? about running SageTV on WHS

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by something fishy

My "fix" was to buy a Sil5744 based port multiplier - this will do hardware Raid1 that is transparent to the OS - no drivers are required. It is attached to the Marvell controller on my Mainboard as the boot drive.

I took an existing WHS install (the C and D drives on one 500Gb HDD) connected it to the first port on the 5744 set to Raid1 mode and booted up. The 5744 chip recognised this as a degraded array. A reboot with a brand new HDD in the second slot caused the 5744 to mirror the WHS system drive onto the new HDD with no intervention from me and it has been running as a Raid1 set ever since.

<WARNING !!! - I didn't expect it to be this painless, I only tried it because I had cloned the WHS system drive previously (connect the WHS drive as an external disk to a std WinXP machine to use “domestic” imaging programs). Do it at your peril and don't blame me if the 5744 chip wipes both HDDs as it creates the Raid1 array rather than magically mirroring it. But in my case I didn't need to reinstall>.

The 5744 will function as a boot drive without any drivers on the OS (it has hardware switches to set the Raid mode). However I installed the Sil Steelvine manager which enables me to see and control the Raid either from the WHS machine or my desktop PC - it can connect over a network. So far no problems.

The product that I am using is
http://www.addonics.com/products/hos...ad2sahpmeu.asp
And it is just velcroed to the bottom of my PC case (coolermaster stacker so lots of space) and powered from a floppy disk connector

Of course it goes without saying that Raid isn't backup - I have a clone of the OS drive also, but it makes me feel better about system drive vulnerability.

Eric

Eric,
Thanks for this reply. This may very well be what I'm looking for. It sounds very promising. Is that the only place to buy it at? Also, I haven't looked at any documentation yet but I'm guessing that you use connect the e-sata connector shown in the picture to the motherboard sata port and then connect the two hard drives to the other two connectors, is that correct?

Thanks,
Chuck

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Reinstall of WHS OS should take about an hour. (Depends on the speed of the machine) It's not that difficult. A reinstall of SageTV just requires a copy of your original SageTV directory. Install the drivers for any hardware. (Tuners, USB-UIRT) and you should have it back up in less than 2 hours. I your OS drive dies you will lose C and D. D for the most part contains your backups of your other machines. I make a copy of the SageTV directory. If you use Acronis and have a boot CD you should be able to make a copy of your WHS OS and D drive if you want. You just can't install the regular product on the server.

Gerry

Gerry,
Thanks for that. I wasn't sure how long that process took.

Thanks,
Chuck

[Skirge01]

I don't remember what thread I was reading that led me to this, but I just began using Cobian Backup last night. I have it set to duplicate my client Sage directories and my WHS Sage directory to one of the WHS shares every night, using incremental backups, plus a weekly full backup. The incrementals will be kept for a rolling 30 days and the weeklies (weekly's? Is that a word? ) kept for 4 weeks. This piece of software seems amazing with what it offers: run as service, run backups as different users, compression, encryption, incremental, differential... you name it. It's free, too. I just need to figure out what other folders I should be backing up on the OS drive.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

I don't remember what thread I was reading that led me to this, but I just began using Cobian Backup last night. I have it set to duplicate my client Sage directories and my WHS Sage directory to one of the WHS shares every night, using incremental backups, plus a weekly full backup. The incrementals will be kept for a rolling 30 days and the weeklies (weekly's? Is that a word? ) kept for 4 weeks. This piece of software seems amazing with what it offers: run as service, run backups as different users, compression, encryption, incremental, differential... you name it. It's free, too. I just need to figure out what other folders I should be backing up on the OS drive.

Cobian Backup is good stuff. I use that. If you have a HDHR back up the All Users directory. That's where (Application Data\SiliconDust directory) the HDHR channel listings are stored.

Gerry

[something fishy]

Chuck
I don't remember a large number of sources for this sort of part, certainly Addonics were cheapest and happy to ship overseas. However for US residents this
http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/insaiira1mic.html
will do the same thing. It is an earlier Sil chip, but wins by having status lights and a HDD-fail buzzer.

