Mar 26, 2015 creating a software raid 0 array on windows is really easy, and relatively painless. Windows 7 has arbitrary restrictions on the available raid levels, and it was impossible to create a level 5 raid without windows server. Freenas is a top choice among the users who want to share content across multiple platforms like linux, apple, and windows. This software is intended for preinstallation on a new personal computer for resale. Garrett follows this with some great advice for home server users. It also gave me a more robust tv server configuration for my xbmc clients. Jul 07, 2009 a redundant array of inexpensive disks raid allows high levels of storage reliability. Windows home server 2011 has now arrived, and with it a bevy of new featuresand one key feature of the older version removed. In a raid setup adding, removing, and replacing drives is much more complicated. Heres the rundown of the facts on windows home server, as told to us by microsoft. Rebuild the system is rebuilding the array, and is thus at risk of data loss until the array has completely rebuilt. It is quite different and unique in the whs operating system the whitepaper covers off how the technology works. I noticed that my hp mediasmart has an sis 01821182 raid controller made by silicon integrated systems corp, and also a marvell 61xx marvell raid controller made by marvell inc. Help me choose a mini itx motherboard for a home server.
Comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. Power pack 1 for windows home server was released on 20 july 2008. To receive the latest version installers of the connector software, configure the windows home server to use windows update. Oct 14, 2011 there is one significant gotcha to be aware of if you use raid on an hp microserver running windows home server. Im using snapshot raid on my storage pool for a little redundency. But the real question is whether you should use a hardware raid solution or a software raid solution. At the moment i am thinking of getting two 1tb wd greens and putting them in raid1. This is an important criteria for many home users, since we dont typically have boxes of identical hardware sitting on the shelf to prepare for failure. Windows home server forums view topic hardware raid. What are the advantagesdisadvantages of doing the mirroring using windows vs doing it using the intel rst features. Storage spaces are the latest generation of drive extender, although i think drive extender in whs v1 performed a lot better. For those using a motherboard such as the supermicro x8silf or supermicro x8st3f, with remote iso. It just isnt compatible with the whs management console system. Fortunately, it is easy to build a software raid 5 in windows 8.
But a lot of times i see in disk managment console that disk are beeing resynching. Having replaced the original os with whs 2011 i never even bothered to boot up the original os there are no utilities that might have come with the hp system. Windows home server v1 drive extender daves computer tips. Software raid, particularly of a level that can leave every disk unusable if the controller hiccups, adds another bit of complexity i want to avoid. Software raid on windows server 2003 has always worked fine for me.
A raid can be deployed using both software and hardware. And new products and services will be added as windows home server keeps growing and getting better. Over at the fear the cowboy website, garrett serack explains why windows home server drive extender technology is better than raid5, with his own personal experiences thrown in. Oct 30, 2015 while the intel raid controller blows the software raid out of the water on sequential reads, surprisingly the windows software raid was better in nearly every other respect. Whilst my plans arent anywhere near as ambitious and my hardware pales into insignificance against that shown, i am in the process of at least adding more drives and raid options. How to set up software raid 0 for windows and linux pc gamer. I have just read through all your blogs concerning the big whs. Greens are fine for archiving though in my experience. And of course this shows you the final product and the configuration of your drives as it appears in the disk management window. Today im going to show you on how to setup a software raid as usual. This video tutorial will show you how to install the windows home server connector software without using the cddvd. Software raid 5 whs 2011 windows home server is the only consumer level operating system to offer a software implementation of raid 5.
How does windows server 2003 software raid5 compare to whs. I was wondering if it is possible to use one or both of these to make a hardware raid array on my hp mediasmart. The thing is, microsoft doesnt call it raid in windows 8, opting for storage spaces and storage. This is similar to a raid setup but drive extender had a few cards up its sleeve that made it invaluable for a nas appliance. Within whs, creating a software based raid in fact a mirrored, spanned or stripped array is a very straightforward process. Seeing how whs is based on server 2003, is there a way to disable the jbod setup and enable software raid1 or raid 5 in disk management. I can restore an image of the boot drive to a new drive but whs does not see the part of the drive that is data which is most of the drive. Windows home server 2011 and small business server 2011 rc. The configuration would vary depending on the hardware configuration you have, but whs will use windows builtin software raid to protect drives using either mirroring raid 1 or striping raid 5. Ok, i set up software raid in windows server 2003 and it works fine. Disclaimer disclaimer use of this oem system builder channel software is subject to the terms of the microsoft oem system builder license. I realise that whs has inbuilt backing up an redundancy features but are they sufficient if the hdd fails i assume not. In fact, in some ways its better than hardware raid youre not stuck with a given controller.
