Move to WHS from Linux Raid5...

P

Phimp

Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2006
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596
First off, I know Raid-5 is not a backup solution.. it only protects against a single drive failure, and has its downsides, but I'm not worried about that.

I currently have 3x750GB drives in software (mdadm) Raid-5 using Openfiler.
I am about to buy one, two, or three additional 750GB drives to add to my storage server.
I'm stuck between switching to WHS or keeping what I have and expanding the array.

Windows Home Server
[+] Windows = Easy
[+] Simple to add drives and expand storage
[-] Storage with full duplication is 5 x 750GB / 2 = 1.9TB
[-] $100

Raid5 (mdadm) & Openfiler
[+] Free
[+] Storage is 5 x 750GB - 750 = 3TB
[-] Linux = Difficult
[-] Difficult to expand/grow/add storage/drives to
[-] Can easy fail/corrupt while expanding/growing/upgrading



So...should I quit worrying about Raid5 issues... and just enter a couple commands to add a drive to the array and then grow the array, then resize the filesystem and don't look back?

Or is my concern fairly legitimate and should I figure out a way to pay for WHS and somehow move my 1.4TB of data over to some other single drives so I can un-Raid my current drives and set it all up with WHS, and then just force myself to deal with having less storage available with full duplication (I'll want about 90% of my data duplicated)?

I'd like to just get a PERC 5/i or equivalent Hardware Raid-5 card so I can eliminate some of my worries with Linux and mdadm, but I don't have the cash for one of those expensive cards...

More storage with the same amount of drives and a free OS is a definite plus since I'm pretty cheap and have little money... working at Abercrombie&Fitch doesn't exactly allow me to pull in an Earth-shattering income.

Just or the sake of being prepared for either route...
can anyone give me the commands needed to add 1 or more drives to an existing raid5 array using mdadm and grow the array, and resize the filesystem and all that jazz?

Thanks!
 
I think the overwhelming recommendation you are likely to get from this group is go WHS.
You've pretty much covered the key pros/cons. And the time and frustration you will save going WHS will more than pay for OS, even at your salary :D

Bear in mind, I am commenting based on tons of lurking that I do here - I don't have either Linux or WHS installed. So how's that for backseat driving?
 
While you run raid 5 on linux in software mode, keep in mind that you still deal with raid 5 issues and you still have no true redundancy which you would have by having two seperate copies of your documents.

Also keep in mind that with WHS you can select which files you would like duplicated, so you don't have to duplicate your entire setup.


My recomendation, go WHS.
 
seem like a lot of people are going whs right now.... i am jumping on the bandwagon, see you aboard :)
 
My vote is WHS.

I recently built a NAS for myself. I was deciding between WHS or some other OS. I tried out FreeNAS and didn't like it. Tried a few Linux distros and didn't like them either. It's not that they wouldn't work (well FreeNAS didn't) but it was just more work then I was interested in investing in a simple backup solution. Was about to pony up the money for a copy of WHS because I love the feature set but I scored a free copy of Server 2008 Standard Edition so I'm using that instead. ;)

One drive for the OS. Two 1TB drives mirrored for storage. Setup all the user accounts and share permissions and just created the backup procedures on my other systems. All is well now. :)
 
If you really need to save money, I'd say stick with Linux. I'm using it with 5 drives right now, and mdadm is perfectly stable and runs rock solid. Worrying about a drive failure during a reshape is going to happen no matter what you do. In WHS, you always run the risk of a drive failing, just like with software RAID. All it comes down to is do you want to pay $100 for an easier time adding/growing/replacing drives, or are you willing to go through some more trouble to save money on an operating system?

I may be biased, but I use software RAID and as long as you don't have too many performance requirements, it will be more than enough.
 
Is there a WHS Trial?
I'd like to play around with it and see how I like it.

I would just not like to have to pick and choose which files I want protection on with WHS.
 
Up to 3 weeks for the disc to get here =(

I don't like that I'd have to pay money for another hard drive just to install WHS on it.
Right now I'm using a 2gb CF card w/ a CF>IDE adapter for Openfiler.
More electricity, more noise, more cost, extra CF card & adapter going unused.

So I'd have to pay $100 for WHS and $45 for an 80GB drive to install it on... =/
 
CyberCecil said:
If you use this trial, can it be upgraded to a full version without re-installing?
Click to expand...