You connect the esata port on the port multiplier to a sata port on the mainboad (Marvell and some Sil chips will see the portmultiplier and enable you to manage it via Steelvine manager, the ICH7 just sees the array as a drive with no management or status supplied) and the HDDs to the sata ports on the 5744.

I needed an esata to sata cable.

e

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by something fishy

Chuck
However for US residents this http://cooldrives.stores.yahoo.net/insaiira1mic.html will do the same thing. It is an earlier Sil chip, but wins by having status lights and a HDD-fail buzzer.

Thanks for the reply. However, that link says it is no longer made. So, it looks like the one you originally posted is the best option.

Originally Posted by something fishy

You connect the esata port on the port multiplier to a sata port on the mainboad (Marvell and some Sil chips will see the portmultiplier and enable you to manage it via Steelvine manager, the ICH7 just sees the array as a drive with no management or status supplied) and the HDDs to the sata ports on the 5744.

I needed an esata to sata cable.

e

So, from your previous post and the one above the best procedure to install this device and have the best chance to not to wipe out the main drive in my WHS would be as follows:
Power down the WHS.
Connect the sata to esata cable from the sata port that my system drive was originally using to the port mulitiplier esata port.
Connect the original system hard drive to the sata0 port of the port mulitiplier.
Set the port mulitiplier to SAFE (Raid 1) mode using the switch.
Then power up the WHS. This should boot up like normal. (This step is just for me to make sure everything is working with the controller).
Then turn off the WHS.
Install the second hard drive (just as large or larger) to the sata1 port of the port multiplier.
Then boot up the WHS.
The process of mirroring will start and all should be working properly now with Raid 1 mirroring.

Does that sound right?

If I did use a larger hard drive, what would happen to the extra?

Also, if I want to use the monitoring software like you, what would be the steps I would need to take to do that? I'm not sure if my motherboard is compatible or not and I'm not sure what to look for. Here is link to the main page for my motherboard. http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/...e=GA-MA69VM-S2 if you don't mind checking for me.

Thanks for all of your help,
Chuck

[something fishy]

Chuck

Mandatory warning has to be restated. Before trying to mirror the WHS system HDD you HAVE to image or back it up (I used driveimageXML). The Steelvine documentation actually states that changing raid mode will erase all drives in the array.

However that done the steps that you outline are pretty much what I did and this did not require reinstallation. So good luck.

To use the steelvine manager software
- download from Sil website
- install on the WHS
- reboot, there will be an icon in the system tray. If the software can see the portmultiplier opening up the steelvine manager will display the array details if not it will be blank.

I don't know if the AMD chipset supports port multipliers that will enable you manage the array using Steelvine manager. The compatibility chart on Sil's website doesn't mention AMD or ATI chipsets (but then it doesn't mention Marvell either and that works). On the link you posted there was no mention of port multipler support.

If the AMD chip does support port multipliers then you will good to go immediately - with the hardware switch set to Raid1 you won't be able to create an array but you will be able to check its status and verify it.

If the AMD chip doesn’t support port multipliers and you really want to use Steelvine manager it you will need to use a third party SATA card. I presume that as a WHS machine you’re happy using onboard graphics, if so you have two PCIe slots (you can use a short PCIe card in the graphics card slot happily) and two PCI slots. I’d recommend a Marvell based PCIe SATA card – this will give you 2 additional SATA ports that do support port multipliers (and another PATA channel if you have any old drives) and can be set in the BIOS to be the boot device. Also the Marvell boards are cheap and in my experience work fine. Sil’s website lists suitable Sil based cards but on my mainboard at least I can’t boot from them.

BTW the Steelvine software has two parts, a service and a gui. The service (steelvine.exe) has to be running on the server for the GUI to monitor and control. They communicate over TCPIP so the GUI can be on the same machine (connect to: localhost) or a different one (will only take the IP address of the server not its name).

