Christopher (Drashna)

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/servers/raid/raid-controller-res2sv240.html This one. I purchased one of these from ebay for about $70. There are a lot of them for more than that (closer to $200, but if you offer an amount, some of these sellers are desperate just to move their stock. Plugged in one port from my card (it's an IBM ServeRAID m1015, as it only has two), and connected all of the drives to the expander. Looks like this in the MSM util: And these cards, you can plug into a PCI-e port for power, or use the Molex connector. One or the other. So you could mount them anywhere in your case, to optimize the cable placement. However, that HP card looks very nice as well.

Well, unplug one of the cards. See if that works fine. If it does, there are some options in the BIOS/UEFI firmware that .... may help. Normally, there is an option for the legacy rom stuff, that you can disable. Since ... it doesn't appear to have that ... I would recommend contacting ASRock and see what they say. The alternative may be to check out an ASRock RACK board (server/workstation boards).

I'm glad to hear that you're not having any BSOD's any more!

Is this for any size? There is a limit on minimum (128MBs), and a maximum (very, very high). But it also is limited by how much space the provider has available. Also, could you see if you could upgrade to the 1.0.0.297 build, and see if that helps? http://dl.covecube.com/CloudDriveWindows/beta/download/

If you are able to reproduce this, could you enable logging: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_CloudDrive_Log_Collection This should give us a clear idea of what is going on, and help fix the issue.

Did that 20MB drive cost you ~$200-300? And I agree, all of my drives are horizontal. Unless they're SSDs, and then there mounted in ... well, some pretty crazy ways. ... or not at all.

Well, I've been using WHS since Ars Technica ran an article about it in December of 2007. I was using an XP box, with IIS enabled, and using DynDNS to make the files easily accessible remotely. So WHS was a perfect fit for me, out of the box. And yeah, microsoft could have stood to do more marketing ... and maybe they'd own the NAS market right now.... Much like the DVR market and WMC.... and the mobile device market.... As for Plex, yeah, And they've had people requesting it for years.... It's simple on linux ... but I had horrible performance from Plex when I ran it in a VM. I also had horrible issues with it not loading right on Windows (it would take 5-10 minutes before it became usable... and sometimes would just stop....). However, I personally use the Task Scheduler to run stuff on startup. It works very well. And no need for a third party app. As for the GPU acceleration, there is a huge thread on the emby forums, if you want to try it out. http://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/10723-gpu-transcoding-intel-quicksync-and-nvidia-nvenc/ But definitely beta quality (or worse). As for Sickbeard vs Sonarr, I've been meaning to test it out ... but I'm not a fan of having to move my entire config over. Yes, I'm being lazy. But I have better things to do... because sickbeard works.

Glad to help. And yeah, I got a 500GB SSD when it was on sale. Specifically for HyperV (and data deduplication). I'm pretty sure it's faster than use HDDs, even in a RAID. And if you're curious for exact details: The drive is only using 254GBs of data. The savings is reported as 64% currently (it jumps around), and reports that it's saving 534GBs using deduplication. Which is ... fairly close to what Microsoft estimates. However, Since I'm using a lot of different OS's, it's not "optimized". https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831700.aspx#BKMK_Step1 Additionally, if you're using a block based backup solution (such as Windows Server Backup), if you backup the entire volume, it maintains this savings in the backup as well. And in case it's important, you can move the drive to another system, but it needs to have the deduplication feature enabled to be able to read the disk.

I'm glad to hear it. And yeah, the "drive usage limiter" balancer makes it much simpler.

Danfer, I definitely know the "no more space for drives" issue. And it's not a fun one. Well, it can be fun, if you're into that sort of stuff. As for the controllers, LSI is a fantastic company, and their chipsets are some of the best. Intel are very nice, as well. As for the terminology here, let me help clarify them: HBA: "Host Bus Adapter". This is basically what all consumer grade controller cards are. This basically means that the controller card doesn't do RAID. It just passes the disks through to the OS. This is generally what you want (there are exceptions, though). SAS: "Serial Attached SCSI". It's basically an industrial grade "SATA" protocol. It's ... a lot better, and a lot more stable. However, "SAS" connectors are usually compatible with SATA drives. It depends on the hardware in question. But you'll need "breakout cables" in your case. Breakout cables allow you to using the SAS connector to connect normal SAS or SATA drives. JBOD: Just a Bunch Of Disks: This isn't necessarily what you want. In some controllers, it creates an array with all the disks listed, rather than passing the disks through. These controllers look like the may work for what you want, but I'm not sure. However, I actually have a couple of IBM ServeRAID M1015 cards. These are SAS cards that use the LSI chipset. They've been flashed to allow normal RAID functionality AND to pass through disks to the OS. They work great with StableBit Scanner and StableBit DrivePool. If you're interested in them, PM or email me (christopher@covecube.com), and I'll see what I can do. And these cards are a lot cheaper than what you'd pay for the Intel cards you've listed, or a new LSI card. (as in ~$100, instead of $300+). As for the breakout cables: http://www.amazon.com/Logic-LSI00411-SFF8643-miniSAS-Cable/dp/B00H5NPLHW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_147_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1ZXN740AT0YT0JJJQJ58 or http://www.amazon.com/CBL-SFF8087OCF-06M-Mini-SAS-SFF-8087-Multi-lane-Internal/dp/B000HVXCXO/ref=pd_sim_sbs_147_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1R86XTV7V56WXH0XAEBJ Depending on what controller card you end up with. Also, depending the card, you may need to use the "Unsafe" DirectIo option to get SMART data (this is rather normal on the higher end cards)

Since at least the WHSv1 days... but it started off as a Windows Media Center only app. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/13752/getting-started-with-media-browser-for-windows-media-center/ Published in 2010. As for MediaBrowser Server, a couple of years, I think. And yeah, it's open source, and one of the few open source projects that I really like. As for the metadata, I don't mind. I've been using sickbeard for a long while to grab that stuff anyways (for XBMC and the like). And check out the metadata manager. It's ... worlds beyond Plex's "implementation" (which feels like it's an after thought tacked on...) OOh, and don't forget to check for the "Emby" service. It should work, just set it to automatic and reboot!

