WHS?

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

The problem I always have with RAID1 is that you're never guaranteed to be able to retrieve the data once the RAID controller fails. While an identical or similar controller should theoretically be able to recognize your array, I've had issues with this at least 4 times over the past 10 years. Also, you can't simply remove a drive from the array, plug it into another computer, and access your data. This could be critical if the computer itself is inaccessible due to hardware failure, but the drives are not.

I've lost far too many hours (sometimes weeks) trying to recover data from a RAID1 array that I will never again utilize it.

That's another plus for WHS. Even if the computer died every one of those drives from the pool can be installed/attached to another PC and all of the files can be copied off. No fancy retrieval required.

Gerry

[stevech]

I prefer not to use shadow copy for BIG video files. I'm fine with it for others.

I don't get how WHS protects from drive failure without software shadow copy on EVERY file and file system and directory (as in RAID1). How is this done?

Yes, RAID1 isn't controller agnostic as I understand. But I don't know of another practical way to protect from drive failure for my 100 or so big video files where most of those files are deleted within days and new ones rotate in.

My smaller non-video files are well backed up with SecondCopy and/or TruImage and/or Drive cloning.

[Djc208]

Originally Posted by stevech

I don't get how WHS protects from drive failure without software shadow copy on EVERY file and file system and directory (as in RAID1). How is this done?

It doesn't. The WHS file protection is defined on a folder-by-folder basis. So for instance I have my Pictures folder, my Public folder, and a few other custom shared folders set as protected. WHS keeps a duplicate of these folders on a second HDD in the pool in case one fails. Folders not set up this way are not protected and could dissapear if they are on the drive that fails.

I think the point gplasky was making is that he doesn't protect these recording files. I don't either, if I loose some recordings due to a drive failure it's not a huge deal for me. Before I went with WHS I used RAID 1 for security, but only on the system and shared files drive. My recording drives were not protected.

My only problem with WHS is that there's no built-in way to protect your system drive and the Sage files on it. There are add-on solutions for this but by default I can't have WHS keep a duplicate of my wiz.bin file.

[stevech]

I did that for a long time - no backup of big MPEG recordings. Then I got to thinking about the WAF impact would be of a drive failure. That, and when 500GB disks got really cheap, is when I put RAID1 in for the MPEG files. And tossed in a small partition on the same drive-pair for booting Windows XP.

A few really important MPEG files (traditional holiday shows, key birthday parties, etc) are copied to a USB drive, but these are few.

So that's why I wonder why WHS is a good thing for Sage. I suppose (?) WHS could use an external eSATA RAID box. But this costs a lot more than just RAID1 inside the PC with motherboard RAID. And it's another box/fan/power supply to impact the overall MTBF (failure rate).

[Skirge01]

I would use something like FlexRAID, WHS' built-in duplication, or an alternative backup solution, such as Cobian Backup, in order to back up just the critical recordings to another drive which isn't part of the WHS drive pool. All three of these solutions require no additional hardware (beyond the drive) and the data would be fully accessible via any computer using the latter two solutions.

[HuMan321]

Originally Posted by robogeek

I think one of the best features of WHS is the storage pool. In a non-WHS machine you would be dealing with RAID to get similar functionality with large storage spaces and redundancy otherwise you would be dealing with many hard drives with many drive letters. With WHS storage pool, all of your drives (or the ones you assign to the pool) are combined into one large pool. You get away from drive letters and use shared folders instead. WHS tracks the folders, what files belong to which folders, and what hard drive those files are actually located on. You simply deal with the folders and files and WHS takes care of the grizzly details. You can have RAID-like redundancy, but at the folder level instead of at the drive level. What's even better is that you can grow your pool by removing your smaller drives and replacing them with larger ones and you don't have to worry about having same size hard drives like you would with a true RAID array. WHS just makes network storage access, management, and expansion very easy.