If the second disk is bigger then the Raid1 array will be the same size as the smaller disk, the balance will be wasted.

Hope that this helps.

Eric

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by something fishy

Chuck
Mandatory warning has to be restated. Before trying to mirror the WHS system HDD you HAVE to image or back it up (I used driveimageXML). The Steelvine documentation actually states that changing raid mode will erase all drives in the array.

However that done the steps that you outline are pretty much what I did and this did not require reinstallation. So good luck.

I did remember your warning but I thought that you couldn't image the system Hard Drive due to the way drive extender works. I know it will be a risk.

Originally Posted by something fishy

To use the steelvine manager software
- download from Sil website
- install on the WHS
- reboot, there will be an icon in the system tray. If the software can see the portmultiplier opening up the steelvine manager will display the array details if not it will be blank.

I don't know if the AMD chipset supports port multipliers that will enable you manage the array using Steelvine manager. The compatibility chart on Sil's website doesn't mention AMD or ATI chipsets (but then it doesn't mention Marvell either and that works). On the link you posted there was no mention of port multipler support.

If the AMD chip does support port multipliers then you will good to go immediately - with the hardware switch set to Raid1 you won't be able to create an array but you will be able to check its status and verify it.

If the AMD chip doesn’t support port multipliers and you really want to use Steelvine manager it you will need to use a third party SATA card. I presume that as a WHS machine you’re happy using onboard graphics, if so you have two PCIe slots (you can use a short PCIe card in the graphics card slot happily) and two PCI slots. I’d recommend a Marvell based PCIe SATA card – this will give you 2 additional SATA ports that do support port multipliers (and another PATA channel if you have any old drives) and can be set in the BIOS to be the boot device. Also the Marvell boards are cheap and in my experience work fine. Sil’s website lists suitable Sil based cards but on my mainboard at least I can’t boot from them.

BTW the Steelvine software has two parts, a service and a gui. The service (steelvine.exe) has to be running on the server for the GUI to monitor and control. They communicate over TCPIP so the GUI can be on the same machine (connect to: localhost) or a different one (will only take the IP address of the server not its name).

Do I have to install the software first, after the first Hard Drive is working, or after both are installed? So if my motherboard doesn't support the GUI then I will have to leave it set to SAFE, and use the software to monitor the status both locally and remotely. Is that right?

Originally Posted by something fishy

If the second disk is bigger then the Raid1 array will be the same size as the smaller disk, the balance will be wasted.

So if I start out with a 500 GB drive and then add a 1 TB drive, the system will see 500 GB. What happens if I replace the 500 GB drive with another 1 TB drive? Will it still only show 500 GB and the other 500 GB is wasted?

Originally Posted by something fishy

Hope that this helps.
Eric

You are helping alot and I appreciate all of your time answering my questions on this. I'm very close in going ahead and ordering it and one or two 500 GB Hard Drive so I can rotate drives periodically.

Thanks again for your help,
Chuck

[something fishy]

Hi Chuck
Q1: If you power the system down and then image the drive the image is current. I then pulled all the pool drives when I was messing with the port multiplier. Only when it was sorted and running did I reinstate the pool.

Q2: I set the hardware switch to Safe mode. Installed the WHS system drive and then installed the GUI. I could then monitor the rebuild easily.

Q3: Sorry I don't know, however my understanding is that after PP1 WHS no longer requires a big D partition as "landing space" so the advantage of a large system drive is lost (someone should correct me if I'm wrong on this)

No worries, hope it works for you.

Eric

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by something fishy

Hi Chuck
Q1: If you power the system down and then image the drive the image is current. I then pulled all the pool drives when I was messing with the port multiplier. Only when it was sorted and running did I reinstate the pool.

That makes sense. However, what do you mean you pulled the pool drives? I thought that if you did that when the pool drives were put back in it would want to format the drives. I don't want to do that.

Originally Posted by something fishy

Q2: I set the hardware switch to Safe mode. Installed the WHS system drive and then installed the GUI. I could then monitor the rebuild easily.

