RAID-1 Boot Hardware for WHS 2011?

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Nerva

Weaksauce
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Oct 12, 2008
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I am in the process of transitioning from WHS v1 to WHS 2011. I have a Norco 4020 server case, that has twenty hot-swap bays for storage, plus two more 3.5" internal bays, presumably intended for a redundant boot drive.

I am leaning towards buying a pair of Momentus XT drives that I will run in RAID-1, with the remaining drives (all of which are 1TB, 2TB, or 3TB) used in the hot-swap bays for storage, running either DriveBender or DrivePool, once they are out of beta.

Unfortunately, as it turns out, I am running an Asus E35M-1 Pro mobo, which is a nice setup for low power and enough expansion slots, but despite having 5xSATA3, it does not have RAID. Hence to make my scheme work, I will need a hardware RAID-1 card that works with WHS 2011. Hopefully someone around here has done this setup already and knows what works...
 
Anyone? This weekend I need to buy a RAID-1 card that's compatible with WHS2011.
 
I'm guessing any RAID card that has Windows7 x64 (x86?) support would work? During WHS install you just supply the proper driver after your array is built. WHS should see the drive and install to it like any other drive.

Your BIOS would have to support booting off an add-in controller, but that shouldn't be an issue.
 
Thanks. Good point on the Windows 7 x64 = Server 2008 x64 = Windows Home Server 2011 compatible.

I am new to RAID, so please forgive this newbie question: it needs to be hardware RAID-1 for the boot drive, to provide redundancy for the OS itself, so given that, why are drivers involved? Wouldn't hardware RAID be something the OS wasn't even aware of -- it thinks there's only one disk it is booting from when in fact there are two that are mirrored?
 
Drivers are needed for the RAID controller's chipset. Windows will need them in order to communicate with whatever drives are attached the the controller and in a RAID array. Controllers can also run in "IT" mode, where they don't do any RAID functionality, just pass the drives onto the BIOS where they just look like any other drive that's connected. Most controllers come stock in RAID mode, so you should be fine there.

You're right on the OS not being aware of the RAID array, it'll just see a single drive. The RAID controller presents a single drive, and handles the mirroring "behind the scenes". Windows will continue even if a drive fails, although performance will be reduced. Typically the controller will have some way to communicate a drive failure to you in the OS - a status tool or it could just beep at you.

Most controllers come with a driver disc, and you can always check online to see if Windows is supported (should be for virtually every controller). I have a 2 port SATA card in my file server running the OS drive and an optical (here). If you look under the details tab, you'll see Server 2k8 is supported.
 
Sorry, another dumb question: is it a problem if I only want to mirror two drives on a controller, and then have the rest of the drives attached to the controller have no RAID at all?

For example, I'm looking at the AOC-USAS2-L8e, which has 8 ports, 6GB/s, and RAID-1 -- potentially a good long-term investment for a server -- could I run the two SSD's in RAID-1 and 6 3TB drives on the other ports that are "IT" as you call it?

Or, should I buy a AOC-USAS2-L8i, which has 8 ports, 6GB/s and no RAID, hook the big drive up to that, and then buy a simple, separate RAID-1 card for the boot SSD's?
 
Hmm... that's a good question actually. You could definitely add all your drives to the L8e, but only put two in a RAID 1. The other drives would still be seen by the OS - drives on a RAID controller don't have to be in an array of some type. IT mode is more when you want the OS to have full control of the drives - ZFS for example. Or, when you're running an optical drive off it, like I am in my server. You can't mix IT and RAID mode, it's one or the other.

WHS does its own redundancy I believe - so putting data drives in some type of RAID array wouldn't be appropriate. From a cost perspective, I don't see reason to go with the L8e just for RAID 1 (assuming it's more expensive than the L8i). Cheap controllers will do RAID 1 just like the more expensive ones. RAID 5 and beyond is when you need the fancier controllers.

If you put the data drives on the L8i, you'd have two open spots for more drives down the road. When adding new drives, doesn't WHS just incorporate them into its total data pool? If so, then I'd say definitely leave the two spots open. Otherwise, if you wanted more space down the road you'd be looking at another controller to increase your available SATA ports.

I say a simple RAID 1 card for the boot array would be fine. You'll be using SSD's for the OS? Any particular reason? Sounds like that would add a lot of cost without much benefit, WHS doesn't really do much beyond store files does it? If you do go the SSD route, make sure to carefully select your drives. Seems like lots of drives have reliability issues. I think you'd also lose TRIM on the SSD's if you put them into an array.


EDIT: By SSD you mean the momentus XT and it's SSD cache? I don't think you'd want those in a RAID (see here). It appears the cache works by storing frequently used files, not actual sectors (but I'm not clear on this). The web page is talking about a RAID 0, not RAID 1, but I'm thinking that putting the drives behind a controller would eliminate the drive's ability to figure out what files/sectors to store. I could very well be wrong, so I recommend doing some searching to see if anyone else has put these in a RAID 1.

EDIT 2: Seems like various forums complain about these drive in a RAID array, 0 or 1. I'd advise against it.
 
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My thinking is, I'd like redundancy for the OS drive, and then let the OS manage redundancy for the data pool. Given that, it would be a waste to have a mirror of 3TB drives -- what I want are a pair of cheap, low-power drives and I really don't care how small they are. Given that, when I shop around, I find the options are either the Momentus XT laptop drive or an even smaller SSD. The OS needs less than 20GB, so when you get right down to it, why not buy a pair of 30GB SSD's, which cost less than a pair of Momentus XT's?
 
