talex

Thanks again - yes the one I want to use the SSD's for has 6 discs in a 2x pool - I only added 1 SSD for cache - guess I can remove it and then add it back in when I get another to add, then re-enable the cache plugin.
 
I used to "hoard" but the wife is kind of sick of all the computer stuff lying around - We had 3 gaming teenagers who upgraded alot over the years - the last just finished college and got his own place so I have a ton of hardware I am still sorting through - much of which makes excellent "home server" hardware - probably have about 6 gaming motherboard with as many Phenom Quad Cores lying around and plenty of DDR2 to go with it... and even more gaming video cards - stacks of those.... those not so good for a server though... it's hard to discard that type of stuff so I understand.

For the VMs, then I think that should be fine.
 
 
 
 
This may be because of the NICs being used.  A lot of modern network hardware has a number of defaults enabled that cause some pretty poor performance. 
 
Features that include "checksum" and "offload" in the name can do this (they offload the processing to the CPU, via the drivers so... yeah).  Also, improperly configured jumbo frames can cause performance hits. 
 
However, if the poor performance is locally, then that's a different issue.
 
As for DrivePool, I'm glad to hear it.  And yeah, it's designed to be simple. And very easily recoverable.
 
 
 
 
Thanks.  And I started with a small system. It's grown, and grown.  
 
Though, I can definitely understand the direction.  I have solar, so electricity is "free" and the savings have already paid for the installation costs. 
 
But yeah, it doesn't take a lot to run Active Directory.  
 
 
As for using 20 bays .... I'm at 23 bays used right now.   As for deleting ... I joke about "dee leet?" with friends. I like to keep pretty much everything, in case i need it.  It's a trait that I "most likely" picked up from my dad (whom was definitely a hoarder). I only hoard data (and working computers/servers), but still.  Though, it's proven to be very useful in a number of cases.
 
But yeah, anything older than Server 2008 is not supported and probably not needed. Besides, Microsoft will still keep them hosted forever, I suspect. 
 
And a very nice setup. Though, if you're keeping the drive stored at home, I'd recommend keeping them in something fire proof/resistant. 
 
 
Yes, I believe so. 
 
If you're using two pools, with no duplication, and you wanted to use SSD Optimizer for both pools, then you need to use two SSDs. Or a SSD partitioned into two volumes. 
 
But if you're using a pool with x2 duplication, then you definitely need two, physical SSDs. 

DrivePool will recognize the drive, regardless of it's location and letter. So relocating the drives shouldn't be an issue at all.
 
As for identifying the drives... well, I have a Norco 4220 as well, and yeah, it can be troublesome.
However, you can mount the disks to folders, which may help:
http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624
Additionally, In StableBit Scanner, you can specify a "Case" and "Bay". This information is actually displayed in DrivePool as well, if both products are installed on the system.
I use this option to label each "rail" (or row) in the box as a case (eg, Rail 1, Rail 2, etc) and then label the bays as 1-4, for each. That makes identification super easy. And you can "group by case" in Scanner, for even easier visual separation.

I'm glad to hear it.
I wasn't sure if you had purchased StableBit Scanner already, so I wanted to make sure you were aware of the option.
And to set that information, you'll need to right click on a disk and select "Disk Settings". There are a number of other things you can set here, but the two options I'm talking about are at the bottom.