Did you just have one drive initially, installed the GUI, and then add the second drive? Or just added both at the same time? I guess it knows which one needs to be duplicated if you put both in at the same time.

Originally Posted by something fishy

Q3: Sorry I don't know, however my understanding is that after PP1 WHS no longer requires a big D partition as "landing space" so the advantage of a large system drive is lost (someone should correct me if I'm wrong on this)

I understand that part but as the years go by I'm sure that 500 Gb drives will become obsolete and I was just wondering how it would be handled if I was using this as a mirrored image of the original 500 Gb.

Thanks,
Chuck

[wayner]

This has nothing to do with Sage but does anyone else get File Conflicts from WHS?

I get persistent file conflicts - they are almost always with thumbs.db files on folders in my photos share. I had this issue on my former WHS machine, I built a totally new WHS box to use as a Sage server and once again I get these conflicts. I don't think that they are an issue since who cares if a thumbs.db files gets corrupted or deleted but it does cause my WHS indicator to go to "Code Yellow" which can be distressing.

MS is aware that this is an issue but they seem to be taking their time on this.

http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/2008/08...nflict-errors/

[something fishy]

Hi Chuck

That makes sense. However, what do you mean you pulled the pool drives? I thought that if you did that when the pool drives were put back in it would want to format the drives. I don't want to do that.

I mean that I physically disconnected them (easy for me as all HDDs are in Sata backplanes). They then appeared as failed drives to the OS so the WHS connector went (very) red. All port multiplier issues sorted I powered down, re-connected the pool drives and after a bit of demigrator.exe activity (I presume that it was verifying everything was as it should be) everything was fine.

Did you just have one drive initially, installed the GUI, and then add the second drive? Or just added both at the same time? I guess it knows which one needs to be duplicated if you put both in at the same time.

My memory is getting a bit hazy but I think that the exact order I did it was
- connect port multiplier to sata header previously occupied by WHS system disk
- set port multiplier config switch to whatever it needs to allow each disk to be individually accessable. Install WHS system disk into first 5744 sata port (this is the only one visible to the BIOS if the mainboard's Sata ports arent port multiplier aware.
- boot up, assuming that everything is OK the bios should find the HDD on the first 5744 sata port and boot
- install steelvine manager and check to see if you can see the 2 "channels" on the 5744 controller.

Assuming that you can (I could) you have two options -
a) use the steelvine manager to set to Safe mode (this is what I ended up doing, you have to set the hardware switch to "software controlled"). At this point the software should immediately report that the array is degraded and ask for a replacement disk. I powered off, put a brand new HDD in the second "channel" on the 5744 controller rebooted. The steelvine manager software will then ask you if you want to rebuild the array. I did so before reconnecting the pool. Mirroring the system disk takes about 1hr with the pool disconnected.
b) power off. Set the hardware switch on the 5744 controller to safe mode and switch back on. It will report a degraded array. Power off, insert blank HDD and tell steelvine manager to rebuild.

If you can't see the port multiplier then the mainboard sata port doesn't support them. You can still create and use a Raid1 array but you'll be flying blind. My advice would be to buy a sata card that does support port multipliers, install that with your WHS system drive as is - check that it works before doing anything else to aid fault diagnosis.
- Power off, switch your WHS system drive from its present sata port to a port on the new card.
- Set the HDD boot priority in the Bios to boot off a disk on the new card (in my system which has 8 sata ports on the mainboard and another eight on sata cards this involves a bit of trial and error to find which is which).
- When you've got the PC booting satisfactorily start the process outline above.

BTW I only did this once and it's three or so months ago so my recollection of the exact order is fading - another "clone the drive" plug.

I understand that part but as the years go by I'm sure that 500 Gb drives will become obsolete and I was just wondering how it would be handled if I was using this as a mirrored image of the original 500 Gb.

