WHS 2011 Build, setup reccomendations

[Spike]

I'm going to finally put together a WHS build for backup and media serving. I'm recycling some parts but will be getting some others. What I'm curious about is whats the best setup for the HDD's for backing up everything. I played around with the beta, RC1, and RTM versions of the original WHS but know nothing about the 2011 version. Here is the physical setup:

Antec P180 (have)
Asus E35M1-M Pro (will buy)
G.Skill DDR3 2x2GB DDR3 1600 (have)
Corsair CX 430 (ordered)
2xHitachi 2TB (ordered)
2xSamsung 1.5TB (have)
1xSamsung 1TB or Seagate 500 or Seagate 250GB or Corsair 60GB SSD (have all)

What I'm wondering is what HDD's should I use for the WHS setup? There are only 5 ports on that mobo so I have decisions to make. I have heard it's better to have one smaller drive to backup the server itself so I could use an older 250GB I have just sitting around. Any truth to that?

Also, when setting a backup of a client PC can you set which HDD's you want to save? For example, there are 2 HDD's on my main PC I don't care about backing up and would rather conserve the space. Can I have WHS do that?

Last Q (for now), which HDD is best to install WHS on itself? Should that be a smaller driver? Or one of the larger drivers (like the samsung 1.5TB's that are faster) and then use the rest of the drive for media serving?

The setup will be to backup 3 PC's and 1 laptop as well as serve media files to all 4 and hopefully eventually to a kitchen PC and the tablets.

Thanks!!

 

[Geofram]

What I'm wondering is what HDD's should I use for the WHS setup? There are only 5 ports on that mobo so I have decisions to make. I have heard it's better to have one smaller drive to backup the server itself so I could use an older 250GB I have just sitting around. Any truth to that?

Personally, I use a USB HD to backup my server onto. Or ESATA. Something that's external to the actual box. This makes it easy to grab if you need to run (the house is on fire! Save the server backup!), but more importantly, it doesn't take up one of your limited number of SATA ports in the computer. It also doesn't matter how slow this HD is generally.

Also, when setting a backup of a client PC can you set which HDD's you want to save? For example, there are 2 HDD's on my main PC I don't care about backing up and would rather conserve the space. Can I have WHS do that?

Yes. You can set which HDDs you want to backup and which to ignore, for each client computer.

Last Q (for now), which HDD is best to install WHS on itself? Should that be a smaller driver? Or one of the larger drivers (like the samsung 1.5TB's that are faster) and then use the rest of the drive for media serving?

This is a matter of some debate. I like to keep my files off of the OS drive, because if the drive dies, I'd rather just re-install the OS and not lose any of my data. But it doesn't hurt to have a big drive here and to use it for storage as well. You won't see any negative performance by doing this.

Just remember that on WHS, there's not much reason to have a fast OS HD. The OS does very little. The speed of your other HDDs matters more. If you use an old, slow, HDD to store data on, you'll feel it every time you copy things over or pull them off. My Home Server had some HDDs in it that actually couldn't saturate my gigabit network, which was extremely annoying to me whenever I copied to them. Eventually I replaced them with newer, bigger, faster drives.

That being said, there's no reason to NOT have a fast HD for the OS either. Mine's currently running on one of my older SSD. I store nothing on it but the OS, and I use it basically because I had it, and no better use for it. Makes it reboot fast if I ever need to reboot it. But it's totally not necessary for faster everyday operation of the server.

 

[JackMDS]

You get a 60GB SSD (about 30GB is taken by the OS).

Use temporarily a 160GB or larger drive (minimum installation for WHS2011).

Ghost the installation to the SSD and use the SSD as the OS boot drive.



😎

 

[SunnyD]

You get a 60GB SSD (about 30GB is taken by the OS).

Use temporarily a 160GB or larger drive (minimum installation for WHS2011).

Ghost the installation to the SSD and use the SSD as the OS boot drive.



😎

Possible change in sector size will offset any performance gains you get when ghosting from a HDD to SSD. Gillbot found this out the hard way... system performance went up many-fold after doing a full wipe and reinstall. If you're going to install to a SSD, do it right.

That said, you'll want to install the AMD SATA drivers at setup time, otherwise the install will take forever and a day.

