otispresley

It looks like you are saying that writing to your pool is slow and reading from the pool is fast. Do you get the same results when reading and writing using a non-pooled drive on your WHS? This will help you determine if it is DrivePool or something else. Your network connection is 2-way communication no matter which way your transfers are going, so I would not think it would be a network issue. If you find that the problem is related to DrivePool (ie your speeds both ways on a non-pooled drive are fast), then you may want to check your SMART data for any errors or warnings on any of your drives. If you don't have anything installed to read SMART data, then you can install Scanner or HD Tune on a trial basis and check it. Sometimes a failing disk can cause the system to slow down even if it is not the disk currently being written to. Is this a new install or was it working fine and then this problem just started happening. You may also check Event Viewer to see if anything is logged there.

Hey drashna, The process in post #7 (the new way to enable RDM capability) is done instead of following the link in post #5 (the old way you had to enable RDM before ESXi 5.x). So, the whole guide is literally post #7 plus UnsafeDirectIo for newer ESXi versions. There is no reason not to run a version that supports this since ESXi has the free license available. Thanks and keep up the great work!

Just so everyone knows, I enabled the setting UnsafeDirectIo in Scanner, following this guide: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_Scanner_Advanced_Settings Everything is working as expected. I am now getting SMART data for all my RDM drives. Thanks Codegear!

Thanks! I was not aware of this setting. By the way, you don't have to go through all that for RDM anymore. All you need to do is the following and then any disk (not USB) you plugin in thereafter will be available for RDM: In the ESXi Console window, highlight your server Go to the Configuration tab Under Software, click Advanced Settings Click RdmFilter Uncheck the box for RdmFilter.HbaIsShared Click OK

This site claims $501 for R2 Essentials, but we will see when it is actually released: http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-ups-price-on-windows-server-2012-r2-datacenter-by-28-percent-7000019168/

You are right that Windows Server 2012 Essentials is a good chunk of change! It does have a dashboard, Client Backups, Shared Folder management, and Remote Access, the same as WHS does. In addition to this, it also provides a DNS server, and VPN server for remote connectivity to your network. The downside to 2012 Essentials is the following: It makes your clients join the domain when you install the connector In order to enable remote access, you must install a valid certificate It statically sets all connected client DNS addresses to its IP address File transfer rates to the server are initially quite slow If you are willing to put in some extra time, all of these issues can be worked around as follows: Skip domain joining when installing the connector Create a self-signed certificate and enable Anywhere Access Keep services from setting a static DNS entry for the server Disable SMB signing to speed up file transfer rates Another thing to keep in mind is that Windows 8.1 will likely be released in October and Windows Server 2012 R2 at around the same time. The upgrade from Windows 8 to 8.1 will be free, but I am not sure about the server versions. If price is your biggest obstacle, then Windows 7/8 and a PC backup solution will be cheaper than a server OS. WHS 2011 is not going away any time soon. It is still available for OEM pre-installs until 2025. I think that your choice of OS depends on the features you would like to have versus the ones you must have. I choose Windows Server 2012 Essentials because I want and use pretty much all of its features, except media streaming and VPN. Desktop solutions are always much cheaper, but you may have to spend more money or a lot of time trying to get other features you may want, such as remote access/media streaming, PC backups, centralized user management, VPN, DNS server, etc.

Here is a how-to from the old forums that should probably be migrated as a sticky in the new forums: http://forum.covecube.com/discussion/574/how-to-migrating-from-whs-v1039s-drive-extender

You can get SMART data if you pass the entire controller through to your VM, but this is the only way. You cannot do this if the drives you are using for ESXi are connected to that same controller

@drashna, for right now, I am using an evaluation copy of Cisco Prime Infrastructure for fault management of my Cisco router, switches, and AP, as well as a friends' gear across a VPN tunnel. I have used Nagios for this in the past though, since you can monitor just about anything with it. I just have MRTG installed so I can see the utilization of my router interfaces in a web page; it uses SNMP to gather the data. For Unified Communications, I am using Elastix because it is pretty easy as far as an all-in-one solution goes. It has a pretty nice admin interface, uses Asterisk for phone, OpenFire for IM and presence, uses Postfix for POP/IMAP email and Roundcube for webmail. There are also some add-ins that can be installed to extend functionality. I have one installed that provides web conferencing services.

Yes, you will need to download the disk space equalizer and use that to automatically balance the pool. Volume equalizer is for when you have multiple volumes to equalize on the same physical disk. The plug in architecture is in place so that you can decide how your data gets distributed across the disks in your pool, and you can even write your own balancer if you want to. Not everyone wants automatic balancing; some want DrivePool to fill up one disk at a time, or any number of different options. I use the disk space equalizer as the 1st balancer and set to equalize by percent used and including both un-duplicated and duplicated files. If you want balancing to only occur at a certain time, then you can schedule it. My pool is primarily used as file storage and for media streaming, so balancing does not impact me. If you were to use it for something like virtual machine or database storage, then performance is paramount and automatic balancing may negatively impact it in those cases.

I have had my setup for a while, but it works really well: Chassis: Norco 4220 Power Supply: Corsair 750W Motherboard: Asus KCMA-D8 Processor: AMD Opteron 4180 x2 Memory: Kingston DDR3 1333 8GB Kit x4 Add-On: PIKE 2008 Add-On: iKVM Add-On: LSI 4 port mini-SAS Operating System: ESXi 5.1 OS Drive: 60GB OCZ Agility 2 VM Drives: 240GB OCZ Agility 3 x3 (RAID 0) VM Backup Drive: Samsung 1TB in a dual USB dock DrivePool VM: WHS2011 DrivePool Drives: Seagate 3TB x14 (RDM to WHS2011 VM) DrivePool Drives: Hitachi 2TB x6 (RDM to WHS2011 VM) Other Services on VMs: Web, TeamSpeak server and music, MySQL (For XBMC and Web), DNS, DHCP, TACACS+/RADIUS, Fault Management, MRTG, Unified Communications