? about running SageTV on WHS

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by 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...

S_M_E,
Thanks for the info. I'm still going to try this setup out. If it doesn't work then I will have more drives for the pool.
Chuck

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by 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----

pat,
Thanks for pointing that out. That is the very reason I think this will work. At least I hope it works for me

Chuck

[Peter_h]

Originally Posted by 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...

I know we have had this discussion before but were you by chance using an intel matrix raid driver? What were the errors you were getting? Iastor timeout by chance?

As I am finding out, this is a VERY common issue. It actually affects WHS, vista, and xp installs.

some light reading.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23...ista-raid-woes
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/...s--iastor.aspx

Intel announcement
http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-025783.htm

Just an FYI.

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by Peter_h

I know we have had this discussion before but were you by chance using an intel matrix raid driver? What were the errors you were getting? Iastor timeout by chance?

As I am finding out, this is a VERY common issue. It actually affects WHS, vista, and xp installs.

some light reading.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/23...ista-raid-woes
http://www.eggheadcafe.com/software/...s--iastor.aspx

Intel announcement
http://www.intel.com/support/chipset.../CS-025783.htm

Just an FYI.

No, I've tried it with hipoint, promise and adaptech controllers but I gave up on RAID before I got my Abit AB9-Pro which does use the intel matrix. RAID lived happily on XP, Vista, win2k and win2k3 on the old HW so it's not the same issue.

I don't remember the exact error, it was almost 2 years ago now. What I do know is that my problems went away after getting rid of RAID and that I tried both the system drive and pooled drives. As I said, there are a few people that seem to have had good luck with RAID on WHS, my experience was different and a lot of people on the WHS forums confirmed that WHS doesn't like RAID, in general. If you or others have good luck with it, great! I'd personally avoid it on WHS.

Originally Posted by crarbo1

pat,
Thanks for pointing that out. That is the very reason I think this will work. At least I hope it works for me

Chuck

That very well might make a difference. Some people reported good luck with flexraid on pooled drives too.

YMMV...

[something fishy]

FWIW I only use the port multiplier to provide some redundancy on the system drive. In theory it wouldn't take that long to reinstall everything but
- It would still take some time especially as I have xmltv grabbers etc to configure alongside Sage.
- For some reason I don't trust WHS's claim that a reinstall will recognise the pool. (it didn't when I upgraded from the WHS beta and I'm sure it should have)
- *Any* downtime on SageTV kills WAF especially as with all cable boxes centralised near the server theres no way to watch TV at all in my house without Sage.

With the dodgy HDD I mentioned removed the system seems solid and theres never been anything that I could attribute to the port multiplier. WHS does seem to think that its a single drive.

I don't use any raid for the pool (or the Sage recording drives which are outside the pool). These are just on the Mainboard sata controllers and cheapo sata cards (Sil and Marvell chips) as individual drives.

[S_M_E]

There are certain conditions to get the "server reinstall" option. Most of the time it's not a problem but you're not the only one that didn't get that option when they tried. If you DO get the option then the pooled data is safe. The old reasons to keep Sage recording drives out of the pool are now obsolete too.

I'm glad that the multiplier is working for you though. If it remains stable you may want to post a tutorial about it on the WHS forums.

[crarbo1]

Just wanted to update everyone on my try at this.

I just got the port multiplier today and wanted to get right to this so I took a half day off from work to get started

I followed the directions that I stated previously and ultimatly had success but did have some things crop up.

I was able to boot up just my original WHS system drive on the port multiplier using SATA port 1 based on the instructions but once I loaded up the utility it said my hard drive was "Drive #1" not "Drive #0". I had the switch set to GUI and tried to select "SAFE" mode or Raid1 but it said it couldn't do that for "Drive #1". So, I powered down, swapped out my sata cable to correspond with the SATA port 2 from the instructions and rebooted fine. Then it showed up as "Drive #0" and allowed me to select "SAFE" mode. I then shut down my WHS and hooked up the new drive. I booted back up and it said the drive was unconnected. To make a long story short, my drive was bad. Fortunatly, I ordered 2 drives so I would have one spare already. Good thing I did. I put the other drive in and it recognized it and started to "mirror" the origninal WHS system drive. It took about 3 hours for mine to complete but mine was on a 500 GB drive so I figured it would take longer. I then shut down and added the pool drives back in. It did get everything sorted out after a while.

