home PCs performed automatically each night. And to share tons of movies and music to these PCs and the Media-PC in the living room.
THING I FEEL I MUST HAVE
NICE TO HAVE
Don’t Care About At All
Things I Don’t Know
RAID vs. Storage Spaces vs. Something else – RAID arrays take so long to rebuild. And as crazy as it sounds, I have less confidence in RAID 5 or RAID 6 due to the likelihood of a second drive failing during a lengthy rebuild. So something that’s redundant, can recover to useable state quickly and doesn’t require a lot of fiddling to restore to a good state (again, like WHSv1, but better). I’m hearing Storage Spaces and other solutions out there can do this. I’m all ears for good recommendations here.
My initial thinking is to build a Windows Server 2012 R2 machine using Storage Spaces and the ability add expandable 4/6/8-bay enclosures as needed. But I'm not even sure what kind of motherboard would provide the right features for expandable external storage like this.
I would very much appreciate insights from those more tech-savvy than me on options for meeting these needs and getting off my beloved (but ancient) HP EX475. Thank you in advance.
Like many folks, my WHSv1 is finally getting long in the tooth and I want to build a replacement before lightning I have to. I’m not rich, I don’t mind spending money to build or buy a solid, reliable solution. So except for a Murderbox-style solution, price is not an object. It’s also not urgent. I’m planning ahead while my WHSv1 is working just fine.
Today’s WHSv1
My WHSv1 is presently fully populated with four full bays in an original HP EX475 (w/2GB RAM and EX495 Software) plus an additional 4-bay enclosure (Sans Digital JBOD connected via eSATA) for a total of 14TB of useable space (8x 2TB). I’m not interested in investing further in a dead (WS2003) platform or the EX475 hardware (2TB drive limit unless you hack it).
I like everything about WHSv1, so if there was simply a modern version that supported 4TB drives and the addition of external drives, I’d just move to that. But alas, there isn’t.
I also use nearly everything about the WHSv1: automatic nightly backups, streaming music/movies, remote access. I don’t use it for photo sharing or transcoding (as HP EX495 software allows) or Apple Time Machine.
I’d like something that’s big now (starts with 12TB) and can expand to 16TB, 24TB and more over time without a complete rebuild (hopefully by adding drive bays/enclosures).
I use my WHS to store backups for 8 home PCs performed automatically each night. And to share tons of movies and music to these PCs and the Media-PC in the living room.
THING I FEEL I MUST HAVE
- Support for 4TB drives per bay (obvious, but want to call it out)
- Ability to stream movies/music to Windows PCs, Windows Media PC and iPads
- Quiet and well cooled server/enclosures that keep drives cool to reduce failures
- Backups: Passive, non-intrusive (‘it just works’
backups of all 8 PCs in house (one XP, the rest Win7 and a single Win8/8.1), daily diffs – like WHS, if possible. - Reliable Restores (see first ‘nice to have’ below). Everything claims it can back up PCs. But if restoring is a PITA, it’s sometimes almost not worth it.
- Expandable over time – I’d like to add drive bays/enclosures/pools as needed for growth (multiple eSATA ports?)
NICE TO HAVE
- File-specific as well as ‘bare-metal’ PC restore like WHSv1/v2 provided. If not this, a good alternative that makes restoring as easy and quick as possible. I dread the days of installing an OS, customizing it, reinstalling all programs, then restoring all files – then the many days of tweaking things to get them just the way they were before a meltdown. WHS did this well.
- Remote Access to PCs (like WHSv1) so I can remotely access all PCs on the network
- Remote Access to files/backups (WHS never allowed me to grab a backed-up file remotely – I had to perform a local, partial restore to grab earlier file versions).
- SMART or some other mechanism to help identify failing disks before they die
- Reuse existing 4-bay enclosure. While I expect to ditch the HP EX475 unit, if the new solution allows me to use one or more Sans Digital (or other branded) 4-bay enclosures to add drives/drive pools, that’d be nice.
- Looks nice (black/black w/blue lighting). I’m fond of the HP EX475 lighted indicator for each bay. I can’t imagine there’s an equally attractive piece of hardware, but alas – I figured I’d ask.
Don’t Care About At All
- UNIX – I’m less interested in UNIX-based solutions only because I don’t know UNIX. So if push comes to shove, I imagine greater frustration fiddling with something where I’m no expert if things go wrong.
- Speedy Drives – While copy times for my amount of data is unpleasant, the bulk of my use is backups and streaming a single movie to a Media-PC. So I don’t need fast drives. Cool, slower 5400RPM HDD or SSHD hybrid drives will do just fine.
Things I Don’t Know
RAID vs. Storage Spaces vs. Something else – RAID arrays take so long to rebuild. And as crazy as it sounds, I have less confidence in RAID 5 or RAID 6 due to the likelihood of a second drive failing during a lengthy rebuild. So something that’s redundant, can recover to useable state quickly and doesn’t require a lot of fiddling to restore to a good state (again, like WHSv1, but better). I’m hearing Storage Spaces and other solutions out there can do this. I’m all ears for good recommendations here.
My initial thinking is to build a Windows Server 2012 R2 machine using Storage Spaces and the ability add expandable 4/6/8-bay enclosures as needed. But I'm not even sure what kind of motherboard would provide the right features for expandable external storage like this.
I would very much appreciate insights from those more tech-savvy than me on options for meeting these needs and getting off my beloved (but ancient) HP EX475. Thank you in advance.
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