I was just about to ask the same question.

And it would suck to have to partition one of my 750GB drives to install WHS OS onto one of them. But I guess that's what I'd have to do to avoid spending another $50 on another drive JUST to install WHS to it.
 
Phimp said:
I was just about to ask the same question.

And it would suck to have to partition one of my 750GB drives to install WHS OS onto one of them. But I guess that's what I'd have to do to avoid spending another $50 on another drive JUST to install WHS to it.
Click to expand...

The recommendation would be to use one of your 750s as the system drive. WHS will partition it as needed into a 20GB system partition and whatever is left goes into the pool. They say the bigger the better for the system drive as WHS uses (or at least used to use) the pool portion of the system drive as a"landing zone" for transfers into WHS, from there files are rebalanced to the rest of the pool.
 
curtcheese64 said:
As of the Power Pack 1 update WHS no longer uses a "landing zone" for incoming files.
Click to expand...

I'll definitely be installing PP1 after reading about file corruption issues and such that PP1 fixed.

So installing would partition up the 750GB drive to like 80GB for WHS and 520GB for the storage pool. Then after installing Power Pack 1, it wouldn't be used as a "landing zone", but for just general storage in the pool?

Losing 80GB to WHS on one of my drives, and hundreds/thousands of GB to file duplication... starting to make me wanna tough it out with mdadm raid5, and just back up the most critical files to a separate computer.
 
personally i went with server 2008 and used the raid 5 option there. works pretty well so far, though i still need to set up proper shares and such. was even considering active directory...

i also like windows server for the fact that you can set up whatever addition programs you want, where (from what i understand) WHS only uses "add-ons".
 
I'm personally running FreeNAS on both of my file servers and I love it. I'm not a *nix pro. But I use a Linux distro daily (Fedora to post this). It took me a while to figure out FreeNAS, but after I got it working, it was really nice.

I have one file server that has four 1TB Seagate drives in a software RAID5 - 8GB of RAM and a Phenom 9600.

My other FS is an older dual P3 1GHz with 1GB of RAM and four 500GB Seagate drives in a hardware RAID5 using an older Acard AEC 6880 PCI controller card.

I've joined both to my Windows domain controllers without any trouble (in 0.69b4) and they authenticate users with no trouble. I also use the built-in FTP server.

The only issues I've found is figuring out how to set it up. That takes a little bit. The other (bigger) issue I found was NIC card driver support.
 
Phimp said:
Losing 80GB to WHS on one of my drives, and hundreds/thousands of GB to file duplication... starting to make me wanna tough it out with mdadm raid5, and just back up the most critical files to a separate computer.
Click to expand...

Stop with the slippery slope drama. BTW, the OS partition is only 20GB.
 
cameron122000 said:
If you really need to save money, I'd say stick with Linux. I'm using it with 5 drives right now, and mdadm is perfectly stable and runs rock solid. Worrying about a drive failure during a reshape is going to happen no matter what you do. In WHS, you always run the risk of a drive failing, just like with software RAID. All it comes down to is do you want to pay $100 for an easier time adding/growing/replacing drives, or are you willing to go through some more trouble to save money on an operating system?

I may be biased, but I use software RAID and as long as you don't have too many performance requirements, it will be more than enough.
Click to expand...

You may want to read up on WHS before you spout. WHS is NOT in any way shape or form like software raid....

Also, keep in mind, time is money, unless if you have all the free time in the world and have no job, family, or other obligations, your time would be considered money. Do not factor in time for replacing costs, you should rather factor what your time is worth and factor that against an easier solution. Kinda reminds me of my old job, the company want to save $8,000 on a piece of software, so they used a $500/hr consultant for a month to create an in-house piece of software using open source. Now they contunally have to deal with patching and maintaining where they could have just forked out the money up front.


Phimp said:
I'll definitely be installing PP1 after reading about file corruption issues and such that PP1 fixed.

So installing would partition up the 750GB drive to like 80GB for WHS and 520GB for the storage pool. Then after installing Power Pack 1, it wouldn't be used as a "landing zone", but for just general storage in the pool?

Losing 80GB to WHS on one of my drives, and hundreds/thousands of GB to file duplication... starting to make me wanna tough it out with mdadm raid5, and just back up the most critical files to a separate computer.
Click to expand...


