Newbie setup

[p4nts]

Sorry about the n00bness of this question but I'm not a Windows Server setup expert and any help/guidance would be much appreciated.

I've got a new Microserver :16Gb, 4 core, 512MB SSD (OS) and 2x10TB NAS drives. I was hoping to set this up as Windows Server 2016 (with desktop experience) to act as a file server for a Linux based Kodi box. I've got various other Windows machines which would looking to access Shares on the server. Once 3-6 months has gone by, hopefully Disk prices have fallen a bit I was planning on getting a third disk and hooking up Snap RAID.

I'm looking to run HyperV so that I can fire up VMs to use my MSDN sub to set up some test labs for work/community stuff. As well as using the improved docker support to dig into Containers. I was hoping to avoid having to set the box up as a DC or does DrivePool require "Server Essentials Experience" to be enabled?  Or would I be better going with Win 10 Pro and just turn everything off.  Finally is ReFS still proving problematic, and SnapRAID covers that anyway? 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

No worries, that's what we're here for.

Looks like a nice setup. Though, I'm guessing that you meant 512GB SSD, not MB.

 

StableBit DrivePool doesn't require any specific feature, so a stock Server Standard setup will work. 

 

No DC needed, and no need to turn on the Essentials Experience role, either. 

If you have the server license already, then you can use that, no problem. Otherwise, Windows 10 Pro (for Workstations) would be better/simpler for you. 

 

As for ReFS, it works fine. Especially on newer OS versions.
And SnapRAID works a bit differently. 

[p4nts]

Hi Drashna, 

Thanks very much for your reply, much appreciated. Yes it is a 512GB SSD ;-)

I've set the Disks up C:\Mount\Disk01 etc.

I might have gone with ReFS, after what you've said ,but "fortunately"  Snap RAID doesn't support this yet 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

You're very welcome! 

And I'm not surprised, ReFS is a big beast.  While most stuff works fine on it (because it was designed to honor most of NTFS' commands, IIRC), some of the more advanced stuff .... may have problems.  Especially if it's addressing the file system data directly, and not the files.