Backup Software or WHS??

[Jesse]

Hi,

I am in need of a backup solution for the fleet of pc's I seem to be accumulating.

A few years back I was looking for something to backup my sage folder and Opus (I think it was Opus..) recommended AIS backup. I went with that and it has worked well. Now I am looking for something that will backup the data and image the C drives on 5 different pc's and store it on my sagetv server.

Ideally I would like something that is installed on the server and will backup the other pc's on the network. I don't know if this is even possible. It seems likely that I will have to buy enough licenses to have the product installed on each machine I want to back up. Tedious.

The other option would be WHS. I know sage will run on WHS, but I am concerned about drivers, file transfer speeds etc. Has anyone here ever restored an entire machine using WHS and if so how well did it work? I suppose I could build a second server dedicated to WHS and keep my sagetv server on a separate machine but this seems wasteful.

Any opinions/advice is appreciated.

TIA

Jesse

[Djc208]

While I can't say I've restored anything from a WHS backup it is probably the most efficient way to try and do a complete backup of multiple computers. The WHS backup is inteligent in that rather than make a copy of each PC it will make a copy of one, then the second PC will be compared against the first, only those files NOT on the first PC will be backed up and so on through all the PCs. That way you don't have 5 copies of the same OS on your backup drive.

A pretty complete explanation here: http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2007/06...server-backup/

The downside would be having to basically reformat your system to set this up, and the possibility of new software problems. But for the money I'm not sure if you'll find a comparable program to do the same.

The other option would be to set up the same software on each PC and have a drive on your server dedicated to backups. Each PC would make an automated backup to this drive. You'd need lots of space, and technically 5 copies of the backup program but is not as major a change. You could even take the time to designate certain backup items to reduce the storage required.

If my whole system goes I'm usually not concerned about the OS, I'll just re-format and re-install clean. It's the personal files and such I prefer to save, so that's mostly what I back up.

[vhurst]

I'm so diggin' the WHS solution. I just built a WHS box for my parent's SageTV server. I keeps their desktop & laptop backed up, handles Sage, and so much more. I've read a full system restore is a breeze, but haven't yet done it myself. I'll be making the transition to WHS for my own Sage server soon.

[Spartan]

Originally Posted by vhurst

I'm so diggin' the WHS solution. I just built a WHS box for my parent's SageTV server. I keeps their desktop & laptop backed up, handles Sage, and so much more. I've read a full system restore is a breeze, but haven't yet done it myself. I'll be making the transition to WHS for my own Sage server soon.

I have the same sata controller as you do (also running RAID-5). When you do make the move to WHS, do you plan on keeping the controller & raid volume or are you going to have whs manage all of the disks?

[MattHelm]

I just use this for personal files:

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

And this for full metal backup:

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

Both are free and run great on Windoze.

[jm9843]

Originally Posted by vhurst

I've read a full system restore is a breeze,

It is. WHS is great.

[S_M_E]

I run my SageTV server on WHS and recently had to restore one of my workstations. WHS does make it simple. As far as I'm concerned, Sage and WHS go together like fish and water...

[DOS64K]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I run my SageTV server on WHS and recently had to restore one of my workstations. WHS does make it simple. As far as I'm concerned, Sage and WHS go together like fish and water...

+1
I've been touting WHS as a great host for SageTV for awhile. I love that I can just add disks as my video/music library increases.

[rlvogel322]

Another +1 for WHS. It really works great, IMHO.

[vhurst]

Originally Posted by Spartan

I have the same sata controller as you do (also running RAID-5). When you do make the move to WHS, do you plan on keeping the controller & raid volume or are you going to have whs manage all of the disks?

I'll keep the controller, and the Sage recording volume won't be WHS managed. My primary issue to resolve is what to use for the WHS OS drive. Since the Dell server is built for SCSI, and WHS wants 120Gb minimum to install, which it partitions to 20Gb for the OS. Big SCSI drives are expensive. I want to keep the 36Gb mirror raid for the OS. I'm going to try to install on a spare SATA drive I have around, then use Acronis to move the OS partition to the 36Gb SCSI's, and the file storage array to something else. Should be an adventure.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by vhurst

I'll keep the controller, and the Sage recording volume won't be WHS managed. My primary issue to resolve is what to use for the WHS OS drive. Since the Dell server is built for SCSI, and WHS wants 120Gb minimum to install, which it partitions to 20Gb for the OS. Big SCSI drives are expensive. I want to keep the 36Gb mirror raid for the OS. I'm going to try to install on a spare SATA drive I have around, then use Acronis to move the OS partition to the 36Gb SCSI's, and the file storage array to something else. Should be an adventure.

I wrote a tutorial for stretching your WHS C drive to a larger size and I also have one for 64K clusters for the pool so you really don't need unmanaged drives for recording anymore either. I once tried a RAID 5 array for the system drive and it caused issues. YMMV

See the link in my sig for the link to the other tutorial too...

EDIT:
If you're planning on trying to separate your C and D partitions to separate drives and stretching that way, you'll be disappointed. The free space wont display correctly (for C or D) and it will cause errors, eventually, when it thinks it has more or less space than it actually does. My tutorial, is the only reliable (although also unsupported) way to stretch the C drive, AFAIK.

[vhurst]

Having Sage record to a managed drive is appealing, and since the 64K cluster issue can be overcome it's looking good. What about any issues with (as I understand WHS does with managed drives) the way it writes to the data partition of the first physical drive, then moves files to where it wants to manage them. If this is true, and Sage might be recording 4, 6, who knows, shows at once, things could get pretty busy for what is essentially software RAID.

Any tricks to get WHS to install on two drives, rather than require a 120Gb drive which it partitions?