I don't know how you did your math, WHS only consumes 20GB of your main drive for it's own partitions, and this partition can be used for files or whatever you want to put on there, it's more of headroom for your main operating system and its applications.

Also, I don't know if you know anything about file duplication services under WHS, you can duplicate selectivley, you don't have to duplicate your entire collection. So where as you are planning on running Raid5 for your critical files, you could enable duplication on those files under WHS and have better data redundancy than Raid.
 
here is the deal, you can access the desktop of WHS with some add-ins and then install any program you want.... there is a good forum for WHS called we got servered :)


the major issues you all are disputing w/ WHS can be answered here and there are many addins that make WHS a great tool


http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?
 
I would pay for WHS if it were $500, because it has saved me more time and frustration. It does exactly what I want it to and I never have to touch it.
 
I have 3 drives setup in RAID5 and a cron job that goes off nightly to backup my /etc, DB, and some media files to a remote PC using rsync. Something like this probably wouldn't work for you, but it works well for me, and was the best choice for me and my data.
 
I like the flexibility of a full linux system and prefer having the drive space. I started testing WHS for my backup file server. I'm going to use WHS for my uber important stuff and primary access server. Ill be using Linux SRAID5 systems for media storage and backing up the important stuff... WHS is good for the set and forget admin and sometimes u want that...But I want the space for my media... so I'm setting up a second server and using the best of both worlds.

On a side note, if its set right, expanding an array is built into mdadm and shouldn't be too hard to expand. however, you probably do want to backup your data if you haven't played with it before.
 
So, if you already have Win Server 2008, would there be any reason to purchase WHS and set up a second box?

I have a machine I use for toying around with VMWare and such running 2008 (only powered on-demand). All I would need to do is get a decent motherboard and I have enough parts to set up an additional machine (Celeron 420). I'm not sure it's worth the extra $150-200 for a copy of WHS and motherboard to save a few pennies in electricity though - and EIST seems to do a pretty good job on my quad core desktop.

I am quite fond of the backup solution and the storage system in WHS. I'm not worried about backing up my data (although WHS backup sounds neat), but mostly my girlfriend's laptop. I would really like a seamless application for that, which WHS would provide.
 
centurion said:
i also like windows server for the fact that you can set up whatever addition programs you want, where (from what i understand) WHS only uses "add-ons".
Click to expand...

Not true. Any application can be installed on a WHS box. I have VMware Server installed running Untangle. As far as installing other apps, its just like a normal Server 2003 box.
 
WHS is an Application running on Server2003

I can RDP to the box and unistall WHS and just have a 2003 box.
 
Trepidati0n said:
BTW, the OS partition is only 20GB.
Click to expand...

Ockie said:
I don't know how you did your math, WHS only consumes 20GB of your main drive for it's own partitions, and this partition can be used for files or whatever you want to put on there, it's more of headroom for your main operating system and its applications.

Also, I don't know if you know anything about file duplication services under WHS, you can duplicate selectivley, you don't have to duplicate your entire collection. So where as you are planning on running Raid5 for your critical files, you could enable duplication on those files under WHS and have better data redundancy than Raid.
Click to expand...

It requires at least a 65 GB drive to install to so I was assuming it would need a 65 GB partition for the OS. But I guess that's probably because it's wanting 20GB for the OS and at least 45GB for the "landing zone"?
Anyways, I was figuring it needed 65GB for the OS partition so I'd need to buy an 80GB drive.. so then I had the number 80 stuck in my head when I wrote that on a 750 drive there's about 700 GB useable... so 80 to OS (I was thinking 80 and not the required 65, which I now realize is only 20GB for the OS), and 620GB for the storage pool. (i mistyped 520 in my post.)

Note to self: do not post immediately after waking up in the morning... Brain will not function properly.

So.. now that I'm awake.. let's try this again. lol
750 Gigger would be split into 20 GB for WHS OS, and about 680 GB for the storage pool, right? Then, I'd throw in the 2 other 750GB drives I have, in addition to whatever drives I purchase on Black Friday, probably 2 1TB or 750GB drives.



and ya, I understand the way WHS file duplication works. but like I previously mentioned, I will want to duplicate most of my data.

I suppose I can go without duplication on the DVD and HD-DVD rips since I can always copy/backup again from original source, but they take so damn long to rip, encode, etc.
my music I absolutely can't lose but I guess I can back it all up to one of my separate 250GB drives
the rest is computer backup images and business files that I would be up shit creek without a paddle if I lost.