I do have one complaint about it though. The WHS Disk Management add in does not give me the temperature for either drives. I figured it would give me for one but it doesn't give me any. It does show me the drive activity though, so I would have thought the temps would have worked. Oh well.

I have another question though. Can I use the utility on my desktop PC to access the WHS to monitor the status of the array?

Thanks,
Chuck

[S_M_E]

I have a few questions:

1) Did you convert/format your D partition to 64K clusters?

2) If so, did the backup/mirrored drive duplicate that cluster size or is one drive different than the other?

3) How much do those multipliers cost again?

4) Have you tested simulated hdd failures by unplugging the SATA cable from the either drive while running?

I'm still not completely sold, especially since you report that it doesn't give drive tempatures but I can certainly see a potential benefit too. I also want to see how stable they are more long term...

[psklenar]

Originally Posted by crarbo1

Just wanted to update everyone on my try at this.

I just got the port multiplier today and wanted to get right to this so I took a half day off from work to get started

I followed the directions that I stated previously and ultimatly had success but did have some things crop up. ...

Chuck,

Thank you VERY much for the update! I should be receiving my port multiplier Thursday (according to FedEx tracking). I still need to order a 2nd drive for mirroring the system, so I don't expect to be ready to do this this weekend, but ... I AM going to do it.

S_M_E,

$49.95

Regarding the drive temp, since the mobo only sees one "drive", which temp should Disk Management show? Heck, which temp should the multiplier pass on to the mobo?

I wonder if the SteelVine Manager s/w displays the individual drive temps & health?

pat----

[S_M_E]

Pat,

You have formatted you D partition to 64K, right? I'd still be interested in finding out the answer to my second question once you install your multiplier, if Chuck didn't convert his to 64K before he installed his multiplier that is.

I guess I should have scrolled down more for the price when I looked at that link.

As far as drive temps go, I'd be happy if the multiplier only passed the main drive (drive0) temp but maybe the util still passes the temps. All in all, WHS would only be missing the temp of the system drive, which might be acceptable. I'd still like to see more than a few hours of testing though. I'd also like to see drive benchmarks before and after the multiplier.

[psklenar]

S_M_E,

No, I didn't change the block size on the "D" portion of the System Drive, just the three 1TB Pool drives are formatted with 64K blocks.

pat----

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I have a few questions:

1) Did you convert/format your D partition to 64K clusters?

2) If so, did the backup/mirrored drive duplicate that cluster size or is one drive different than the other?

I did not format the D partition to 64K clusters, just the pool drives. Sorry I can't help you out on that one.

Originally Posted by S_M_E

3) How much do those multipliers cost again?

Thanks pat for sending him that link. That is the place I ordered if from.

Originally Posted by S_M_E

4) Have you tested simulated hdd failures by unplugging the SATA cable from the either drive while running?

I did try that out while watching a movie from SageTV. I did not see any issue at all with the movie.

Originally Posted by S_M_E

I'm still not completely sold, especially since you report that it doesn't give drive tempatures but I can certainly see a potential benefit too. I also want to see how stable they are more long term...

I was a bummed about not seeing the drive temps. Unfortunatly, the utility does not show them either. I was really hope the utility would at least do that but I think I can get a gauge from the other drives though. I'm not sure how much testing I will do but hopefully it will last and not give me any issue.

Chuck

[S_M_E]

Well, that only leaves the question regarding the 64K clusters and read/write performance benchmarking as unknown. I recently updated the 64K tutorial after I "converted" (nondestructive) my D partition to 64K too. Since the multiplier shares a port with both drives, I'd imagine performance is decreased which is the main reason for 64K clusters in the first place. It almost seems to be self-defeating in that context. A drive benchmark would tell for sure.