Lastly, it's a server OS ffs. There's absolutely NO reason to run that machine with a SSD. It's not like you'll be rebooting the machine daily let alone monthly. Do yourself a favor and pick up a pair of 4GB sticks of ram. For about $30 you can mitigate just about any reason there is to use a SSD.

 

[JackMDS]

SDD of 160GB is very expensive. I used for the Ghosting a 60GB SSD that I got for $44 after MIR.

The Booting is very fast I.e., the SSD works OK. The aspects that involve the working of the OS are faster too.

Howvever it is the Not the Speed that I care about. It is the the quite cool Drive that does not have moving parts and yields a more stable Server.




😎

 

[deanx0r]

SDD of 160GB is very expensive. I used for the Ghosting a 60GB SSD that I got for $44 after MIR.

The Booting is very fast I.e., the SSD works OK. The aspects that involve the working of the OS are faster too.

Howvever it is the Not the Speed that I care about. It is the the quite cool Drive that does not have moving parts and yields a more stable Server.
😎

I am not sure if it still holds true for WHS 2011, but cloning a system drive for WHSv1 was an extremely tedious task. I installed WHS in a similar way, because WHS wouldn't install on any hard drive smaller than 80GB. Everything boots faster, and I have the piece of mind that the system drive is free of any type of wear and tear or failure. But was it worth the troubles I went through? Nope :/

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6826

 

[JackMDS]

Sorry I used the term Cloning but on a second thought it is Not the right term.

I backed the original Installation that was done on a regular 160GB SATA drive to an External drive using Acronis True Image 2011.

I then Recover the backup to a 60GB SSD. When using this method True Image detects the nature of the new Drive and adjusts the Restore to match the new drive.

Both backup and Restore was done with a Boot CD of Acronis True Image.

I.e., the drives where passive through the process.


😎

 

[LokutusofBorg]

With a simple config file on a USB stick you can install WHS2011 to any drive you want, and not have to put up with the "mandatory" data partition that it tries to create.

Just google for "whs 2011 install small drive" or something similar to get all the details. Very easy.

 

[sep]

how's the server coming along? I build one out of spare parts...curious to see how yours is going with the Asus E35M1-M Pro.

 

[roguerower]

With a simple config file on a USB stick you can install WHS2011 to any drive you want, and not have to put up with the "mandatory" data partition that it tries to create.

Just google for "whs 2011 install small drive" or something similar to get all the details. Very easy.

I put together a system yesterday and tried this for about 8 hours on a OCZ SSD before giving up. I tried everything that I could find and it never worked.

I've tried cloning the installation from my larger drive (WD Green 3TB) to the SSD but keep getting errors. I'm about at the end of line and am most likely going to use a WD Black 1TB drive as my boot drive.

 

[sep]

I put together a system yesterday and tried this for about 8 hours on a OCZ SSD before giving up. I tried everything that I could find and it never worked.

I've tried cloning the installation from my larger drive (WD Green 3TB) to the SSD but keep getting errors. I'm about at the end of line and am most likely going to use a WD Black 1TB drive as my boot drive.

Did you use Acronis True Image?

Can you try to install any Windows on the SSD to validate it's not your hardware or setup?

 

[LokutusofBorg]

I put together a system yesterday and tried this for about 8 hours on a OCZ SSD before giving up. I tried everything that I could find and it never worked.

I've tried cloning the installation from my larger drive (WD Green 3TB) to the SSD but keep getting errors. I'm about at the end of line and am most likely going to use a WD Black 1TB drive as my boot drive.

Are you saying you tried what I explained via cloning? Or via a fresh install?

I hooked up a DVD drive to my server temporarily with the WHS 2011 install ISO, and had the (very simple) config file on a USB stick also attached to the server, and it installed from scratch just fine. I didn't do anything with images.

 

[roguerower]

Fresh install.

First I tried to install it using the WHS 2011 Install CD in a SATA DVD Drive and a flash drive with the cfg.ini file. No dice, even after a dozen+ tries.

Second I downloaded the ISO of the Install CD and put it on a flash drive. Then I took the cfg.ini and put that on the same flash drive. Same thing.

I don't know what the problem was. I did exactly what the guides said and nothing worked. Made the cfg file a bunch of times, no dice.