But this time, it will not be based on linux or unix operating system. Notice the raid 5 arrays appear as one drive and are invisible to whs 2011. Nov 29, 2010 the idea of drive extender for windows home server is you can have as many hard drives as you want and they all group together into the same pool of storage. A non raid solution would be the best and least complicated. The problem is that whs partitions the boot disk as a boot partition that is 20g or so and then the rest is a data drive that is part of the drive pool. Hps mediasmart servers are basically lowpower pcs running windows home server software from a corner of your house. Im using the software raid 5 and it seems to be working perfectly. If you have windows desktops whs is the better choice. The idea of drive extender for windows home server is you can have as many hard drives as you want and they all group together into the same pool of storage. Installing windows home server connector software without the. Oct 20, 2011 a non raid solution would be the best and least complicated. Personally im looking at using whs as my new software raid platform. Windows home server uses a special technology called drive extender that works in the background to. It is paired with the windows home server consoleclient software accessed from another computer on the network to provide a graphical management interface.
Hardware raid no, that is handled by the raid controller that is either an expansion. Work health and safety compliance management software whs. Im going to go real time raid soon, once i find a little time to play. This in turn makes it possible to support raid 10 raid 0 of multiple raid 1 devices, simply by using the raid 0 and raid 1 functionality together. I tend to recommend sas, re4, blacks, forget it in that order to my clients. Windows 10, 64bit windows server 2016 intel rstcli pro for intel optane memory. The maximum capacity i will see with the big whs is. Units are headless and embedded only you cannot buy whs and put it on an old pc. Downloads for intel rapid storage technology intel rst. The intel rst cli pro utility can be used to perform.
Freenas is a free and opensource application networkattached storage nas system based on freebsd and the openzfs file system. The intel rapid storage technology intel rst driver 17. Raid5, or let windows home server look after redundancy. You can do a software mirror of a boot volume using windows software raid, but it wont clone the bootloader right without a lot of extra work. In a hardware raid setup, the drives connect to a special raid controller inserted in a fast pciexpress pcie slot in a motherboard. The additional levels raid z2 and raid z3 offer double and triple parity protection respectively. Since the software raid works exactly like any other compatible windows os, i can use whs and get the added benefit of the new automated backup system. Power pack 2 was released on 24 march 2009 and power pack 3 was released on 24 november 2009. Software raid no, that is handled by the operating system. Is it really worth considering as an option though. There are known issues with software raid and whs, if you decide to mirror your system partition i strongly encourage you to use a hardware raid solution. Since a linux software raid device is itself a block device, the above implies that you can actually create a raid of other raid devices. Ed tittel takes his apart and shows you how to upgrade and benchmark the.
If youre going to go the software raid route, there are options there as well. As far as i know whs usually comes bundled with hardware that is headless, no display and keyboard etc. Windows home server 2011 and raid 5 windows server. Hi, i just bought a maximus v formula and im running it with the i7 3770k. Want the ability to use different sized drives with parity, so i dont lose data if one drive fails and not be limited to all the drives equal.
Lets start by looking at why whs 2011 is a good fit for your home. Installation of the windows home server connector software. Jun, 2016 comparing hardware raid vs software raid setups deals with how the storage drives in a raid array connect to the motherboard in a server or pc, and the management of those drives. Windows home server 2011 and small business server 2011 using gpt and raid 5 or 6 here is a raid 10 implementation that will look a lot like windows home server v1 in terms of redundancy versus capacity tradeoffs, but will be quite a bit faster.
Installing windows home server connector software without. Whs monitor is a modular, cloudbased work health and safety compliance management software which enables organisations to simply and effectively comply with their work health and safety obligations. Seeing how whs is based on server 2003, is there a way to disable the jbod setup and enable software raid 1 or raid 5 in disk management. The unit comes with a 250gb 7200rpm drive, you should install os to that, then add additional drives that will comprise of your raid5 you will need a minimium of 3 drives for raid5. No, whs is not jbod in that drives are not protected. There are a lot of enhancements, such as the ability to easily stream media and the ease of installing plugins that makes whs far and away the better choice. Windows home server 2011 fails to deliver consumer. In essence a user trades raw capacity of the installed disks for the ability to maintain access to their data after a drive fails. Whs vail aurora and raid systems, when using array types other than raid 0, both use redundancy to store data to protect against data loss. Whs with hp proliant microserver n40l thomas maurer. Certainly with raid 6, hardware raid processors can start to become a bottleneck by the time you get to 812 drives. Features freenas open source storage operating system. Since whs has a redundancy system raid is not really necessary. Hardware raid no, that is handled by the raid controller that is either an expansion card in your server or built in to the motherboard.
