Christopher (Drashna)

I thought I had mentioned this before on this site but regardless here it is again.
 
I noticed a lot of folks here are buying new consumer type equip for their servers.  That's what I did for years until I discovered UnixSurplus and bought this:
 
http://www.unixsurplus.com/product/nas-vmware-raid-server-32-bay-35-sas-or-sata-jbod-storage-array-up-to-96tb
 
This is retired commercial equip with lots of years left in it.  This is two separate units, the top is a 1U server which has a S5000PSL Intel motherboard with dual Xeons.  I got mine fitted with 16GB of ram.  The unit below is a 16 bay drive unit that can handle SATA or SAS drives.  Both these units are half depth and very light, not a all like the HP DL360's I have. I have had mine running for about 3 years now non-stop with no problems.  I liked it so much that I purchased a 2nd set as a backup. 
 
You can't beat the price.
 
I bought mine without a card because I was going with the HighPoint 2722 Non-RAID controller.  I can confirm this card works like a charm with WHS 2011 or Win 10 and it passes the S.M.A.R.T. data.  If you do get a server here without the card ensure you get the 1U riser card for it.  It may or may not have it.  Make sure you ask for it.
 
I no longer have to worry about how I'm going to squeeze one more drive in my PC case.  BTW, these drive bays can be daisy chained.
 
Here is an old picture of my setup.  I hadn't gotten my 2nd server/drive bay yet.  It was a cheap build for me, the rack was about $70 and it does the job.  I hope this post gives people an alternative to consumer class equipment.
 
 
Ron
 

Glad to see its been approved for production!!! keep up the great work!

I updated my setup about 6 months ago and thought I would share as it works better than ever:
 
Chassis: Norco 4220
Power Supply: LEPA 1600W
Motherboard: SUPERMICRO MBD-X9DR7-LN4F-O
Processor: Intel Xeon E5-2660 x2
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB x4
Add-On: HighPoint RocketRAID 2760A
Operating System: Hyper-V Server 2012 R2
OS Drive: 480 GB Mushkin SSD
VM Drives: 240GB OCZ Agility 3 x3 (RAID 0)
VM Backup Drive: Samsung 1TB in a dual eSATA dock
DrivePool VM: Windows Server 2012 Essentials
DrivePool Drives: Toshiba 3TB x9 (Pass-Throughto WS2012E VM)​​
DrivePool Drives: Seagate 3TB x8 (Pass-Through to WS2012E VM)
DrivePool Drives: HGST 6TB x3 (Pass-Through to WS2012E VM)
 
Other Services on VMs: Web, TeamSpeak server and music, MySQL (For Kodi and Web), DNS, DHCP, RADIUS, IM, E-Mail/Webmail, Video/Music conversion for mobile​

I built this system a couple weeks ago to replace a HP MediaSmart EX485 with 12 TB storage.  This is used to provide full client PC backups for 5 PCs, network storage for user files that need to sync across our desktop and notebook PCs, bulk file storage and media streaming (temporarily Mezzmo for DLNA but am migrating over to Plex Media Server).  The biggest issue I've had so far was intermittent drive errors getting logged in Windows' Event Log.  I finally got it resolved yesterday by disabling IntelliPark on the Red's using wdidle3.
 
Fractal Design Node 304
Silverstone Strider Gold 550W + short cable kit
ASRock E3C226D2I
Intel Xeon E3-1265L V3
Corsair H90i AIO
2x 8GB Crucial DDR3-1600 ECC
Plextor M6e 256GB PCI-E SSD (OS and programs)
6x 6 TB WD Reds (for storage pool)
Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials
Stablebit Drivepool + Scanner to combine the 6x Reds into a single drive pool with selective folder duplication.
 

haha, thats no fun
 
i'll have to see how much i get up to at christmas.. need to duplicate that other 40TB!