Agreed, I guess that mirroring onto a bigger drive would leave unpartitioned space. Whether you could ever access it using a partition manager I don't know. I guess you could
- mirror onto bigger HDD
- pull original smaller HDD
- use a partition manager to resize partitions on larger HDD (you'd probably have to do this outside the WHS box)
- reinstall onto 5744
- insert second new HDD and rebuild array

@ wayner
I used to have file conflicts and a whole series of niggly WHS issues. It turns out I had a "bad" drive. I use inverted commas advisedly because
- WHS didn't report the disk as approaching failure
- neither did chkdsk with all the switches (I didn't try anything like spinright)
However the disk would periodically drop out of the pool (and reappear when rebooted). Whether or not it was a conventional disk fault or just a dodgy connection I don't know (all my HDDs are in Sata backplanes so there must be a degree of tolerance when the connectors mate). However removing the HDD in question from the pool solved all WHS issues – it’s presently a paperweight on my desk.
So I would double check all HDDs and run as many diagnostics on them as possible. Looking at the event viewer (control panel - administrative tools) might help narrow down if theres a disk problem. Look in the "system" section.

Eric

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by something fishy

Hi Chuck
I mean that I physically disconnected them (easy for me as all HDDs are in Sata backplanes). They then appeared as failed drives to the OS so the WHS connector went (very) red.

Thanks for the clarification. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding something.

Originally Posted by something fishy

All port multiplier issues sorted I powered down, re-connected the pool drives and after a bit of demigrator.exe activity (I presume that it was verifying everything was as it should be) everything was fine.

Do you remember what "issues" you had to sort out?

Originally Posted by something fishy

My memory is getting a bit hazy .................
- set port multiplier config switch to whatever it needs to allow each disk to be individually accessable.

I thought that I would have to set the switch to SAFE (Raid 1) mode. Could you clarify the above step a bit further for me?

Originally Posted by something fishy

BTW I only did this once and it's three or so months ago so my recollection of the exact order is fading - another "clone the drive" plug.

I understand about memory being hazy. I forget stuff I did 3 weeks ago!!

By the way, I ordered the port mulitiplier, an esata to sata cable, and (2) 500 GB hard drives. I hope to have them all here by the weekend so I can do this then. I would like this to work without requiring a reinstall of WHS but if it doesn't I don't have to do too much to get it back the way I want.

Thanks for all of your help,
Chuck

[wayner]

Originally Posted by something fishy

@ wayner
I used to have file conflicts and a whole series of niggly WHS issues. It turns out I had a "bad" drive. I use inverted commas advisedly because
- WHS didn't report the disk as approaching failure
- neither did chkdsk with all the switches (I didn't try anything like spinright)
However the disk would periodically drop out of the pool (and reappear when rebooted). Whether or not it was a conventional disk fault or just a dodgy connection I don't know (all my HDDs are in Sata backplanes so there must be a degree of tolerance when the connectors mate). However removing the HDD in question from the pool solved all WHS issues – it’s presently a paperweight on my desk.
So I would double check all HDDs and run as many diagnostics on them as possible. Looking at the event viewer (control panel - administrative tools) might help narrow down if theres a disk problem. Look in the "system" section.

Thanks Eric - I will try to runs some diags but I have never had any issues with WHS other than these conflicts and they keep coming up on the same types of files - i.e. thumbs.db and on different folders which really makes me think that it is a WHS software issue rather than a hard drive problem. I have the slideshow running in the Vista sidebar gadget on two PCs and I also have the slideshow running on my HD-200s when the screensaver kicks in so that is possibly why conflicts could occur as I am not normally accessing my photos share for editing or any other tasks.

[something fishy]

Do you remember what "issues" you had to sort out?

Just the uncertainty of doing something new and AFAIK unsupported by WHS. I knew that the port multiplier should from its specs have been invisible to the OS but I wasn't quite sure that in practice it wuld be (it is).
Also I let the array rebuild without the pool attached for the same reason. however this has the side benefit that it rebuilds much faster (on a live system the rebuild seems to take about 3 hours, without the pool one hour).

I thought that I would have to set the switch to SAFE (Raid 1) mode. Could you clarify the above step a bit further for me?