So maybe if I really pick and chose what I want duplication on, It'll be about 40-50% of the data.

From what I understand though you can't really chose WHICH drive certain data goes on if the drives are all in the same storage pool... this concerns me because It would be nice to spread the files that are NOT being duplicated, across all drives so that if one fails, you don't have to hope it wasn't the one that contained all the non-duplicated data... is this correct? or can you tell it where to store things when you only have one storage pool?
 
Phimp said:
From what I understand though you can't really chose WHICH drive certain data goes on if the drives are all in the same storage pool... this concerns me because It would be nice to spread the files that are NOT being duplicated, across all drives so that if one fails, you don't have to hope it wasn't the one that contained all the non-duplicated data... is this correct? or can you tell it where to store things when you only have one storage pool?
Click to expand...

I've never liked WHS because of that, I like RAID 5/6 setups because of the added redundancy for everything stored there insstead of just a software RAID 1 for some data. In the end the storage space probably works out about the same because you won't duplicate everything, but I'd rather just have a simple RAID setup so that I don't have to restore from an external drive every time a drive fails.

That said, I gave up on software RAID and snagged a nice 8-port hardware controller so anyone looking for one of the 8-port SM pci-x cards can shoot me a PM.
 
Volkum,
FreeNAS was the first option I tried out. Tested it out for a while, simple and easy, but it doesn't use mdadm for raid5, there is less documentation on the raid5 software, and it failed to rebuild an array while simulating a drive failure.

I liked Openfiler much better. Raid5 is appealing because of it's pro's, but software raid5 using mdadm and dealing with command line to upgrade just really worries me.
If I were to add two more 750GB drives to the array. I would have 5 disks and 4x750 GB of storage...
If I filled that... In order to switch back to ANYTHING other than raid5 like WHS, or just single drives, whatever, I would need to somehow get 3TB of additional storage to move the files on the array over to, while I take them out of the array and reformat them.

That's what I like about WHS... throw whatever drives you have in there and whatever drives you can get for cheap, 250, 500, 750, 1000, 1500 GB, whatever the size, and it handles it for you.
You can then take any of those drives out if you wanted to or needed to, plop them into any windows computer, and have full access to whatever files were on that particular disk.

It takes care of your file duplication needs, so although it doesn't protect everything with minimal storage volume loss... if a drive fails... there is Zero downtime for all of your duplicated files and all of the files that weren't on that disk, and you probably didn't lose anything too important if you didn't have it duplicated anyways. No need for waiting for a rebuild of the array, when you add a disk you dont have to wait for it to expand and hope there isn't a power outtage during that time if you don't have a UPS, you don't have to search google for 3 hours quadruple checking that you have the correct commands to format a new drive, add it to an existing array, grow the array, and then expand the filesystem on the array...

So I think I'll go for the flexibility of WHS.

I'll pick up some 750's or 1TB's on B.F. or Cyber Monday and hope WHS is either on sale or just deal with paying $100 for WHS.

Thanks for all the advice guys.
 
centurion said:
would server 2008 do the same disk spanning that WHS does?
Click to expand...

I think this has become the most frequently asked question in this subforum in the past few weeks. :p

Drive Extender is exclusive to Windows Home Server.

Making a WHS FAQ with a sticky that had a list of common questions and answers like this would be a pretty good idea.
 
MrMike said:
I think this has become the most frequently asked question in this subforum in the past few weeks. :p

Drive Extender is exclusive to Windows Home Server.

Making a WHS FAQ with a sticky that had a list of common questions and answers like this would be a pretty good idea.
Click to expand...

i only asked the question because i'm stuck at work and cant look at my own server at home.

i know when i configured it (under disk management) there were a number of options including raid 5 but i couldnt remember what they were.
 
MrMike said:
Making a WHS FAQ with a sticky that had a list of common questions and answers like this would be a pretty good idea.
Click to expand...

Most people don't read FAQ's. They feel themselves to self important and their questions so thought provoking...that doing research is a just a waste of time. Every single question I have answered in regards to WHS over the past few months has been double checking with the white papers they released.

I'm guilty of this sometimes as well....but not the extent I have seen on WHS and RAID.
 
It's too bad there's not a WHS Trial iso for download on Microsoft's site or something to that extent.