I meant I wanted screenshots of someone with a 246TB pool
 
I'm curious to know how many disks he's got and what they are all attached to and housed in
 
ive also got a spreadsheet with all my drives (and their warranties)
 
I was lucky to get a bunch of 4TB WD datacentre drives cheap off ebay that still all had the full 5 year warranty (and they are screaming fast)

lol, yeah screenshots!
 
Ive also got four of the 8tb drives (maybe 5.. I lose count! ) hahaha

Yes, where ever possible they are simply rips
 
even the 4GB/episode stuff looks blurry and soft to me, compared to the 8-12GB/episode bluray rips
 
yeah.. in terms of DP plugins I've only got the scanner, SSD, and space equalizer on.
 
I've told the SSD plugin it can let the drives get to 100% full.. so hopefully it will only let new files get added to the very fast disks
 
then the space equaliser should move stuff in the background so all the disks are filled to the same percentage

Very nice!
 
And there will always be somebody with more storage than you, somewhere.
 
 
And I'm up to 73TBs now.  Had my first DOA drive ever. From Newegg. They paid for the return shipping, and replaced it promptly. New drive works great (my 4th 8TB Seagate Archive, BTW).

It works!  I can see the HD serial number and the smart data.  Thank you!
 

That's OK! I really only did it because I needed to put a bigger HD in the server anyway so I cloned the 8.1 drive to a new SSD and then performed the upgrade on the bigger drive. Worked like a charm (and activated with no issues). Pretty impressive for DrivePool AND Microsoft!
 
 
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yep, exactly.  
 
I was actually more concerned about DrivePool reading the existing data.  But now that I think about, you said you are using the hidden NTFS metadata.  Perhaps that's readable no matter the permissions.
 
But yes, and for anyone else reading: if you have custom permissions on your drivepool (e.g. \\SERVER\Users\Mommy, \\SERVER\Users\Child1), then you will want to remove all of those permissions before switching to a new server.
 
Easiest way to do that is to Right-Click at the root of your pool, go to editing the permissions, remove everyone but the defaults.  Once you do that, make sure to click the checkbox for "Replace permissions on all child objects."  that will reset it all.

Hi I used to use Xigmatek Utgard these can take 3 x 5drive enclosure's have excellent airflow I still have the 2 I used excellent case's I moved to rack mount that's the only reason I stopped useing them. Plenty of reviews on line of the case
 
9 x 5.25 slots

Lol.. does that mean I only get the silver medal? (plus.. in the true internet style.. photos or didn't happen)
 
also sadly very full.....

Ok thanks for your advice!  I think I will order from Monoprice.  Their prices are better, and I already know their quality is top notch.

Option #1 does seem like the best idea, actually.
Especially, as OneDrive is probably using some special API to bypass some of the throttling that occurs.

Ah new case will come someday. Just bought an Icy Dock 5 HDD in 3x5.25" cage. Rather nice but cooling wise, meh. In any case, once DP features Grouping (or "Strings"?) I can build my desired 2 x 4 x 2TB Pool for which I'll need another, larger case. So the fact that I do not have that yet is, basically, all your fault! ;d

For licensing, if your'e reinstalling, you'll want to deactivate the licenses prior to moving everything over.  Otherwise, you should be fine, and prompted to "transfer" the license as it's different hardware.
 
 
Aside from that, yeah, you'd want to just pass the disks through, and DrivePool won't have any issues with that.

Disk grouping sounds ideal.
 
Previously I found the i/o deadlock seemed to kick in after maybe 5mins or so, so having gone several hours without issue is certainly promising. Fingers crossed I don't wake up to a BSOD tomorrow morning! Will keep you guys updated.

Couple of thoughts -
Multiple NICs are great if you know how to use them and don't buy crap. Intel PRO NICs never failed me, in hundreds of servers where I worked. Other brands may work OK, but the off-load from the CPU as implemented by Intel is very impressive. I never regret paying a little more for Intel. I have had some good luck at work with HP & Dell rebranded NICs, but easier to source drivers etc and know what I am getting with Intel at home.
 
