Upgrading from WHS v1 to 2011

[teddyboy16]

Hi,

 

I'm finally getting to the point that I would like to upgrade my old WHS v1 to 2011. It's getting long in the tooth and there are some add-ins that I would like to use that are not available on v1. I'll be using the same hardware only I'll be using a SSD drive for the OS that I just bought. The home server is used basically for streaming movies using mymovies, music, file and photo storage. I have already purchased a license for drivepool and scanner. I'm going to follow the wiki on migrating WHS v1 to 2011 using drivepool. After reading it, It's a pretty straight forward process. I have the necessary signed 64 bit drivers for my HBA cards.

 

I want to use v2 of drivepool because I like the features it has, but the only niggle is that it doesn't have full dashboard integration as v1 does. I'd rather use the most current version, and I'm willing to sacrifice full dashboard integration for it. Am I really losing anything else?

 

One thing that I would really like to see is a wireframe view of my hard drives in the dashboard. That's the one thing I'm going to miss about using the disk management add-in for v1. It was nice to be able to easily identify a drive for removal. Will Alex every provide such a feature in the future? I'm not sure how I'm able to identify a drive for removal. How does that work? All my bays are hot swap, so I don't have to take the server down.

 

I've been watching this software for a very long time since he first started developing it.

 

Thanks! :-)

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I'm glad to hear that you're switching. I think you'll be very happy that you did. 

 

As for DrivePool v2.x, it lacks full dashboard integration, but it does create a tab in the dashboard from which you can administer the pool from. It's just not as integrated into the dashboard.

 

As for the Wireframes, we don't currently support that, but it's been requested in the past. We are considering it for the future though (no promises).

 

And as for removing disks, well, both DrivePool and Scanner identify the volumes mounts (drive letter or folder path), as well as the volume labels. If that's not good enough, if you have both installed, DrivePool will add the model and serial number for the disks to the tool-tips in the GUI.

 

 

 

Though, for ease of identifying disks, I would recommend mounting them to folder paths (such as "C:\DrivePool\i##" and "C:\DrivePool\e##"). 

http://wiki.covecube.com/StableBit_DrivePool_Q4822624

[teddyboy16]

Thanks for the reply Drashna. I read the wiki on mounting them to folder paths, and that looks like a good way to go. I'll probably do that once the server is up and running stable with the pool balanced. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Alex will support wireframes in a future version. I created my bootable usb install stick from my 2011 DVD, so now i just have to bring down the server to replace the OS drive with my new SSD then begin the installation sometime today. I've had a good run with WHS v1. The main reason I stuck with it for so long is that I didn't have a viable alternative to drive extender. I wasn't all that crazy about drivebender or flexraid, but I always liked drivepool because of its simplicity in managing drives. I'll give an update once I've completed the install later today. :-)

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I know what you mean. That's why I switched to DrivePool as well.

 

Also, for installing to the SSD, I'd recommend doing this:

http://connecteddigitalworld.com/2011/09/20/installing-whs-2011-or-sbs-2011-essentials-on-ssd-or-sata-hard-drives-smaller-than-160gb/

 

That will install the "C:\" drive to the whole SSD, instead of creating a 60GB partition and the rest D:\. 

[teddyboy16]

Yes I saw that. Might as well. It's a simple one line change to the cfg.ini file. I don't really see the point of only using part of the SSD. getting ready to do the install after running a few errands.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I can think of a couple of reasons: temp/cache files. Keep it in an easy to clean location. 

 

But for the most part, Since SSDs are fairly small, it's better to use just one partition for the entire drive, and periodically clean the disk up.

[teddyboy16]

well the server is up and running. drive pool and scanner are installed and running. i decided to use 1.X version of drive pool this time. I'll upgrade later when 2.x has tighter integration in the dashboard. eventually 1.x will go away but it suits me just fine. im following the wiki on moving over my files into the pool but i cant seem to find the drivepool system service to turn it off while i move the folders. i looked under sevices and i didnt see anything that stood out. can you point me in the right direction. :-)

 

I found it in task manager, so i can kill the task while i move the folders out of DE/shares and into the poolpart.{something}/serverfolders/dvds for example. ive created the shares through the dashboard and they are in the pool as E:/serverfolders/dvds for example. when i look at the individual drives by remoting into the server and unhide the folders they are not there. all that is there is poolpart.{something}/ with none of the share folders showing up on the drives. what am i doing wrong.

[teddyboy16]

Well I figured it out. I think it was a combination of being up late trying to figure it out. For some reason, I wasn't able to find the service, but this morning it was there. I stopped the service and began moving the files on each of the drives into the pool part folders after I made them visible. Once I started to move the folders they started to show up in the shares. Once that was complete I deleted the metadata, and started the sevice. It's now remeasuring and verifying the integrity of the pool. I was a little confused with the directions, but once I started moving the folders it all started to fall into place.

 

I'm impresssed with drivepool and its performance. The whole system is much more responsive than v1 ever was. I only have 2gb of ram, so i might bump it up to 4gb. :-)

 

im very happy so far.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I'm glad to hear it!

 

And yeah, the wiki instructions need to be cleaned up a bit. It's on my to-do list.

 

And the issue you may have been having finding the service was that it is listed under "StableBit DrivePool Service", and you may have been looking for "DrivePool". But then again, "weird things happen" when you're really tired.

 

But I'm glad that you're very happy with DrivePool. And yeah, much more responsive that Drive Extender!

Also, for WHS2011, the hard coded limit is 8GBs of RAM. Just in case you wanted/needed to know.

[teddyboy16]

Yes I'm aware of the hard coded ram limit. My Gigabyte socket 775 motherboard only allows 4gb on the motherboard. I'm going to get a couple a couple of sticks of DDR2 ram to bump it up to 4gb. I'm running on a wolfdale 6300 core2 duo. its more than enough for my purposes. One of the things that held me back from upgrading was signed 64 bit drivers for my Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 cards. I managed to find signed drivers. Sonnet has the drivers because they have a card that is based on the same chipset, and they loaded without a problem.

 

The server is up running and it appears stable. Drivepool is still doing its thing, but even with that going on I'm able access my ripped movies. Yes the wiki for WHS DE migration needs a little cleanup. ;-) I followed it but when I created the shares I was expecting to see the Poolpart.{xxxxxx}/serverfolder/sharedolder on each pooled drive which is what i was expecting to see. It was confusing to me, so I just moved the folders out of the DE folder into the poolpart folder on each drive. They immediately started to show up along with the shares I created. After that I moved them into the actual shares, then I deleted what was in the drivpool store folder and started the service to restart the duplication and verification processes.

 

It's all working very smoothly now, and I like the fact that I can have the backups in the pool and duplicated. WHS v1 was so finicky about its backups. :-)

[teddyboy16]

Looks like I have a two 2TB hard drives that have some bad sectors. Scanner really works! I've had more trouble with WD green drives. It's not a lot of sectors. One drive has 64kb worth of bad sectors and is effecting four files. The other drive has about half the amount of bad sectors. I'm going to replace at least one of the drives (probably both) this weekend with 3TB WD red drives. I'm going to attempt to recover from the bad sectors tonight. Does scanner mark the bad sectors after a recovery?

[Christopher (Drashna)]

No, scanner does not change anything on the affected drive. At all. Ever.

 

Specifically, we have a very specific "no writing" policy for scanner. The only exception is the file recovery process and the "fix file system" (but that's chkdsk).

 

Normally, when the disk tries to write to those sectors (which naturally occurs), it will clear up the issue (by noting these are bad sectors and reallocating them to good sectors). As will manually running a "chkdsk /r" pass.