And as mentioned, each PC (well, up to 10) on your network can be backed up to the WHS machine. Daily, weekly, and monthly backups can be available for each machine on your network. Unlike other backup software, WHS maintains a database of files so when certain files are the same on several machines, only one copy of that file is maintained on the WHS server instead of wasting space by keep all of those additional copies. It's just a smarter more efficient way to backup multiple PCs to a central server. And a simple restore CD can be burned from the WHS machine that will allow you to restore one of those backups if you ever need to restore a machine due to a nasty virus or hard drive failure.

And it's pretty stable too. The last time I rebooted my WHS SageTV server was for Windows Updates. That was 40 days ago

Once WHS does the initial backup does it only look for incremental changes after that to keep network traffic low?

Also, say you had a large folder on another PC you wanted to backup (350GB) Could you throw that 350GB onto an external drive and copy it to the WHS thereby eliminating the need to send 350GB over the network? It would then only add the incremental changes?

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by HuMan321

Once WHS does the initial backup does it only look for incremental changes after that to keep network traffic low?

Also, say you had a large folder on another PC you wanted to backup (350GB) Could you throw that 350GB onto an external drive and copy it to the WHS thereby eliminating the need to send 350GB over the network? It would then only add the incremental changes?

WHS only backs up files that have changed since the last backup to keep network traffic and backup storage requirements low.

I'm pretty sure you can't copy the 350GB folder to an existing backup on the WHS machine and have it resume backing up from the remote machine for future backups. You would either have to let WHS do it for you over the network or you would have to maintain the backup of that folder yourself by some other means. If you've got gigabit ethernet, just let WHS back it up over the network...the initial backups may take a long time, but future backups will go much quicker.

[davephan]

Has anyone ever tried taking a disk image of the C drive (boot) and D drive (tombstones) with an imaging product like Ghost, Acronis, PING, etc that can create an image from a boot CD, outside of the WHS operating system?

The imaging process might work, but I don't know if the recovery would work because you would restore the C and D drives, but the pool would be different, and maybe the WHS operating system wouldn't be able to function after the recovery.

There should be some easy way to recover the WHS system (if it fails), since it is needed to recover other systems.

Dave

[gplasky]

You can't image D: because of the tombstones. Anytime a file is copied a tombstone is created. The minute a file is copied to the pool the image is out of sync. If you ever restored it without the tombstones you cannot reach those files through the pool share. Also the backup database changes every night a backup is done. Imaging th C: partition shouldn't be an issue. I just haven't gotten around to testing it. As long as your imaging software boots to an OS and then creates the image, being on a server OS shouldn't matter.

Gerry

[stevech]

WHS sounds like it was hard-coded for the family of 4 to use to manage 3 family PCs and their photo collection and homework.

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by stevech

WHS sounds like it was hard-coded for the family of 4 to use to manage 3 family PCs and their photo collection and homework.

It's not quite that limited, but remember, it is Windows Home Server. It does a great job at sharing and protecting data in its storage pool and backing up upto 10 networked PCs. The one downfall is that it doesn't do much to protect itself from a primary system drive failure. A WHS system drive failure is very recoverable, just a bit of a hassle, which might be a good endorsement for running the WHS system drive from a RAID1 controller.

If easy networked PC backups or the ability to have folder-based (instead of drive-based) redundancy and easy storage expansion aren't critical needs for you, then stick with what you've got. If you already spent money on a NAS, and it provides you with the reliablity, redundancy, and easy storage expansion that you are looking for, then sitck with it. If you want WHS-like redundancy and easy storage expansion with XP/Vista, you're looking at a fairly expensive RAID controller to accomplish that. Without WHS, when I replaced a drive, I had to shutdown to install the new drive and copy the data off the old drive to the new drive, shutdown again to remove the old drive, and then reset the drive letter on the new drive to match the old drive, and reconfigure any network shares that were on the old drive, etc. All that manual work just to swap a drive to increase storage. With WHS storage pool, expansion is insanely easy...open the WHS Console, right click the drive to replace, remove it from the pool, and WHS then moves the data off of the drive and balances that data across the remaining drive(s) in the pool. When it's done clearing the drive, you shutdown once to take the old drive out, and put the new drive in. WHS will see the new drive and give you the option to add the new drive to the pool. Except the part where the machine is shut down to swap drives, in no other part of that process does any of the data in the pool become unavailable and I don't have to worry about moving any files, resetting drive letters, or reconfiguring any shares.