The HP workstation [dual XEON] I use for my archives has a LSI controller on board, 8 ports. Beside 8 standard SATA ports. Great stuff.
 
 I left WHS due to single CPU support, and I was finding it restraining rather than liberating. The main reason I used it was for backups and drive pooling, once drivepool came out and I found it usable, I ditched WHS.
For me, the perfect OS is Windows 7, I don't have to fiddle with it, it just works, streaming without issues. No features I don't need. I'm using W7 Ultimate N on my archive server and W7 U on my current server, all x64.
When the archive server dies of old age I will evaluate the market, but right now I see some impressive small form factor motherboard / cpu combos that can do what very expensive hardware was needed to do five years ago. The electricity savings, lower CPU wattage [heat] mean modernizing could save a lot of money. Fans and air conditioning cost a lot of money to run 24 - 7.
 
  Just moving a large part of my "rarely accessed" storage to the archive server saved me a ton of money, if I'm not using it I turn it off. I have further sub-divided the archive into two pools on that server, archives and offliine, I have offline on a individual surge protector, it holds long term storage that I am not likely to need more than once or twice a month. The creation of an archive server was well worth having two drivepool and scanner licenses, they paid for themselves long ago. In a sense, it is a poor man's tiered storage, I got the idea when we were being ptiched new SAN units EMC, Dell etc. The big point was tiering your storage and using fast drives for current workload and data migrating to slow cheap drives when it wasn't be accessed anymore on a regular basis. The difference is I migrate manually.
 
Here are my current stats, not the impressive over 246 TB that other guy has, but right now 107TB [formatted] with 14.3 TB of free space across all three pools, if I got my math right.
 

 

 


As for "management" I just use RDP, built in and just works. If I had to manage hundreds of servers like I did at work, that's another story. The less cables the better for me. I don't live in a McMansion, pretty easy to walk over and see what's up if there is a problem. I don't run my server headless, I have a monitor and keyboard/trackball hooked up [monitor powered off] for local access.

What would be amazing would for you to create some software that can Create a drivepool using Stablebit clouddrive.
 
Just imagine
 
Gdrive
Amazon
dropbox
 
etc...
 
 
all pooled into one virtual drive...
 
 
drools

You are very welcome.
 
And we do apologize for not being able to get to this. However, we are a very small company, so getting to everything is impossible. We'd love to add the feature (though ReFS really shines with Storage Spaces, unfortunately), but there aren't enough hours in the day. 
 
And just FYI, I did bump this, as I've talked to Alex about this recently, and adding the ability to use the ReFS drives may work (though it will need extensive testing, which Alex doesn't have time for at the moment)

Oh wow Thank you.
 
I had totally forgotten about the ability to manually type in rules. That's definitely what I'm looking for.  Because my movie collection is much larger than the single 8TB hard drive I had hoped for example as a starting point to just have movies starting with  #-H
 
So in effect all movies from "2 Fast 2 Furious" through to "Fury" Not necessarily an all in one rule but perhaps something like (in my case)
\SERVERFOLDERS\COUCHPOTATO MOVIES\A*
\SERVERFOLDERS\COUCHPOTATO MOVIES\B*
Would this work and are those rules correct for movies beginning with A & B?
 
As for deleting stuff it never ever happens (I have some amazingly bad movies in my collection)
The nearest I get to deleting is when SickRage replaces a season of web-downloads with a Blu-Ray release that It finds or I  purchase.
This is the very reason that shows will not go on the archive drives at least until a show is ended/cancelled and the quality is at optimum. This way the archive drives will hopefully be "write once" which as you imply are their intended purpose.
 
I cannot believe I forgot about the ability to write rules.... I tend to see a feature in programs think to myself "I will never use it" and then forget it exists.​
 
Anyway thanks for the help as always Chris... If you could confirm (or correct) the rules above It would be appreciated.

Thanks for checking.
And yes, I read the changelog. You know me, I give every version a try 

I'm liking the netgear Nighthawk X6 triband (R8000)