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by vhurst

Having Sage record to a managed drive is appealing, and since the 64K cluster issue can be overcome it's looking good. What about any issues with (as I understand WHS does with managed drives) the way it writes to the data partition of the first physical drive, then moves files to where it wants to manage them. If this is true, and Sage might be recording 4, 6, who knows, shows at once, things could get pretty busy for what is essentially software RAID.

Any tricks to get WHS to install on two drives, rather than require a 120Gb drive which it partitions?

Disk Migration and "landing zone" issues have been fixed, imo, with PowerPack1 and the MS patch during the November updates. Just make sure you turn off duplication for the recording share. If you also plan on using WHS for PC backups, I'd suggest a 320-500G drive for the system drive. Better too big than too small. I currently use a 320G drive with C resized to ~70G, leaving ~250G for D. The space on the D partition is still used for backups, tombstones and for when the rest of the pool is too full. Do not format C or D with 64K clusters, just the rest of the pool.

AFAIK, attempting to separate the C and D partitions *will* break things. Check the WHS forums, there are many threads with people asking about that very thing and the devs all say "don't do it." If you're worried about drive failure on the system drive, there's little reason. There are also many threads about primary drive failures and what to do if it happens. The truly paranoid can make images of the system drive on a regular basis but you'll need a product that supports 2003 server to make those images and If you restore an image, I suggest using the same size drive as the one that failed even if the imaging SW allows for restoring to larger drives. Again, WHS is picky about the free space it has and expects and the only way to reliably change that is during install, as outlined in my resize tutorial.

[Jesse]

It seems the consensus is WHS. Ok, I have some questions.

What about drivers? There are no WHS/Server 2003 drivers for any of my tuners (vbox, ATI and HD-PVR). My 9500S-12 raid card does have a "Windows 2003" driver which I am assuming is Server 2003. Then there is the USB/UIRT and the four port usb-->serial adapter.

How about the applications (other than sagetv) that I run on my server? What about comskip, DVD Profiler etc?

Anyone know if it is possible to install WHS on a raid 1 array? I understand that WHS should be able to re-create the c drive if I have a failure, but I want to minimize the possibility of down time.

TIA

Edit: Wow. 750 posts qualifies me as a sage fanatic. Cool.

Jesse

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by Jesse

What about drivers? There are no WHS/Server 2003 drivers for any of my tuners (vbox, ATI and HD-PVR). My 9500S-12 raid card does have a "Windows 2003" driver which I am assuming is Server 2003. Then there is the USB/UIRT and the four port usb-->serial adapter.

I have analog cards in my WHS and they work fine. I can't speak for the others but I'd be optimistic.

How about the applications (other than sagetv) that I run on my server? What about comskip, DVD Profiler etc?

Applications shouldn't be a problem. It's a 32bit OS.

Anyone know if it is possible to install WHS on a raid 1 array? I understand that WHS should be able to re-create the c drive if I have a failure, but I want to minimize the possibility of down time.

Possible, yes. Recommended, no and unsupported like most non-standard tweaks and configurations. As I've posted several times, I wouldn't bother with RAID for the system drive, it may cause stability/drive health issues requiring a rebuild and it's really not needed. Instead of using RAID, just make an image of your system drive on a regular basis. The whole drive not just 1 partition.

[Skirge01]

I have to agree with S_M_E on the system drive. While I'm a fan of RAID for certain circumstances, I would strongly urge you to avoid a RAID 1 for any OS drive. It really doesn't get you much and restoring your system after a catastrophe can be very problematic. As S_M_E said, just create an image every so often. I believe there are even some 3rd party tools out there to somewhat automate creating an image of a WHS system drive.

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I have to agree with S_M_E on the system drive. While I'm a fan of RAID for certain circumstances, I would strongly urge you to avoid a RAID 1 for any OS drive. It really doesn't get you much and restoring your system after a catastrophe can be very problematic. As S_M_E said, just create an image every so often. I believe there are even some 3rd party tools out there to somewhat automate creating an image of a WHS system drive.

I actually run a RAID 1 on the OS for WHS. I think it is great, it has saved my butt once already. I had a drive throw some errors, replaced the drive (sata backplane), rebooted and the array rebuilt itself. This is great for me as it minimized downtime. I had the OS down and backup within 2 minutes. I was then free to test the bad drive later when I had the time which is crucial when you have a 1 year old running around.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been a reinstall of the OS. The forlder duplication will save all of your shared data but if you lose the OS drive, you have to reinstall. To be honest the reinstall is not bad at all but it is still a couple of hours.

However, I have experienced 2 minor issues with the RAID. The first is you need to make sure that you use RAID friendly drives. Otherwise, the system may report drive health issues. This is common as most drives have a buffer period where they will stop responding for a few seconds to catch up with reads and writes. During this time, the drive can "fall off" the array. WHS doesn't like this and will report drive health problems.

I recently started experiencing this and have upgraded to some western digital RE3 (RAID Edition) drives.

The second is the OS would not install initially. This was more due to the way the installer works and my motherboard. The installer was stopping before I could add any drivers. The problem is that the installer did not have the correct raid drivers. I slipstreamed the install with the drivers and it installed perfectly.

Right now the server is down as I had a batch of bad drives (Samsung spinpoint F1's) and will be upgrading to all western digitals by the end of the week.

Other than my bad luck with drives, I highly recommend WHS. You really can't beat the automatic backups. I go to sleep and when I wake up in the morning, all the computers in the house are backed up.

[S_M_E]

Like others, I've had problems with RAID on WHS and when I stopped using it the problems went away. It's great that it helped you once, hopefully the "batch of bad drives" you've had won't make you lose data. Now I just set the BIOS to see the drives as IDE and they don't give me any issues. I've lost data on RAID drive/controller failures, on other operating systems, and I just don't see a need, in my situation, for it on WHS.

As always, YMMV...