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So, after about 3 weeks of having WHS running in my house, I've come to the conclusion that it has drastically changed the way I think about storage.
When I built my quad rig last summer I put 4 500 gig drives in it. Three of them were in a RAID, with a 3x60 (120 gig) RAID 0 stripe for the OS (for speed), and the rest of the space as a RAID 5 (redundancy). The fourth drive was not in the RAID, it was there solely to store the Acronis backups that ran on a schedule. The RAID 0 stripe was backed up weekly (since losing a single drive of the 3 meant the whole machine wasn't bootable), and the RAID 5 was backed up monthly.
This computer was replacing another as my primary rig, but the one it was replacing is set up similarly, and is still in use by my kids. Two 300 gig drives in a RAID 1 (redundant) stripe, with another 300 gig to catch the monthly Acronis backups.
Lastly, there is the HTPC, which has some random smattering of 200, 250, and 300 gig drives. No RAID, no backup...just storage for ripped DVDs.
After one week of WHS, I took the fourth 500 gig out of my primary machine (the quad), and put it in the server. No need for acronis backups anymore, so might as well add the space to the pool. Yesterday, I broke the RAID entirely, created a 120 gig partition on one 500 gig drive, and the rest of the space as a second partition. I restored the primary partition from the server using the restore CD (I wish it let you restore to smaller sized partitions if the space wasn't required...) and put all of the files back on the rest of the space by using the WHS console from a backup that I had just done.
This left me with 2 500 gig drives to throw into the storage pool.
I'm considering doing the same with the older machine to reclaim some 300 gig drives (2 of them), but I think I'm getting into diminishing returns with drives that small. I may just do it for power savings! The HTPC may end up with a single 200 gig drive for the OS, and all of the ripped DVDs on the WHS.
Anyway, I've finally come up with 3 categories of files:
1) Files which absolutely must be backed up, but are unlikely to change much over time (think photos) - These end up on the server, in a share with duplication "on."
2) Files which should be backed up, and are subject to constant changes. (think source code, saves for games) - These end up on the client machines.
3) Files which do not require backup (DVD rips, downloads) - These end up on the server, in a share with duplication "off."
The important thing to recognize is the difference between #1 and #2. Sure, it's easy to throw everything on the server, but you loose one very important feature, and that is versioning. The fact that the backups of the client PCs allow you to go back to arbitrary points in time is important. Files on the server itself are backed up, yes, but only the latest version is ever available.
So, where am I now? I think I'm much better off. The only thing that I'm really lacking is the redundancy of storage for files in category 3. Although the HTPC didn't have it, the other 2 machines allowed me to store huge files in special directories which Acronis was told to ignore. Sure, they weren't being "backed up", but in both cases they were protected (either by RAID 1, or RAID 5). I may get to a point where I have so much storage on the WHS that I'll just turn on duplication for these files as well, but I wish there was support for something like RAID 5 which wouldn't loose 100% of the storage space for these files...
Anyway, that's my rambling for now.
-Kevin
When I built my quad rig last summer I put 4 500 gig drives in it. Three of them were in a RAID, with a 3x60 (120 gig) RAID 0 stripe for the OS (for speed), and the rest of the space as a RAID 5 (redundancy). The fourth drive was not in the RAID, it was there solely to store the Acronis backups that ran on a schedule. The RAID 0 stripe was backed up weekly (since losing a single drive of the 3 meant the whole machine wasn't bootable), and the RAID 5 was backed up monthly.
This computer was replacing another as my primary rig, but the one it was replacing is set up similarly, and is still in use by my kids. Two 300 gig drives in a RAID 1 (redundant) stripe, with another 300 gig to catch the monthly Acronis backups.
Lastly, there is the HTPC, which has some random smattering of 200, 250, and 300 gig drives. No RAID, no backup...just storage for ripped DVDs.
After one week of WHS, I took the fourth 500 gig out of my primary machine (the quad), and put it in the server. No need for acronis backups anymore, so might as well add the space to the pool. Yesterday, I broke the RAID entirely, created a 120 gig partition on one 500 gig drive, and the rest of the space as a second partition. I restored the primary partition from the server using the restore CD (I wish it let you restore to smaller sized partitions if the space wasn't required...) and put all of the files back on the rest of the space by using the WHS console from a backup that I had just done.
This left me with 2 500 gig drives to throw into the storage pool.
I'm considering doing the same with the older machine to reclaim some 300 gig drives (2 of them), but I think I'm getting into diminishing returns with drives that small. I may just do it for power savings! The HTPC may end up with a single 200 gig drive for the OS, and all of the ripped DVDs on the WHS.
Anyway, I've finally come up with 3 categories of files:
1) Files which absolutely must be backed up, but are unlikely to change much over time (think photos) - These end up on the server, in a share with duplication "on."
2) Files which should be backed up, and are subject to constant changes. (think source code, saves for games) - These end up on the client machines.
3) Files which do not require backup (DVD rips, downloads) - These end up on the server, in a share with duplication "off."
The important thing to recognize is the difference between #1 and #2. Sure, it's easy to throw everything on the server, but you loose one very important feature, and that is versioning. The fact that the backups of the client PCs allow you to go back to arbitrary points in time is important. Files on the server itself are backed up, yes, but only the latest version is ever available.
So, where am I now? I think I'm much better off. The only thing that I'm really lacking is the redundancy of storage for files in category 3. Although the HTPC didn't have it, the other 2 machines allowed me to store huge files in special directories which Acronis was told to ignore. Sure, they weren't being "backed up", but in both cases they were protected (either by RAID 1, or RAID 5). I may get to a point where I have so much storage on the WHS that I'll just turn on duplication for these files as well, but I wish there was support for something like RAID 5 which wouldn't loose 100% of the storage space for these files...
Anyway, that's my rambling for now.
-Kevin
