#1 STUNNA

Apparently there's a way around getting server 2012 to not be in a domain. My boss was complaining to me about it a while ago but said he figured it out. I'll ask him what it is.

Mike an issue you might be having is that you're using consumer drives and if their not properly isolated from each other they maybe failing due to excessive vibration caused by having a bunch of drives together. I too have drives failing prematurely and believe this to be my issue.

The WD Red NAS drives are supposed to remedy this.
https://acurazine.com/forums/technology-16/western-digital-red-review-nas-optimized-hdds-worth-premium-866517/


ReFS + Storage Spaces is supposed to replace drive extender. Also ReFS r/w support is added in windows 8.1 consumer

svtmike

This web site has a few articles on it but is frustratingly lacking in depth: http://winsupersite.com/

I think that's exactly the issue I'm having. The Seagate Constellation drives I ordered are part of their "Value Enterprise" line -- a little slower on performance than the typical enterprise drive but rated for 24/7 server duty.

Yes, but it has some significant limitations relative to what we all love about Drive Extender because it is block-level resilience vs. file-level. The Stablebit product I mentioned above provides file-level resilience, but I'm a bit leery of using a product from such a small company for something so fundamental and critical.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...when-it-works/

I think for maximum flexibility, I would either set it up using parity and commit to using a particular size drive (Seagate has a 4TB drive now in their NAS disk product line) or set up a mirrored pair and commit to only adding drives in equally sized pairs. I could conceivably get 6 4TB drives into a small server in something like a Lian Li PC-Q18 case, and that should do me for the foreseeable future.

#1 STUNNA

This doesn't work?

http://winsupersite.com/article/wind...-domain-144329

I guess that's only for client PCs and not the server itself. I've emailed my boss he'll probably respond in the morning...

svtmike

I haven't tried it.... need to have an extra computer (ideally, two -- a test client would be best) and download an eval version of 2012 Essentials and mess around with it.

Or wait and keep running on the server that I already have.

#1 STUNNA

Run it in a VM?
http://www.neowin.net/news/windows-s...eview-released

svtmike

On my P4 WHS?

Not all of us are IT nerds with extra computers just sitting around the house. If I'm going to set up a new server to replace the WHS, I'm just going to do my research, buy the machine and start playing.

#1 STUNNA

Windows 8 Pro comes with Hyper-v built in

doopstr

Why not get a Synology NAS? Low power usage, quiet, keep it on all the time. Runs Linux Kernel. Not very expensive. Lots of features. Very little involved in managing it and the web gui is very nice.

svtmike

It does look nice, but...

I want server-configured automatic backup, not client-configured. And my experience with NAS is that it's slowwwwww compared to a server machine.

It's also more expensive.

svtmike

It also comes with Windows 8 built in. No thanks.

doopstr

Synology does support server side backup via USB attached hard drive. NOTE: that the pics shown are from a very old version of the GUI.
http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index...ynology_Server

There are also apps that allow for offsite storage using services such as Amazon.

I'll give you that the lower end NAS are slower than your typical Windows Server.

svtmike

You missed my meaning. With a MS server solution, all I have to do is install the connector software on the PCs and then I can manage the backups centrally from the server without having to log on to any of the other machines. It will wake the computers up at night, do its thing and put them back to sleep.

Synology appears to use a solution that requires the backup to be configured and managed on the client PCs.

doopstr

Ah, got it.

Are you going to build your own hardware? Have you looked at HP Micro Server?

svtmike

I'm going to roll my own.

Looking at this:

Lian-Li PC-Q18B Case
Asus P8H77-I Mini ITX Motherboard
Intel Core i3-3220 processor
8GB memory
600W PSU (yes, it's overkill)
Start with 2 x 3TB Seagate Constellation drives for Storage Spaces, mirrored.

I have a 256GB SSD lying around for the boot/system disk.

I believe I could add a second pair of mirrored drives for resilient storage.

For my home network needs, I think a fifth non-mirrored drive to store PC backups would be OK.

