WHS & Storage Balancing

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FromTheLou

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 2, 2006
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My current WHS install has (2) 1tb drives and (1) 1.5tb drives in it. I'm moving to new hardware and was planning on installing an new 1.5tb drive into the new install and installing WHS. Then moving my data over and removing drives from WHS and adding them to the new install once they are empty. But the more I think about I think I might have a problem.

Won't WHS just move data from the other drives to maintain a "balance" on the (3) drives in the original system?
 
Yes and No... I think you have the right idea.
It's the new install that throws a wrench in it.
If it was a re-install, the drives would balance.
installing on the new drive, moving the data and adding drives as empty is the right way to go I think.
 
CopyThat said:
Yes and No... I think you have the right idea.
It's the new install that throws a wrench in it.
If it was a re-install, the drives would balance.
installing on the new drive, moving the data and adding drives as empty is the right way to go I think.
Click to expand...

whs.jpg


That is my current storage state. My concern is that lets say I move 1.3 TB of data from ServerOld to ServerNew. There is no way for me to force that all of the data I am moving is coming from 1 hard drive.

Meaning that WHS could move 500GB from two hard drives and then another 300GB from the third hard drive.

That would leave me with 2 hard drives still half full and a third with 1TB of data still on it.

If that happens my only hope is that Drive Migrator will then consolidate those drives and leave me with an empty drive. But from what I've seen in the past, that is not what will happen.

Drive migrator will balance my files between all the available drives. Unless I'm missing something obvious, I think I might be SOL.
 
How much of that is data and how much of that is backup tho?

You can add an extra drive to a WHS setup and designate it a server backup, if the actual data you want to migrate to your new server is say less than 2GB you could buy a 1.5-2GB drive and use it to backup your server, make the new server and do a restore, this will also save all your old server settings and user accounts, all you'd lose is backups. Personally I have one of these backup drives anyway that I periodically do full server backups to in case something happens to the server itself.

Do you really need new hardware tho? Can't you just add the new drive to the existing system and call it good? Not like WHS has high CPU/memory requirements.
 
If I'm understanding correctly, you want to setup a new WHS build with a blank single 1.5TB drive, then move files over a network link (and move drives as they empty out)?

What you can do is turn off the WHS storage manager service. This will prevent the rebalancing, but you still have the problem of not really knowing which files are stored on which drive without some tedious checking for every file you move.

What I recommend is this: hook the new drive up to the old machine, GHOST the entire system drive onto the new drive, move all 3 old drives to the new machine, reinstall WHS, then copy over stuff that were lost on the system drive (if any). Then reformat the new drive and add it to the storage pool.

Edit: I just thought of a more obvious solution: you can remove a drive from your storage pool without losing data through the WHS console, it just takes a while... just copy off 1TB of data to your new machine (you end up with some data and some free space on all 3 drives), then just right click on drive -> remove, and wait a couple hours for WHS to move all the data from that drive to the other 2... voila. Rinse and repeat.
 
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-Dragon- said:
How much of that is data and how much of that is backup tho?

You can add an extra drive to a WHS setup and designate it a server backup, if the actual data you want to migrate to your new server is say less than 2GB you could buy a 1.5-2GB drive and use it to backup your server, make the new server and do a restore, this will also save all your old server settings and user accounts, all you'd lose is backups. Personally I have one of these backup drives anyway that I periodically do full server backups to in case something happens to the server itself.

Do you really need new hardware tho? Can't you just add the new drive to the existing system and call it good? Not like WHS has high CPU/memory requirements.
Click to expand...

whs1.jpg


About 250GB of that is personal data and the rest is Blu-ray & HD-DVD rip/encodes from our collection. I've got another 75 or so that need to be ripped/encoded but as you can see i'm out of space.

I don't need new hardware, I'm just consolidating. I've got this WHS install on a SC440 and 2 other Win2k3 & Win2k8 installs on separate hardware for work.

I'm consolidating these three servers into VM's on a Dual Opteron 8347 server. Hmm, looks like I don't really have any options other than buying more hard drives to put in the new install to move ALL of the data before WHS will empty the drives.

Xeth said:
If I'm understanding correctly, you want to setup a new WHS build with a blank single 1.5TB drive, then move files over a network link (and move drives as they empty out)?

What you can do is turn off the WHS storage manager service. This will prevent the rebalancing, but you still have the problem of not really knowing which files are stored on which drive without some tedious checking for every file you move.

