Jump to content

Christopher (Drashna)

Administrators
  • Posts

    11642
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    380

Reputation Activity

  1. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to Rychek in StableBit DrivePool - Controlling Folder Placement   
    At firtst I wasn't sure I would have any use for such a feature, but the more I think about it, the more I like the idea of having more control over what goes where.  It could be very useful as my children get old and skilled enough to use the server.  Bring on the progress!
     
    Oh, yeah, and thanks so much for all your hard work Alex!  Drivepool and Scanner are awesome and the WS 2012 E integration in the last update felt like an early Christmas present.
  2. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to gringott in Going to the Cloud   
    Yes, the bandwidth to upload/download from the cloud is seldom mentioned, the promoters seem to want the public to forget about the cost of that. Example, tablet users with "free" storage space on the web, using cellular connection with limited bandwidth.
    The company I work at is looking at updating our SAN storage, what cost us $600K seven years ago cost less than $300K with greatly increased bandwidth and much better software [tiered] with SSDs on the front.
    So yes, I agree storage is making great strides, but the bottleneck will be for the foreseeable future the connection from home to remote storage. Around dinner time in my neighborhood eveything slows to a crawl as the drones connect to netflix.
  3. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to daveyboy37 in StableBit DrivePool - Controlling Folder Placement   
    This is something that I have hoped for, for a very long time. I really have never been keen on having things scattered around the pool. Especially with music... 10 album tracks scattered over 5 or 6 drives.. But then I'm probably a bit O.C.D.
     
    I'm sure for people who have various devices streaming to different rooms this must be a good thing. Knowing that all the Disney films are all on one hard drive for the rug rats, and the teenage daughter can watch her twilight knowing its on a separate drive so no risk of intensive I/O and so on. And yes i know that this could be achieved by organising multiple pools. However when you get to 13 drives and around 22TB of data creating new pools seems like a hassle. 
     
    First thought is that this would eliminate the need.
    Second thought is that once implemented the folder placement would to my mind then simplify the operation of creating separate pools and may actually lead me to do it, instead of just thinking about it 
     
    I'm all for it!!!
     
    .
  4. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to Alex in StableBit DrivePool - Controlling Folder Placement   
    I can be a bit wordy by my very nature. But yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about, controlling which files go onto which pool part.
     
    And, in the future, a pool part may not necessarily represent a single local physical disk, which would make this even more interesting
  5. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to Alex in Going to the Cloud   
    Oh and thank you
     
    I'm no expert at public speaking, but I do like to talk about the products that I've built, which I believe in very strongly.
  6. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to Alex in WS2012E Dashboard Responsiveness with Scanner Scanning   
    Just to follow up on this,
     
    I've done extensive troubleshooting on this issue with Kihim in a support ticket. It seems like this is caused by the system getting bogged down at certain times leading to a periodic slowdown in the UI. At least that's what I can see from the Scanner's built-in UI performance profiler (accessed by pressing P in a BETA build).
     
    I don't see any Scanner UI task running away with the CPU. I've also set up a local test rig with similar specs, 26 disks and a 2Ghz 8-core AMD server, and have run the Scanner UI for hours looking for any slowdowns and I couldn't find any.
     
    But I think the bottom line here is that the Scanner uses WPF to render its UI, and WPF does require some more CPU resources than your typical Win32 application. I think that that's really the core issue here. So in the future I would like to offer a "lite" version of the UI for situations where CPU resources are scarce. I imagine that there will be a simple drop down that will let you switch between "standard" and "lite" versions of the UI, letting you run whichever one you want.
  7. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to Shane in Slow Write Speeds to the Drivepool   
    I've found "positive pressure" filtered cases can noticeably reduce dust and salt intake; you just have to remember to clean the filters every so often to maintain the pressure ratio (and also so that the case doesn't overheat - and for this I can plug Scanner, with it's emailed and spoken overheat warnings).
  8. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to psikey in Other ?? I have read about.   
    Well I'm so impressed with it (especially after trying the Scanner too) that I've bought the 2 app deal after only 2 days trial
     
    Using this on my N54L Microserver which is purely used as my media store/Plex server + torrents at home. I'm finding it much easier to understand/use than FlexRAID Pooling I purchased last year. For this server its more about max storage space than redundancy.
     