I haven't sold myself completely that a box this small is the right solution though.

alex2364

And the problem with that is...?? You do realize Sever 2012 is based on Win 8, including the whole tile interface.

Ken1997TL

The tile interface is EASILY removed, for free even.

svtmike

Yes I do. It also sits in the background, so UI changes and application compatibility are not concerns. But thanks for asking. I have no desire to buy an OS upgrade for a Win7 machine that runs like a top to run a virtual server on that machine that isn't even my server.

svtmike

So I installed the disks and my controllers (Silicon Image 3124-based) don't play well with them at all. I think it's time to cut bait on this ancient machine -- I don't feel like throwing money at a different controller to see if the chipset is the problem.

Windows 2012 Server Essentials here we go...

svtmike

Well that was fun.

Here's the core of the system:

SuperMicro X9SCM-F-O motherboard
16GB DDR3 ECC RAM
Xeon E3-1230 processor
4 x 2TB Seagate Constellation disks set up in a mirrored Storage Space.

Installation was straight-forward, but I have a bad LAN jack in the wall that caused the installation to bomb right at the end with an "unexpected error". I had the IPMI port on the board plugged into a good one, and apparently the other was bad.

I knew that the server was going to be a domain controller, but not being a server guy I wasn't aware that it also would become my DNS. When I got everything up and running the network performance was bad because my router didn't expect the DNS to be on the LAN, so attempts to get to the server through the LAN had to be by IP address instead of name. Web pages would sometimes load, sometimes not, and HTTP requests were serviced incredibly slowly.

Where I ended up was setting up the server to provide DNS and DHCP to my home network, and using my router as the first DNS forwarder for the server. The router then has my ISP's DNS's configured and will relay requests to them, and then after that the server hits up Google's public DNS.

Refreshed DHCP leases of every device in the house and it's running like a top. If the server ever fails, as a stop-gap I can turn the DHCP in the router back on.

Next was getting computers to all back up. Mine went fine -- converted to a domain computer and backup works great. My son's went fine too, but my wife's laptop would bomb. Ended up running a chkdsk /r last night on her hard drive and was able to successfully back it up.

The server alerted me to a couple of security issues on my son's computer that were probably residuals from a virus infection. Fixed those and the dashboard reports no alerts on my network.

Next up is setting up a backup disk for the server. I just need to back up the 256GB SSD that the OS is on, so I think a 1TB 2.5" drive should be plenty for that.

Overall, not nearly as effortless as setting up Windows Home Server. But once I got it all working, very nice indeed.

More to come.

#1 STUNNA

So how does the IPMI work? I've used Dell DRAC (Their version of IPMI) and was pretty impressed, it's an expensive add-on for a dell server so nice to see this capability in a $200 board.

svtmike

Works pretty well. The only snag I ran into was that SuperMicro's IPMI tool needs to be run with elevated permissions in Windows 7 (at least on my system that's the case), and that was undocumented and not configured by the installation program.

In addition to other things, it provides a KVM virtualization so you can see the boot screen, get into any BIOS, see the OS boot sequence, etc. in a window on another computer. In theory, you don't need to ever connect a monitor or keyboard/mouse to the server using IPMI as long as the server is on a functioning network. You can also virtually operate the chassis power switches and check things like fan and temp sensors, all out of band.

While my router was providing DHCP, I could get to both IPMI and the server over a single LAN port (2 different IP addresses). When I made the server responsible for DHCP, I can no longer find the IPMI port through the single LAN port on the server. Need to look into it more.

I assume that if I plug the dedicated IPMI port into a functioning LAN jack (still need to fix that) that the server would then give it an address, but... when the server is down it won't be able to give one so it's kind of a catch-22 without a DHCP failover.

svtmike

One of the things I want to do with my new server is use it as the host for iTunes Home Sharing for my Apple TVs and iPads. Right now, my client computer is doing that and I get complaints if I shut it down when I'm out of town, or forget to launch iTunes in it.