[davephan]

WHS sounds very appealing to replace XP Pro for a SageTV computer except for one problem. I need to be able to recover the SageTV computer back to a point-in-time when the system was working trouble-free with a disk image.

I'm not sure this is possible to do it with WHS. For example, if an image was created of the C and D drives, from an imaging program from a boot disk, the WHS operating system would be shut down during the image creation process.

However, when the system is recovered from the C and D image, using the boot CD, the C & D drives would be at a different point-in-time than the drive 'pool'. Would this cause problems?


Dave

[robogeek]

Originally Posted by davephan

WHS sounds very appealing to replace XP Pro for a SageTV computer except for one problem. I need to be able to recover the SageTV computer back to a point-in-time when the system was working trouble-free with a disk image.

I'm not sure this is possible to do it with WHS. For example, if an image was created of the C and D drives, from an imaging program from a boot disk, the WHS operating system would be shut down during the image creation process.

However, when the system is recovered from the C and D image, using the boot CD, the C & D drives would be at a different point-in-time than the drive 'pool'. Would this cause problems?


Dave

If you use WHS as the headless server it was meant to be, disk imaging shouldn't be necessary. However, and I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong, I believe you may be able image the 20GB C: system partition and restore it if something gets hosed. There still may be some things that might be tracked in the registry that would get out of sync with WHS, but if you didn't make any changes to the hardware or make any configuration changes to the PC backups or pool shares since the last image, I don't think it would be too serious if you were in a bind and really need to revert to a previous image. If common sense and System Restore are used correctly, that would be preferable and should be sufficient for resolving many common issues rather than imaging the whole partition. The D: partition of the main drive shouldn't need to be imaged. And as Gerry pointed out, if the D: partition was imaged, as soon as any data in the storage pool is changed that would make the image out of sync with the data and would result in data loss if the image was restored.

To summarize, imaging the C: partition may allow you to recover if some program, driver, or Windows update causes an issue that makes your WHS machine unstable or unusable and you want to revert to an earlier time. But you can't image the entire primary system drive (C: and D: partitions together) and use that to restore WHS since the D: partition in the image would likely be out of sync with the data in the storage pool and result in data loss. To protect the whole drive from catastophic mechanical or electrical failure you would probably want to use RAID1 for the primary system drive.

A little background on the WHS C:/D: partitions...when you install WHS, it sets up the system drive with two partitions. The first is a 20GB C: OS partition. The second is the D: data partition that takes up the remaining space on the drive. The D: partition is special and is the heart of the WHS Storage Pool. Some of the critical data it holds includes the WHS directory shares, tombstones, and some PC backups. All of the other drives assigned to the pool are managed internally by WHS and aren't supposed to be accessed directly by the end user. WHS works out which pool drive to put files on and the tombstones on the D: partition are basically shortcuts or pointers to where the files are physically located. Each time files are changed, moved, added, or deleted, the tombstones for those files are also updated, created, or deleted.

[davephan]

I think the fact that it is not possible to take images of the system drive on WHS, and recover with those system drive images to a previous point-in-time, makes WHS an unacceptable operating system for SageTV for me. Any changes that break SageTV may not be able to be reversed back to a previous point-in-time, without having to painfully manually re-install everything and try to remember all the customizations and changes.

I think it would be a better solution to install SageTV on a separate Windows XP Pro system and have a WHS system only for video file storage. If there was a problem with SageTV, it could be recovered easily. If there was a problem with WHS, it would be much easier to re-install the operating system.

If I am understanding correctly, if the WHS system drive fails, a re-install of WHS would fix the problem, and the files stored in the 'pool' would not be lost. If very little software is added to the base WHS installation and very few changes are made to the WHS file storage system, then it would be less likely the WHS system would fail from changes. The WHS file storage sever system drive could be covered by RAID 1 to protect it from a hard drive failure.