    I only really need Folder Duplication for critical frequently changed/added files (photos/Home Movies), as I backup to another Microserver on a schedule, so no big deal getting my large Movie files back off the backup server if a drive fails.
     
     
    Couple of quick questions. Will Scanner, with its installed defaults, still allow Windows Hard Drive standby or do I need to untick Advanced Power Management which is currently set to Maximum performance (no standby) as installed? This server is idling most of the time consuming only ~25W so need to ensure drive spin-down working as before (currently set in Windows8 to 30 minutes). I also use Lights-out to put the whole system in hibernation at set times based on Calendar when its only then consuming 1w. Will the "prevent-standby" type options clash with those in Lights-out? For example, with uTorrent I set Lights-out to not Hibernate if the uTorrent process is still running. Would I need to set a similar kind of rule to make sure it doesn't hibernate in Balancing/Scanning drives etc.?
     
    I also have a G8 Microserver with a proper P222/512 RAID card currently with 4x3TB RAID5 (used as my lab & Media Backup from other server). I'm assuming Drivepool/Scanner doesn't really add anything to this unless I ran as individual drives ??
     
    Also, my drive pool of currently a 4TB & 1.5TB show as 5TB usable pool. Why does Windows Drive Management show it as 2047.97GB and also in the Task Manager graphs also shows it as only 2TB Capacity for Covecube Virtual Disk?? Also, in Task Manager the DrivePool disk shows no Activity while the pooled disks themselves do. Does the Virtual DrivePool not interact correctly with Task Manager etc.?
  9. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) got a reaction from tomba in SSD monitoring   
    Yes, you can definitely configure Scanner to send you email notifications. 
  10. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to gwtony in Thank you, it works!   
    I have stablebit scanner installed, along with server smart to evaluate hard drive health. Drive pool is also installed, and there are 3 hard drives in my pool.  I mapped 2 of the DrivePool folders to my workstations, and use those folders all the time (one holds all my photos, the other holds all my videos).
     
               The other day I received a warning on the dashboard along with an email about one of the drives parking too many times which indicates a possible failure. This warning was only send from Scanner, not from server smart, so I looked into it and the drive seemed to be OK as far as performance, I thought maybe this Scanner is just a little too sensitive to some sort of reading because server smart had all check marks and did not show anything wrong with the drive. Needless to say, the drive failed about a month later. Not only did the one product prove to be a great value (Scanner), but the second product saved my data due to me not listening to Scanner’s warnings.  Drive pool showed the drive as missing after it failed, I chose the remove drive option, and suffered no loss of any data. The remaining 2 drives balanced out and all is good.
     
    I just wanted to post this little story and to thank the team that has created and continues to support these products. I also feel that this post will help others decide to put faith into the product and have some piece of mind that their data is safe with proper use of the software.
    Thank YOU! 
     
     
  11. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to otispresley in How To: Get SMART data passed on from ESXI 5.1 Host   
    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
  12. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to Codegear in How To: Get SMART data passed on from ESXI 5.1 Host   
    Hi Val3ntin,
     
    It is feasible, as it works for me.  I have WSE2012 in ESXi 5.1.
     
    1. Link your physical disks to ESXi using the RDM technique described in this blog (http://blog.davidwarburton.net/2010/10/25/rdm-mapping-of-local-sata-storage-for-esxi/)
    2. In file "C:\Program Files (x86)\StableBit\Scanner\Service\Scanner.Service.exe.config", change setting "UnsafeDirectIo" to "True" - don't forget to reboot !
     
     
    Good luck.
  13. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) got a reaction from gringott in Pool that only is powered on occasionally?   
    Actually, if the pool is missing *all* of the drives, then DrivePool "won't know about it".  
    Once you re-attach one or all of the disks, then it will "discover" it and remount it. Making it accessible again.
  14. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) got a reaction from jrronimo in Best OS for DrivePool?   
    WIndows Storage Server 2008R2 Essentials is basically just WHS2011, but with 25 users and computers. It's also OEM only, and much more "regulated". It's very hard to find without using Technet/MSDN, IIRC.
     