It is a shame the utility doesn't report temps either though. I doubt it works on remote OS either so you'd have to remote in to the WHS to see array status too, I'm guessing. Maybe the next revision will be better. I still think I'll wait a while...

[psklenar]

Originally Posted by S_M_E

Well, that only leaves the question regarding the 64K clusters and read/write performance benchmarking as unknown. I recently updated the 64K tutorial after I "converted" (nondestructive) my D partition to 64K too. Since the multiplier shares a port with both drives, I'd imagine performance is decreased which is the main reason for 64K clusters in the first place. ...

But with chip level mirroring, there "shouldn't" be any performance hit. But ... I've been a DBA working in the midrange enviroment for enough years that I do know that what "should" and "shouldn't" be ... often aren't as expected. <shrug>

But in as much as the "D" drive is no longer the landing zone for everything going to the pool, I'm not all that concerned about the block size there, nor about a miniscule performance hit if I can gain the redundancy to keep my system up and running after a single spindle failure. It's all a matter of perspective.

pat----

[S_M_E]

Originally Posted by psklenar

But with chip level mirroring, there "shouldn't" be any performance hit. But ... I've been a DBA working in the midrange enviroment for enough years that I do know that what "should" and "shouldn't" be ... often aren't as expected. <shrug>

Exactly...

But in as much as the "D" drive is no longer the landing zone for everything going to the pool, I'm not all that concerned about the block size there, nor about a miniscule performance hit if I can gain the redundancy to keep my system up and running after a single spindle failure. It's all a matter of perspective.

Except since it's not a landing zone, WHS is more willing to store data on D. If it's a movie and you're trying to watch it from D or if it's recording to D then you want 64K clusters there too. I've noticed that many people let the pool get too full, which puts files on D and sometimes they stay on D after another drive is added. Converting D to 64K is like performance insurance, just in case Sage files end up there and the performance hit might be nothing or it might be significant. I'm leaning towards minor to none, in theory, but a benchmark would tell us for sure.

[crarbo1]

Tried another experiment for the mirroring. Since it takes about 3 hours to rebuild the array I only did one last night.

Tonight I had my WHS recording 4 analog shows via my PVR-500's, 2 clear QAM show via my HDHomerun and playing a ripped movie that is on the WHS. I then disconnected the sata cable that was hooked to my original system disc while the movie was playing back. Again, no percieved issues at all. I reconnected and it is now being rebuilt again. The recorded shows played fine too.

So, I think that would be the maximum that I would be doing at one time on my WHS and it held up without a hitch. I'm pretty happy about it. Hopefully it will never come to that but at least I know I'm ok if it does.

Thanks to something fishy for posting this possiblity here on this thread.

Later,
Chuck

[S_M_E]

That is encouraging; it's great that it handles the drive failures. Hopefully we'll get a before/after benchmark soon and somebody to test the 64K cluster question eventually.

[psklenar]

Chuck,

That's very good. Thank you very much for testing things!

Tracking shows my Port Multiplier should arrive tomorrow and I ordered a drive from NewEgg this morning and just gotr tracking for it and ... it should be here tomorrow too!

pat----

[crarbo1]

Originally Posted by psklenar

Chuck,

That's very good. Thank you very much for testing things!

Tracking shows my Port Multiplier should arrive tomorrow and I ordered a drive from NewEgg this morning and just gotr tracking for it and ... it should be here tomorrow too!

pat----

pat,
I hope you get your Port Multiplier tomorrow. Mine arrived a few days later than what the tracking info said it should have but I knew that it would be late based on where they said it was, so I was expecting it. I hope everthing goes smooth with your install.

This appears to work very well with my limited testing. I don't think I'm planning on any more testing.

Chuck

[psklenar]

Chuck,

Both the drive and the PM arrived today. Had to head over to the hospital to visit a friend - 93yo, fell yesterday, unknown why, lots of bruises, very sore, but no, apparently, real damage done. Still doing tests and observing (after all, WHY did he fall?), but so far ... the news is good. I have a lot being recored tomorrow night. I hope <fingers crossed> to be able to add the PM and drive over the weekend.

pat----