What I recommend is this: hook the new drive up to the old machine, GHOST the entire system drive onto the new drive, move all 3 old drives to the new machine, reinstall WHS, then copy over stuff that were lost on the system drive (if any). Then reformat the new drive and add it to the storage pool.
Click to expand...

You might be onto something. The WHS system drive is a 1TB drive, so I should be able to P2V the system drive to the new 1.5TB drive. Move the other 2 drives to the new server and then allow the VM direct access to those drives. Hmmmmmm.
 
Why get rid of the old drives tho? I can see moving the WHS to a VM to consolodate hardware (my WHS runs under hyper-v on WS2k8) but just keep the existing drives and pass them through as raw drives to your WHS virtual install and throw in a few more 1.5's in for more free space. You're not going to gain much by upgrading those to 1.5's because if you're burning through that much storage space 1GB more is just delaying the inevitable. Assuming you use 1 drive for the host OS and have 6 SATA ports on the MB you can still add 2 more 1.5's to your setup for ~92% increased capacity and leaving you with ~46% free space.
 
-Dragon- said:
Why get rid of the old drives tho? I can see moving the WHS to a VM to consolodate hardware (my WHS runs under hyper-v on WS2k8) but just keep the existing drives and pass them through as raw drives to your WHS virtual install and throw in a few more 1.5's in for more free space. You're not going to gain much by upgrading those to 1.5's because if you're burning through that much storage space 1GB more is just delaying the inevitable. Assuming you use 1 drive for the host OS and have 6 SATA ports on the MB you can still add 2 more 1.5's to your setup for ~92% increased capacity and leaving you with ~46% free space.
Click to expand...

I had no plans to get rid of the old drives. I wasn't sure if passing the existing drives as raw to the WHS VM would work.(And still keep my data)

But it would seem to make sense that the following scenario should work.

1.) P2V ServerOld's 1TB system drive to WHS VM (which will use the new 1.5TB as a raw disk)
2.) Disconnect the 1TB & 1.5TB in ServerOld and install them into the ServerNew
3.) Give WHS VM access to those two disks as raw disks
4.) Jump for joy?
 
Aren't you going to have buy new hard drives REGARDLESS since you're out of space?

I'd just spend the $200 now to get 3 TB of extra space, toss them in your WHS box (but do not add to the pool), then start use Adv Admin Console to move files from the pool to the non-pooled/new drives.

That is a LOT of rips and, since you need new hard drives anyway, it doesn't seem worth risking having to go through all of that again.

Plus you could always just copy to the non-pooled drives and try it your way.... if it works, you'll be clearing the new drives anyway when they get added to the pool. If it doesn't work, you won't be tearing your hair out!
 
rhouck said:
Aren't you going to have buy new hard drives REGARDLESS since you're out of space?

I'd just spend the $200 now to get 3 TB of extra space, toss them in your WHS box (but do not add to the pool), then start use Adv Admin Console to move files from the pool to the non-pooled/new drives.

That is a LOT of rips and, since you need new hard drives anyway, it doesn't seem worth risking having to go through all of that again.

Plus you could always just copy to the non-pooled drives and try it your way.... if it works, you'll be clearing the new drives anyway when they get added to the pool. If it doesn't work, you won't be tearing your hair out!
Click to expand...

I currently don't need to purchase a new drive as I have an unused 1.5TB Seagate from the last dell deal. That is what I will be placing as the system drive in the WHS VM. Then move all three drives (2x1TB & 1x1.5TB) from the old physical WHS server into the ESXi box. So the new WHS VM will end up with 2x1.5TB & 2x1TB drives.

But I agree with you, I don't really want to take any chances here, so I'm going to do both!

I'm going to pick up 3 1.5TB drives from BB and copy my data from the WHS server to those. Then after I'm sure my data is backed up, I'll try the P2V/migration/raw disk idea.
 
I have experience in this and this is what I would do.

Since you are moving to new hardware with a new drive i'd transfer over as much data as the new hardware will hold. Then i'd tell your current server to remove one drive. And then install that one drive in your new server and transfer as much data from the old server to the new server as you can.
And then remove a drive from the old server and install it in the new server and so on.
 
Archer75 said:
I have experience in this and this is what I would do.

Since you are moving to new hardware with a new drive i'd transfer over as much data as the new hardware will hold. Then i'd tell your current server to remove one drive. And then install that one drive in your new server and transfer as much data from the old server to the new server as you can.
And then remove a drive from the old server and install it in the new server and so on.
Click to expand...

That is the only way to properly do it.
 
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