     
    And .... WHS isn't dead. In fact, the entire WHS2011 code is *what* makes Server 2012 Essentials what it is. Literally.
     
     
    Also, end of mainstream support means that it only gets critical security updates, IIRC. And that will last as long as Server 2008R2 is supported.
    Mainstream support for 2008R2 is Jan 2015... while extended support (aka critical updates) last until 2020. So that's a good long while.
     
    And Server 2012 R2 *is* Server 8.1. As Server 2012 is Server 8.
    Also, the "Essentials" Role (aka the code that made WHS) will be available on Standard and Datacenter versions of Server 2012R2, IIRC.
     
     
     
    And I'd wait for Server 2012 R2 Essentials, if you want to go this route (which isn't a bad idea). Namely, because it handles bare metal restores better (can create a recovery disk from scratch, and may integrate drivers, as well as supports PXE, aka network booting of the recovery image).
  15. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) got a reaction from logbit in Access multiple WHS2011 dashboards from one PC?   
    If the Remote Access website is enabled on the second, you could log into that and download the rdp file, and just keep that. It would be the simplest way.
     
    Otherwise, you could just use Remote Desktop normally. (mstsc /v:servername)
  16. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to dslabbekoorn in dashboard on latest drivepool v2   
    Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!  Very nice.
  17. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to gringott in Going to the Cloud   
    I like my "cloud" local and private. Therefore, no external access for me. Feel free to develop for others, however.
     
    I do the math every year or so. Any serious online storage [TBs] cost more than buying and rotating drives every three years, which of course I haven't had to do that frequently.
     
    You can check for yourself, how much does it cost for 55 plus TBs online 24/7?
     
    Alex, I "saw" [heard] you being interviewed on utube "StableBit on Home Server Show 219".
     
    Very good representation of the product. Yes, I know it was from April but I just found it this morning.
  18. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to ChipMonk in Moving Data Disks to new WHS 2011 Install   
    Just a quick report back to say that the transfer went incredibly smoothly. OK the disk and pool letters got a bit scrambled but I stopped fretting about that ages ago since they're a complete irrelevance. Drivepool 1.xx has once again been a joy to work with, especially compared to the horrors of MS WHS v1 Drive Extender, which still gives me nightmares! Hope the move to v2 works as smoothly with WHS 2011 when the RC comes along. Delighted to see that Dashboard will now be supported.
     
    Many thanks Alex and Co.- a great job.
  19. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to logbit in dashboard on latest drivepool v2   
    Just migrated both my WHS2011s to 2.0.0.387 beta and all is working well
     
    Thanks for doing this, I feel much happier having my 4 drivepool installs all working on the same version of the software.
  20. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to AMCross in dashboard on latest drivepool v2   
    just installed working fine so far
     
     
    thanks alex
     
     
    and Christopher for twisting his arm :-)
  21. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) got a reaction from AMCross in dashboard on latest drivepool v2   
    Hey guys, in case you haven't see it yet:
    http://blog.covecube.com/2013/08/stablebit-drivepool-2-0-0-387-dashboard-tab/
    Guess what Alex added for us!
  22. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to logbit in dashboard on latest drivepool v2   
    +1 For this
  23. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to saitoh183 in dashboard on latest drivepool v2   
    only reason i havent moved to v2 ...but if i migrate to 2012..well thats another story
  24. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to Alex in StableBit Scanner - Identifying Disks Uniquely   
    Keeping this board on topic, I'd like to talk about something pretty technical that is central to how the StableBit Scanner operates, and perhaps get some feedback on the topic.
     
    One of the benefits of running the StableBit Scanner is not just to predict drive failure, but to prevent it. The technical term for what the StableBit Scanner performs on your drives to prevent data loss is called Data Scrubbing (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_scrubbing). By periodically scanning the entire surface of the drive you are actually causing the drive to inspect its own surface for defects and to recognize those defects before they turn into what is technically called a latent sector error (i.e. a sector that can't be read).
     