The only downside to using two servers, XP and WHS as I see it, would be the purchase cost of an extra computer, and the electricity to run the extra computer 24 x 7.

Dave

[gplasky]

If all you're worried about is breaking SageTV then a copy of that directory somewhere else is all you need. robogeek's scripts help in that instance. It takes me less than an hour to install WHS from scratch. I've restored images that took longer than that. I haven't had a WHS system fail. I've had drives fail that were in the pool. I've also replaced the system drive in WHS because I was moving it to a different case and wanted a bigger drive. I've reinstalled WHS, loaded pp and patches, installed tuners and drivers, installed Sage and java and copied the backed up directory over the new install and was done. It's really not that difficult or that time consuming. Not enough to justify running another machine just for Sage. As drivers are updated for tuner cards you end up reinstalling them no matter what OS you are on. To each his own but you don't have to be able to image WHS to justify running it.

Gerry

[HuMan321]

I now have my system swapped over to WHS from XP. Many thanks to those that assisted me along the way.

One question I have is about running this headless. This is something I saw over and over, but now that I am getting a little familiar with it, I wonder how that could be done and also make changes to the system?

If I wanted to backup wiz.bin, Sage.properties, or the entire Sage directory on upgrades how would I do that headless? If I wanted to add comskip or other add ons how would I do that? Sage Property tweaks?

Other than that I really like it. I guess I was expecting it to be more like Log Me In or PC Anywhere when I heard that you used a remote PC to run the headless system.

[Skirge01]

You should be able to use remote desktop to log into WHS. If you built the server yourself and installed WHS, then you can definitely do this. I backup my WHS SageTV directory using Cobian Backup (free).

WHS add-ons are installed through the regular WHS console and can be done from any computer with the WHS console installed. Comskip and other software that actually needs to be installed would require the remote desktop connection. While my WHS box is headless, I remote into it pretty regularly.

[stevech]

My safety net is Acronis TruImage - clone the system drive to another as a hot backup - done every week or two, and Acronis again to do drive imaging.

Never again will I reload Windows and Apps upon drive failure, or a virus infection. Instead, just boot the clone.

WHS Pool seems to me to be simply JBOD, available no matter what OS you use. And JBOD is totally vulnerable to drive failure- so you have to have a disciplined shadow copy procedure - and I assert that shadow copy (software file copy) isn't practical for constantly changing GB files as in video.

[gplasky]

You would turn on folder duplication, not shadow copy. It would make sure whatever folder is duplicated is duped to a different physical drive. That way one drive could fail and you would still have all of them on one or more physical drives. Not the same as JBOD and it's not shadow copy.

Gerry

[davephan]

Originally Posted by stevech

My safety net is Acronis TruImage - clone the system drive to another as a hot backup - done every week or two, and Acronis again to do drive imaging.

Never again will I reload Windows and Apps upon drive failure, or a virus infection. Instead, just boot the clone.

WHS Pool seems to me to be simply JBOD, available no matter what OS you use. And JBOD is totally vulnerable to drive failure- so you have to have a disciplined shadow copy procedure - and I assert that shadow copy (software file copy) isn't practical for constantly changing GB files as in video.

Are you cloning the C & D drives to another drive, and separately imaging the C & D drive with Acronis? Are both methods done with the WHS operating system shut down?

Have you tested a recovery, or had to do a recovery with a failure? If so, did everything work up to the point-in-time of the clone or image? What happened to the video recordings after the recovery? Did WHS 'discover' the files, or did the recorded files exist, but WHS did not know about them. Or, were files recorded after the point-in-time recovery lost?

According to a Microsoft forum, WHS disk imaging or cloning isn't supported and may result in data loss. Here is a link to that forum:
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/e...8-40fc6a0effaa

If the WHS operating system can be recovered successfully from a clone or an image, then WHS would be a viable operating system to install SageTV, where I could have point-in-time recoveries. Otherwise, I would rather use Windows XP Pro, and build up a WHS system just for file storage. It would be a pain to have two systems for SageTV, but the WHS file server could be used to store other computer system backups too.

Dave