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Does anybody have experience running Hyper-V VMs on windows 10 with drivepool? I would like my VMs drives to be replicated onto multiple physical drives within a pool, but am unsure how well the hypervisor and drivepool software will work together. I'm planning on setting up either a docker swarm or kubernetes HA cluster on 4 VMs running on 2 windows 10 pro servers, using Ceph for live file duplication of stateful docker files, keepalived to provide a virtual floating IP address shared between all VMs on the cluster, and traefik as an https auth ingress manager. Am I likely to run into problems with the drivepool duplication function on the VMs? Sharing any experience with this (including non-HA setups of Hyper-V virtual drives using drivepool duplication) would be very welcome. The only limitation I'm aware of is that if I use an ssd cache drive for drivepool, I'll be limited to the size of the drive for individual files in the pool.

I have been running a "server" for a number of years with both Scanner and DrivePool being an integral part of it all (I LOVE these products!!!). I think it's time to redesign my current virtualization environment, and I wanted to know what you guys think: My current setup: "Host" (running Win10 Pro w/Client Hyper-V): - Scanner and DrivePool for media, backups, VMs, etc. - CrashPlan for offsite backups (~10 incoming clients) - Plex Media Server (doing occasional transcodes) - Multiple VMs (Win7 for WMC recording, Win10 testing, VPN appliance, UTM appliance, etc.) I feel like the current setup is getting a little too "top-heavy". My biggest pain points are the fact that I have to bring down the entire environment every time M$ deploys patches, and a lack of clean backups for the VMs that are getting more-and-more important. Being the budget is a big concern, I'm hoping to re-work my existing environment... My proposed setup: "Host" running Hyper-V Server, CrashPlan, Scanner and DrivePool VM for Plex Media Server, targeting shares on host VM for WMC TV recording, moving recordings to host share Etc., etc... I believe this design will allow the host to be more stable and help with uptime...what do you guys think of this? I know I can install and run CrashPlan, Scanner and DrivePool on Hyper-V server, but I've never done any long-term testing... Also, can anyone recommend a good, free way to backup those VMs with Hyper-V Server? If I can get a backup of those VMs onto the DrivePool array and sent offsite via CrashPlan, that would be perfect -Quinn

I've almost finished virtualising my home infrastructure, with everything running on a backbone of Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacentre. This seemed like such a good idea (and it was!) until the premature arrival of my new Son. Now its going rather slowly...! The last device remaining outside of this is my WHS2011. I have P2V'd my WHS2011 and am preparing to make that transition after some testing this weekend. I'm just wondering though if I might take this opportunity to move to Server 2012 R2 (Essentials or otherwise), especially given the EoL of WHS (though I understand we will continue to receive security updates), I've read a lot about this and will probably opt to test Server 2012 R2 first before moving the box over. A lot of thoughts seem to be along the lines of using Server 2012 if you have access to it? I guess I just want a bit of advice on how to setup the drivepool in a virtual environment. I understand that for SMART I'm going to have to buy two copies and run it as in this thread, but what is the best way to set up the disks for the drivepool? Bearing in mind when moving the live system I won't want to be formatting any disks. Should I set up the drivepool on the physical system (Datacentre) and monitor these drives from within WHS2011 (or WHS2012)? Or does Drivepool work better if I pass through the disks (ignoring why this is becoming a deprecated technology for a moment) and run them exclusively inside the VM? From an infrastructure point of view, I don't really care where I run the Drivepool, other than having a preference for it to not be on the physical host directly, but if this is better all round, than I'll do that. Also, I don't yet have an additional network card as I just haven't gotten round to getting this setup whilst I've been testing things. I will ultimately have two seperate physical network interfaces, is it best for performance and reliability to dedicate one to the Drivepool machine? And on the subject of networking I'd ideally like to go down the route of teaming but with dns round robin. Any issues with Drivepool and that? Or is there a better networking solution?

Hi, I've made a VM in Hyper-V to get a VPN connection inside a controlled environment, using xubuntu, and to play aorund with a linux distribution. I would like to add my D: drive from local to the VM. Read that it was possible if you made the drive go offline with disk management. I did that and also tried to disable drivepool service. My problem is that it cannot be seen in the Hyper-V environment under VM settings, SCSI controller. Am I doing something wrong or is there a tweak I'm not aware of? Best regards Johann Valdimarsson

Hello! I'm looking for some advice on a server build I'm planning. Primarily this server will be a fileserver and Plex or Emby server supporting at least 2 streams at a time. OS will be Windows Server 2012 R2, and I want to run at least a couple of Hyper-V guests on this machine so it won't just be a NAS. I use DrivePool currently and I'd like to stick with that. I already have drives - a Samsung 850 Pro 1TB for OS and VMs, a smaller SSD that I can use for write cache, and several WD Red NAS drives. I don't want to do a rack mount build, so I plan to use a Caselabs Mercury S8 with 3 x 4-in-3 Hot Swap bays for a total of 12 hot swap bays. I'm leaning toward this model of drive bay, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OUSU8MI?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER , but I'd love suggestions. I'm up to speed on the gaming side of builds, but when it comes to server components I'm just not sure what makes the most sense these days. So, what I really need advice on is Motherboard/CPU/Memory, and a drive controller if necessary. I'm looking to support at least 14 drives. I'd like to keep these 3-4 components under $1,000. I'm thinking I will run a Xeon E5 of some kind, but I'm not sure which model would be the best bang for the buck. Since it's on 24x7, something with low power requirements would be nice. For the motherboard, I'd like to stay ATX or smaller. I'm fine with an add-on card like the IBM m1015 (or any other suggestions) to get support for the minimum 14 drives. Multiple NICs would be nice too, but not required. For memory I'm targeting 32GB. Any suggestions? Thanks, Jeff

Hello all, Drivepool user here, just trying from yesterday and loving it! But i've found a problem that's a deal breaker for me: i'm using Hyper-V on Server 2012 R2; if i create a VHD on the volume that is created by drivepool i get this same error no matter i do. Has anybody found this error and has a solution for it? Thanks all.

Hi, I have some Questions about using Drivepool with server 2012. i'd like to duplicate a lot of files and some Hyper-V VHDs. The files are no Problem, but what can i suppose on VHDs? Can i store vhds on my pool without worrying about the data, which is written in a vm? One vhd can get a size of 500Gb or more. What happens when i enable the automatic balancing with the vhds? Do they get balanced without shutting down the vms? Can i exclude the vms/vhds from the balancing process? What happens when i remove one disk from the pool? What happens, when i create a vhd which is greater then the free space of the volume on which it is stored? Can i use the integrated per-volume-deduplication feature of Server 2012 to reduce the data, which is stored on one Volume? Can Drivepool still read the deduplicated files? Thanks for the answers best reagrds