I installed iTunes and an add-in call iHomeServer. iHomeServer launches iTunes when the server boots, monitors designated folders for new media and automatically adds the new media to iTunes on the server.

iHomeServer is the bomb. Drop a movie file into the watch folder, and it's added to iTunes quickly and served up to the Apple devices. Sweet. You can also configure it so that if you remove a file from a watch folder, it will be deleted from iTunes. On the server dashboard, it has its own tab that you can use to browse the contents of the watch folders, the iTunes library, see if iTunes is running, and start/stop iTunes.

Well worth the $30.

svtmike

Here's a nice overview of the IPMI tool and feature on the Supermicro board:

http://www.servethehome.com/supermic...0-kvm-over-ip/

#1 STUNNA

This is what I'm talking about.

Actually a few days ago I was tipped off on this feature on how to start an exe as a service. used to be an easy thing to do in Server 2003 by using a couple programs from the Windows Resource Kit and entries in the registry.

Since Server 2008 that stopped working and you had to use the "SC create" command to run an exe however that doesn't work well for programs that weren't designed to run as a service like iTunes. Though I found a workaround you take the exe from the 2003 resource kit that created a service and then used the SC create CMD to run that Exe and then told that exe to run itunes. A lot of people were reporting success with that. I haven't tried it and don't know if it still works in Server 2012 since that was a workaround for Server 2008.

Here's what I'm talking about 1/4 of the way down the page. The result with 21 upvotes.
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...ws-server-2008

There's a couple programs for a client that I'd like to start automatically when windows starts, so I may try this.

I wonder if something as simple as a scheduled task to start iTunes when Windows starts would work?

svtmike

I don't know if it would work or not -- seems plausible that it would, but it certainly wouldn't deliver the entire feature set of iHomeServer. I really like not having to mess with iTunes to add/remove media.

#1 STUNNA

While were on the subject of iTunes and ReFS. I'm running 8.1 beta which has ReFS Read/Write support like Server 2012 and I added my media drive to it, installed iTunes and tried to drag and drop my movie collection into the iTunes window to add it to the library and it won't add the files. I didn't have this issue on 2008 R2 running the older version of iTunes, and I don't think I had this issue with server 2012 when I had it running for a short while (been to long to say for sure).

Have you had any issues manually adding files to the iTunes library via drag and drop from an ReFS drive?

#1 STUNNA

Also where did you pick up a copy of Server 2012 essentials?

svtmike

None that I know of! All of my clients are Win7, so the only ReFS drives I have are in the server.

Newegg. I got the OEM version. It wasn't cheap ($435), but I look at it as a 10 year solution.

svtmike

A little more --

Compared to WHS, restoring files from backup is much faster and more streamlined. Point to the backup to restore from, navigate to the files, folders, and restore. Windows prompts if you want to replace (for a file that still exists) or over-write.

Much faster than WHS, which mounted the backup as a Volume on the client computer (which could take a lot of time), and then required you to navigate and do the copying yourself.

I still have to test the system restore. Luckily I have an old laptop lying around that I can use for that.

svtmike

45 day or so update:

Overall, I love it. I put in one additional add-in to monitor the SMART attributes of my hard drives. The only annoyance is that the drives that wouldn't work with my original WHS have some end-to-end errors in their SMART logs that of course won't go away, so the add-in alerts me when I boot the system.

I also have it running WSUS to gather upgrades from Mickeysoft and distribute them to my PCs. Works great because I no longer have to bug my family to install updates or go to their clients and do it myself.

Backups are reliable and restore works fine.

Remote access is also terrific. I can RDP to any of my Win7 Pro clients and get to my files easily away from home.

The Mac connector stuff is next to useless. I don't know why they bothered.

My only real gripe right now is I can't install the Hyper-V role so that my son can have a Minecraft server running on it.

It sits in the background and runs everything really well. My network feels snappier since the DNS is local on the LAN and it doesn't raise unnecessary alerts so it's pretty much in set-it-and-forget-it mode right now.