Suitability Question

[BGood]

I'm repurposing an older Core i7 workstation as a Win Server 2012 R2 Essentials server.  It currently has a single 60 GB SSD.  I want this to serve files to my Windows PCs, and possibly music/movies to iPad and Android devices.  I'm also going to use the client backup feature of 2012R2 and possibly Ghost images, CrashPlan to backup to a friend's PC, and eventually VPN.

 

I'm now buying 3 WD Red "NAS" drives @ 3 TB each to actually hold all my data.  (I also have an unused 120 GB SSD.)

 

I think I've decided to skip Storage Spaces and ReFS and go with DrivePool 2 and StableBit.

 

Should I just put all the WD Red drives into a single pool?  Or is there some benefit to partitioning each drive and keeping some non-pooled storage?

 

I'm trying to avoid getting 2 months into this and regretting that I overlooked something important.

 

 

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Well, good setup overall!

 

As for the drives, do you have anything that you need to store on them outside of the pool?

I can think of a few thigns, but unless your installing additional roles on the server, I don't see a need to.

 

So yes, putting the drives in the pool would be best. 

And even if you decide you need to use them outside of the pool, no need to partition them. You can still use the disks directly. However, any space you use outside of the pool is shown as "other"

[BGood]

Well, good setup overall!

 

As for the drives, do you have anything that you need to store on them outside of the pool?

I can think of a few thigns, but unless your installing additional roles on the server, I don't see a need to.

 

So yes, putting the drives in the pool would be best. 

And even if you decide you need to use them outside of the pool, no need to partition them. You can still use the disks directly. However, any space you use outside of the pool is shown as "other"

 

Since I'm still trying to determine what I might want to do with this server, can you tell me some of the server roles where I'd want to exclude, either an entire drive or a partition of a drive?  Thanks.

[Christopher (Drashna)]

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

 

But any role you add will want to be backed up. And Server Backup won't backup the pool (and will error out if it tries).

 

That, and you should be able to exclude the "PoolPart.xxxx" folders, if needed.

[BGood]

When you said certain roles should NOT make use of a DrivePool, I was asking for some examples so I can plan ahead.

 

Can client backups be stored in a DrivePool?

 

Perhaps there is a list of types of storage/folders that should NOT be stored in a DrivePool?

 

Sorry if this is a bit unclear, but I'm only just starting to give up WHSv1 for Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials with DrivePool, so I have *lots* to learn about both!

[Christopher (Drashna)]

Client backups are fine.

 

But by "roles", I mean anything installed by server management. Such as Windows Deployment Services, HyperV, etc.