Today im going to show how to setup for windows server 2003. May 25, 2011 windows home server 2011 has now arrived, and with it a bevy of new features and one key feature of the older version removed. Raid z, the software raid that is part of zfs, offers single parity redundancy equivalent to raid 5, but without the traditional write hole vulnerability thanks to the copyonwrite architecture of zfs. Boot disk lost, how to recover files from whs 2011 raid1. Whs 2011 resize system partition solutions experts exchange.
Yes, windows server 2003 has a builtin function that almost similar to software raid. In this article you will find how to install the latest version. It seems that no matter if you use a hardware or a software raid controller, you should expect to lose performance when youre duplicating every write, which makes sense. To make optimal use of your whs, you need to install the whs connector software on each of your computers. However, if raid makes you feel good, you can put a standalone raid card. Theres windows outofthebox raid, and in server 2012 and 2012 r2, there are storage spaces. Jun 04, 2010 what programs are there for software raid, kind of like the intel rapid storage solution.
Hacking the hp ex470475 mediasmart servers toms hardware. Whs 2011 partitions the first drive however into 60gbxgb and then the rest of the drives run independently under normal setup. I am unsure how whs goes about its redundancy so any enlightenment would be great. Software raid 5 is quite realiable although not as speedy as hardware raid5 but if its just for backup wont be any issues. While whs 2011 is a polished improvement of windows home server, storage management has become more complicated, storage growth is more complicated, and storage protection will either depend on what is likely to be complicated raid from the oems or else server backup with its limitations. Raid 5 was very easy to set up, and since its software based it does not require any special hardware and is easily migrated to new hardware in case of failure. It is used to improve disk io performance and reliability of your server or workstation. Help me choose a mini itx motherboard for a home server running raid 5. Whs vail aurora raid mean time to recover mttr guide. I also have two 2tb wd greens which are spanned via whs 2011 software raid as a backup set to the 4xwd black 1tb drives and have never exhibited an issue. I currently have a boot drive as the ocx vertex 4 512gb, and two seagate 3tb hard drives that id like to set up as mirrored drives raid 1. Converting an existing single drive to a raid volume is a lot more complicated than setting it up from the outset.
My primary server is an ex475 mss but were i to build a diy whs for production use it would definitely have raid 1 for the system drive and only the system drive just as insurance against the pita of a server recovery. We just need a couple of disks, and we will have the extra security. The question about what the best raid level is for a generic server at home, and whetherwhat raid to use for windows home server are two very different questions. And for just as long, it has been plagued by substandard readwrite performance which is why. May 30, 2017 up until windows 8, software raid in windows was a mess. One of the advantages of software raid though, is that it can make use of the host cpu which may be hugely faster than the cpu found on a hardware raid card.
I came from a linux file server using software raid mdadm and i find this setup to be a little easier on my maintenance tasks. From a software side, the big additions have been microsoft windows server 2008 r2 sp1 and now new windows home server 2011 and windows small business server 2011 essentials virtual machines. The big whs disaster strikes, part ii servethehome. Looking for one that can do drive pooling like whs or the drobo. Monitoring and alerting for your home server via email, twitter, text message, rss, push notifications, and on your mac desktop. But it also has some demerits making it monotonous solution. So if i write data to disk are these data immediately on both discs, or not. Recovering from windows software raid failure web and.
This is a good question as i run raid1 mirrors on both my and my wifes computer and use both types of software raid 1. Also tried it for a short period during the whs beta with no problems. How to setup software raid for windows server 2003. I cant answer all of your questions but i do run whs 2011 on an ex490 which is the same as your ex495 and i also run on ex485s. Software raid is a type of raid implementation that utilizes operating systembased capabilities to construct and deliver raid services. Easily increase the functionality of your windows home server with an addins. Up until windows 8, software raid in windows was a mess. As netbooks, usually without optical drives, flood the market, this is often the easiest way to install the connector software. Are you familiar with windows home server drive extender technology. The obvious advantage of a hardware controller is the performance gain, but if thats not a factor, then the software raid works well too. What programs are there for software raid, kind of like the intel rapid storage solution.