It'd be great to be able to extensively test it out in a Virtual Machine so I can learn the in's and outs of it for 30 days before I spend $100 on it. I'm also interested in testing it's capability to stream content to a Media Center like my 360. I wonder if there's an add-in that will transcode AVI's and such to WMV streams for the 360 on the fly like TVersity does... I would pretty much have to buy it then. =p

Also, I noticed it doesn't seem to have out of the box FTP support. I suppose you can probably enable MS IIS FTP services though. I was hoping for a more user-friendly route for quick and painless setup/control.
 
^^ There IS an Add-In that does what you are suggesting with the video, just the name of it escapes me at the moment. There are also numerous FTP Add-Ins, although I have found Hamachi much more convenient to get access to my WHS's files. Also, alot of people seem not understand this, but any application can be installed on a WHS box just like it was a standard 2003 Server machine.

I have Firefly Media Server aswell as VMware Server running Untangle installed. Apart from the WHS Connector/Console app, and some Server2003 specific features removed, it IS a fully functional OS that you can install anything on.

TVersity has been installed by many people. Google is your friend, aswell as these sites:

http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/
http://www.whsaddins.com/
http://www.homeserverhacks.com/
http://mswhs.com/forum/
 
criccio said:
^^ There IS an Add-In that does what you are suggesting, just the name of it excapes me at the moment. Also, alot of people seem not understand this, but any application can be installed on a WHS box just like it was a standard 2003 Server machine.

I have Firefly Media Server aswell as VMware Server running Untangle installed. Apart from the WHS Connector/Console app, and some Server2003 specific features removed, it IS a fully functional OS that you can install anything on.
Click to expand...

Awesome! I thought the ability to install regular apps had been blocked kinda since more home-user types would be using it for strictly storage purposes.

Well I'll be using at least VMware Server and TVersity (for 360 & Blackberry) on it then.

and this is why a trial would be nice to have (without waiting three weeks for a disc to arrive :p)


edit: Thanks for the links!
 
Phimp said:
It's too bad there's not a WHS Trial iso for download on Microsoft's site or something to that extent.

It'd be great to be able to extensively test it out in a Virtual Machine so I can learn the in's and outs of it for 30 days before I spend $100 on it. I'm also interested in testing it's capability to stream content to a Media Center like my 360. I wonder if there's an add-in that will transcode AVI's and such to WMV streams for the 360 on the fly like TVersity does... I would pretty much have to buy it then. =p

Also, I noticed it doesn't seem to have out of the box FTP support. I suppose you can probably enable MS IIS FTP services though. I was hoping for a more user-friendly route for quick and painless setup/control.
Click to expand...

http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2008/08/04/whs-evaluation-120-day-version-now-free-shipping-worldwide/
 
novadude said:
I've never liked WHS because of that, I like RAID 5/6 setups because of the added redundancy for everything stored there insstead of just a software RAID 1 for some data. In the end the storage space probably works out about the same because you won't duplicate everything, but I'd rather just have a simple RAID setup so that I don't have to restore from an external drive every time a drive fails.

That said, I gave up on software RAID and snagged a nice 8-port hardware controller so anyone looking for one of the 8-port SM pci-x cards can shoot me a PM.
Click to expand...

Incorrect. Let me address your first point, Raid 5/6 adds drive failure redundancy, but thats where the buck stops. Raid 5/6 can corrupt, fail to expand, or simply error out, taking your entire array with it... so therefore it's not "true" redundancy, you still have a single point of failure. While the corruption and raid expansion issues are one in a thousand, I have lost an entire array to this twice before... two other forum users recently experienced the same pains as they lost some of their business arrays.

While it's not really meant or intended to be a backup, people still follow it as raid being the ultimate in data protection, it's not. Raid does not allow you to scale down or pull hot drives for storage without risking your entire system.

Now, as for your second point, WHS is NOT software RAID 1, it's NOT ANY form of raid period. Please get yourself educated before you make such a gross assumption and infect the rest of the population with inaccurate facts. WHS is more or less of a storage matrix of indipendant disks, NOT RAID in any way shape or form. WHS you can pull a duplicated disk and insert a fresh disk for other tasks not even associated with the duplication process, you can NOT do this with raid 1...that is a huge difference. With WHS you can also not lose mirrored drives due to a controller issue because it has NO raid dependancies (raid 1 fails believe it or not).... that is a HUGE advantage of storage matrix.
 
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