Nerva said:
My thinking is, I'd like redundancy for the OS drive, and then let the OS manage redundancy for the data pool. Given that, it would be a waste to have a mirror of 3TB drives -- what I want are a pair of cheap, low-power drives and I really don't care how small they are. Given that, when I shop around, I find the options are either the Momentus XT laptop drive or an even smaller SSD. The OS needs less than 20GB, so when you get right down to it, why not buy a pair of 30GB SSD's, which cost less than a pair of Momentus XT's?
Click to expand...

RAID 1 for WHS definitely makes sense - exactly what I would do. I'd say pick up a cheap SSD or HDD pair. For my ZFS OS drive, I found a 40GB laptop drive at MicroCenter for $15. Not running any redundancy, but the whole OS I can backup to a thumbdrive (~8GB).

Cheapest drives I see on Newegg are $35. Might check the forum for anyone selling a cheap pair of drives too. If one fails, then you've justified your RAID 1 :D
 
Now i could very easily be wrong about this but i thought i read somewhere(trying to find it again) that for whs2011 there was a minimum 160g system drive needed and that the installer enforced that. I know on my install of it it has the system drive partitioned 3 ways(100MB, 60GB system, and then a 405GB shared partition). Now i understand the OS doesn't actually need that much space but if the installer really does enforce that size limit may affect your choice on system drives. There may be a way around that...but i don't know what it would be :)
Someone please correct me if i am wrong.
 
Dentalis said:
Now i could very easily be wrong about this but i thought i read somewhere(trying to find it again) that for whs2011 there was a minimum 160g system drive needed and that the installer enforced that. I know on my install of it it has the system drive partitioned 3 ways(100MB, 60GB system, and then a 405GB shared partition). Now i understand the OS doesn't actually need that much space but if the installer really does enforce that size limit may affect your choice on system drives. There may be a way around that...but i don't know what it would be :)
Someone please correct me if i am wrong.
Click to expand...

That's correct, at least per Microsoft's requirements page. Looks like the $35 drive at Newegg would be your best bet then for an OS install.
 
Yes you can put only 2 drives in RAID 1 and use the 6 remaining ports for single drives by setting them as single drive simple volumes/JBOBs/RAID 0 (depending on what's supported by the controller to get single drive volumes).

WHS 2011 by default requires 160GB for install but there's work arounds, IIRC when I had WHS 2011 running as a VM it took >30GB(it uses more space than server 2008 R2) so you'd want to go w/ something bigger than 30GB for RAID 1.

In my RCP-4020 I have 4 2.5" drives mount in pairs(1 SSD with 1 Velociraptor stacked over it then mount on the Norco bracket) running in SSD+HDD hybrid RAID 10. If you did something like this you could run 4 30GB drives in RAID 10 and have room for WHS 2011.
 
I am currently running a "workhorse" install of WHS2011, and the boot partition is 60GB, of which less than 20GB is actually used. So I would think 30GB for the boot partition should be plenty, and some amount more for the D-drive. Yes, there are workarounds -- you set the config file on the install to specify a smaller drive.

I hadn't thought of the fact I could stack 2.5" laptop drives in those 3.5" bays...

Anyways, I think RAID-1 should be sufficient. Boot drive performance is not a big deal for a server like this. The main thing is I want a degree of redundancy, minimal power consumption (and heat generation), and noise. Hence the mirrored SSD's for the boot drive.
 
Can someone recommend a HARDWARE RAID-1 card that's inexpensive? My mobo supports both PCI-e and PCI. It's frustrating to shop for these cards without already knowing the market -- they don't clarify whether the cards are hardware or software RAID. I'm surprised Newegg doesn't have it as a clear option to pick.

I'm also wondering if I can run RAID-1 on WHS boot drive with software RAID? I would think you need real hardware RAID for the boot drive...
 
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In Disk Manager you can mirror partitions. I have 2 500GB drives, Disk 0 is the actual boot drive and Disk 1 is the mirror (Raid-1) of it. It is pretty touchy about drive size, I had to shrink the D: drive by 1 MB...yup, 1 whole MB for it to mirror. Now if I missed something and this wasn't what you were asking...sorry. lol

DiskManager.jpg
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Aha... so I'm guessing the 1MB is the actual boot sector the drive boots from, and the rest is identical. So if the boot drive were to die, you could repair the remaining drive to be a boot drive and the system files would all be there?

Would this OS approach even require a RAID controller? I would think the controller wouldn't even have to know what the OS is doing...
 
The 1MB was because Disk 0 is 1MB larger then then Disk 1. From what i have read if the main drive fails the system will keep running until reboot, then you have to select the mirror drive to boot from. I have never had a system drive fail since i stated mirroring it so i cant tell you from experience what exactly will be the recovery steps. If anyone else know please chime in cause i would like to get some clarification on that to.

Also to extend from your last point, my system(and mirror) are separate from my controller. When the computer boots up it looks at array drives and the drives on the MB and if there are multiple OS's gives me a choice with the default being the server OS(this is on a 30 sec count down so i don't have to be there to select it).
 
Well... (thumps head) this all-software approach sounds like a far simpler way of getting the job done. It's not the end of the world if a drive dies and I have to do a "repair" to run the OS from the new drive -- then I just replace the dead drive and make it a mirror to the running drive.

I went ahead and ordered 3 x OCZ Agility 2 60GB drives off of Newegg. My plan is to put two of them in the server and the third in the HTPC. If one of the server drives dies, I can upgrade the HTPC with a new drive and reuse the old one as a spare to replace the dead one on the server.
 
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