This is by design. The pool is set into a read only mode, to prevent any sync issues with files. However, if that's undesirable, you can use the "Drive Usage Limiter" balancer to evacuate a drive. To do so, open up the balancing setting, open the balancing tab, and click on the balancer. Find the disk in question, and uncheck both "duplicated" and "unduplicated". This will move the contents out of the drive in the background... essentially prepping the drive for quick removal, and allowing you to access the pool without any issues.

Yup. It's done at a volume level, and can be done with any sort of files. And I have a bunch of VMs (Windows XP, WHSv1, and up of each different architecture, as well as a "work" vm and a few linux VMs). I get roughtly 65% savings. In fact, I couldn't host all of my VMs on my 500GB SSD if I wasn't using deduplication.

IIRC, I mentioned this on the post that he made at the Home Server Show forums. I apologize for not posting it here as well. http://community.covecube.com/index.php?/topic/52-faq-parity-and-duplication-and-drivepool/&do=findComment&comment=3542

Because the real time duplication feature requires writing to all the disks at the same time. And considering that SSDs tend to fail suddenly ... what happens if the drive dies in that time between writing the data and pushing it to the HDDs? We want to prevent that from happening, if possible. Also, if you're writing to folders that are not duplicated, and them moving them to duplicated folders (or not duplicating them ever), then you'd only need one SSD. Otherwise, it would take a significant rewrite to the driver.

Well, as for the post having value, I would definitely say so. If anything, I think you've hit the nail on the head! This. Being in the Windows Home Server community from pretty much day one, I've seen a LOT of people complain about poor performance when using entirely WD Green drives. Or power usage when using WD Blacks. Etc. Buying the right drive is MUCH MUCH more important than the brand, IMO. And the vibration thing is a huge thing, considering it's a spinning ceramic (I believe) disk with a metal arm hovering above it. It's delicate machinery. And until recently, only enterprise grade drives support the vibration compensation tech. And I think that makes a world of difference for the drive's longevity.

For the shares, does it allow you to add it? If so, then you can ignore the "folder isn't indexed" error. And as for the issue that's preventing it from working, the "USN Journaling" feature... we would like to add it, definitely. But the question is how complex will it be to do so. So, I can't really give you an ETA on that. Sorry.

Well the initial dump you've uploaded was the 2.1.1.561 build... So chances are that we made a change that aggravated the issue (caused it to be triggered more quickly). And there are a few places that could have occurred. I'll post the change log if you're interested. However, the firmware update probably fixed a bug in the controller software that was the actual cause of this. Since that's ... what firmware updates are for usually.... You're probably good to go now! And if it does BSOD again, grab the new dump and upload it. But I suspect that the system will be fine (hopefully!).

There isn't a significant difference between Windows Server 2012 Essentials to Windows Server 2012R2 Essentials (the biggest one is the "Client Restore Services", I believe). If the clients are domain joined, then it's a royal PITA, especially if you want to run it on the same box. If the clients are not domain joined, then it's a simple reinstall, basically. But if it's working fine now, I wouldn't really recommend it, because it's a hassle. If the system fails, then yes, definitely. As for reinstalling StableBit DrivePool, just deactivate the license, and reinstall. Once the OS is reinstalled, the drives connected and StableBit DrivePool is reinstalled, it will rebuild the pool for you, automatically. Plex may be more problematic, though. However, if you save the database for it, you should be fine (aka, move the Plex database off of the system drive, and then back, after you reinstall). The issue is that it's a lot of small files, and a bunch of hard links. It could be a very large library.

You are very welcome! And we'll definitely post (either here, or on the blog, or both) if/when we add the throttling.

lol. And to be honest, I'd really love to pull out Plex's transcoder and use it in Emby. Plex does a better job, performance wise. While Emby is much much prettier (and easier to manage data on).

Yes, all the logs you can get. And we'll look into reproducing the issues as well (especially as it sounds like it's easy to reproduce).

Gringott, don't fee "weak" at all. A modular strategy definitely isn't a bad one, at all. It just depends on your needs. I also got the rackmount case for really cheap. And as for the experience, I'll second that. I've not really had any one brand do significantly different from the others. And I think that every manufacturer has had large batches of "duds", as well.

My server is running on Server 2012R2, with a number of other roles installed as well. . However, the issue with the Gen2 VMs... I suspect is the boot order. THe other drives may have boot records on them, which could be mucking it up. I'd have to see specific configurations, and research it more. However, most of my VMs are Gen1's. And as for the differences, the Gen2 VMs are UEFI, support secure boot, and allow booting from the SCSI adapter (which gets better performance), and from the synthetic NIC. And I'm sure there are some other performance tweaks as well. However, running the VMs from a SSD ... makes a world of difference, performance wise. And data deduplication is nice as well (seriously, it's a 70% savings for the VMs!)

Could you do this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_CloudDrive_Log_Collection And this: http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_CloudDrive_System_Freeze This should give a good idea of what is causing the issue here.