I recommended this step so that each step only makes one change - it just makes problem diagnosis simpler. This step just ensures that the port multiplier is
a) Working (as is the cabling)
b) The system still boots
c) If the Steelvine software can't see the portmultiplier (in its most basic mode) it's a sata port issue not anything else
Once we've got these guaranteed then we can go onto the next step.

To be honest (I've been building PCs for years) I would probably do everything in one step myself. But then I've also spent many hours trying to work out which of the five changes I just made to my system broke it. For anyone else I can't recommend anythign but a pedantic one step at a time approach - hardware and software incompatibilities still exist.

@wayner
Mine were some MP3 files and both (canon) .raw and (nikon) .nef files. But I was getting i/o errors on one consistent physical disk in the event viewer. That was the only real symptom it might be hardware released (often event viewer would log an i/o error with no consequences). It drove me up the wall however...

Eric

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by something fishy

Just the uncertainty of doing something new and AFAIK unsupported by WHS. I knew that the port multiplier should from its specs have been invisible to the OS but I wasn't quite sure that in practice it wuld be (it is).
Also I let the array rebuild without the pool attached for the same reason. however this has the side benefit that it rebuilds much faster (on a live system the rebuild seems to take about 3 hours, without the pool one hour).

I recommended this step so that each step only makes one change - it just makes problem diagnosis simpler. This step just ensures that the port multiplier is
a) Working (as is the cabling)
b) The system still boots
c) If the Steelvine software can't see the portmultiplier (in its most basic mode) it's a sata port issue not anything else
Once we've got these guaranteed then we can go onto the next step.

To be honest (I've been building PCs for years) I would probably do everything in one step myself. But then I've also spent many hours trying to work out which of the five changes I just made to my system broke it. For anyone else I can't recommend anythign but a pedantic one step at a time approach - hardware and software incompatibilities still exist.

Eric

Eric,
Thanks for all of the help. I'm not sure when I will get the port multiplier but hopefully before the weekend. I think I'm ready to give it a go.

Thanks,
Chuck

[S_M_E]

I've tried HW RAID on the system drive and the pool during the betas with poor results. If you experience issues, look at that as a possible reason.

Personally I wouldn't worry about the system drive.

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I've tried HW RAID on the system drive and the pool during the betas with poor results. If you experience issues, look at that as a possible reason.

Personally I wouldn't worry about the system drive.

This plan would only be on the system drive, not the pooled drives. What issues did you have?

The reason I'm worried about the system drive is that I host a php website which, to best of my knowledge, can't be ran on the shared drives. So, if my system drive when down, I would have to reinstall mySQL, php, and setup my website again. It wasn't the simplest thing for me to do the first time and I'm not sure how quick I would have that back up and running. It appears that Raid 1 should work on the system drive without issues. However, if you had some I would like to know the potential issues.

Thanks,
Chuck

[S_M_E]

On the system drive, I had nagging critical drive health warnings that would go away with a "repair" then come back later and spontaneous server reboots (not good for various reasons) that went away when I rebuilt without RAID. I also tried AHCI drivers, without RAID, which had similar issues and the the easiest and most stable was just setting the BIOS to see the drives in IDE mode. I tried RAID5, RAID0 and RAID1.

I'm not sure that the website and database couldn't be ran from a share (maybe not) but I'm relatively sure that you have a tool to backup your database and website regularly and that would make a re-install somewhat quicker. I fully understand the desire and reasoning for RAID on the system drive but if you read the WHS forums you'll see that it's frowned upon by most and clearly unsupported.

That said, a few people have had good luck with HW/SW RAID but I certainly wouldn't use it, especially on the system drive. Unsupported doesn't mean much to me though. Most, if not all, of my WHS tutorials are unsupported but they were tested and are stable. RAID may not be.

YMMV...

[psklenar]

S_M_E,

The key point of Eric & Chuck's RAID is that it's 100% hardware. Not even the mobo BIOS can tell it's not a single drive. That's a very good thing.

pat----