    In order to do the periodic surface scan of a disk, the StableBit Scanner needs to know when it scanned a disk last, which means that it needs to identify a disk uniquely and remember which sectors it has scanned last and when. The StableBit Scanner uses sector ranges to remember exactly which parts of which disk were scanned when, but that's a whole other discussion.
     
    I would like to focus this post on the issue of identifying a disk uniquely, which is absolutely required for data scrubbing to function properly, and this was overhauled in the latest BETA (2.5).
     
    The original StableBit Scanner (1.0) used a very simple method to identify disks. StableBit Scanner 1.0 used the MBR signature to differentiate disks among each other.
     
    For those who don't know what an MBR signature is, I'll explain it briefly here. When you buy a new disk from the store, it's probably completely blank. In other words, the disk contains all 0's written to it throughout. There is absolutely nothing written to it to differentiate it from any other disks (other than the serial number, which may not be accessible from Windows).
     
    When you first connect such a blank disk to a Windows machine it will ask you whether you want to "initialize" it. This "initialization" is actually the writing of the MBR (master boot record, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record), or GPT (GUID Partition Table) if you so choose. The MBR and GPT define the header (and perhaps footer) of the disk, kind of like when you write a letter to someone and you have a standard header and footer that always follows the same format.
     
    One of the things that initializing a disk does is write a unique "signature" to it in the MBR or GPT. It's simply a long random number that identifies a disk uniquely. The problem with a MBR signature is that the random number is not large enough and so it is only meant to be unique on one single system. So if you connect a disk from a different computer, the disk signature on the foreign disk has a miniscule chance of being the same as a disk on the system that its being connected to.
     
    Well, for the StableBit Scanner 1.0 this would be a problem. It would recognize the new disk as being the old disk, which would cause all sorts of issues. For one, you can't have the same disk connected to the same computer twice. That's simply not possible and we would write out an error report and crash.
     
    StableBit Scanner 2.0 improved things a bit by utilizing the GPT signature, which was guaranteed to be unique across multiple systems. The only problem with using the GPT disk signature to identify disks uniquely is that disk cloning software is capable of placing the same signature on 2 different physical disks which would end up causing the same problem. In addition, many disks still utilize MBR, so we can't solely rely on GPT to resolve this issue.
     
    As you can see this has not been an easy problem to solve
     
    In the latest StableBit Scanner 2.5 BETA I've completely overhauled how we associate disk scan history (and other persistent settings) with each disk in the system. This is a major change from how things used to work before.
     
    In 2.5 we now have a brand new Disk ID system. The Disk ID system is heuristic based and picks the best disk scan history that it knows of based on the available information. We no longer rely on a single factor such as a MBR or GPT. Instead, we survey a combination of disk identifiers and pick the disk scan history that fits the available data best.
     
    Here is the list of factors that we use, starting from the highest priority:
    Direct I/O disk serial number GPT Signature + WMI Serial number + Disk size GPT Signature + WMI Model + Disk size GPT Signature + Disk size MBR Signature + WMI Serial number + Disk size MBR Signature + WMI Model + Disk size MBR Signature + Disk size See the change log for more info on what this change entails. I hope that you give the new build a try.
     
    This post has definitely been on the technical side, but that's what this forum is all about
     
    Let me know if you have any comments or suggestions (or can find a better way to identify disks uniquely).
  25. Like
    Christopher (Drashna) reacted to Alex in Beta Updater   
    I've been debating how to handle automatic updates while we're in BETA.
     
    There are 2 issues I think:
    Too many updates are annoying. (E.g. Flash) Because this is a BETA there is the potential for a build to have some issues, and pushing that out to everyone might not be such a good idea. So I've come up with a compromise. The BETA automatic updates will not push out every build, but builds that have accumulated some major changes since the last update. Also, I don't want to push the automatic update as soon as the build is out because I want to give our users the chance to submit feedback in case there are problems with that build.
     
    Once we go into release final, then every final build will be pushed out at the same time that it's published.
×
×
  • Create New...