FlexRAID on WHS

A couple of questions:

Let's say I have a case with six drive bays (excluding my system drive). Four of these are filled with 1TB drives. I would like to use three of them as storage drives and one as a parity drive.

I quickly use up my storage so I buy two 2TB drives to fill my case. Will FlexRAID automatically make one of the 2TB drives the new parity drive or will I have to do this manually?

After a year I decide to replace the four 1TB drives with brand new 3TB drives, and at the same time move over to two-drive parity. Will this be a smooth process?

Thanks,

Nick

You have to specifiy where to store the parity data. But it's not difficult.

Few quick questions,

1. If I setup flexraid for my WHS drives that have existing data, nothing will be deleted?
2. Would it be better to wait for v1.3 rather than using 1.2 now?

ZrC wrote:Few quick questions,

1. If I setup flexraid for my WHS drives that have existing data, nothing will be deleted?
2. Would it be better to wait for v1.3 rather than using 1.2 now?

1. Nothing will be deleted.
2. Yes, you should use 1.3.

Version 1.3 is currently in beta only because of the FlexRAID-View functionality.
So, use the latest 1.3 build.

Brahim wrote:

ZrC wrote:Few quick questions,

1. If I setup flexraid for my WHS drives that have existing data, nothing will be deleted?
2. Would it be better to wait for v1.3 rather than using 1.2 now?

1. Nothing will be deleted.
2. Yes, you should use 1.3.

Version 1.3 is currently in beta only because of the FlexRAID-View functionality.
So, use the latest 1.3 build.

Thanks for the quick reply, everything is now setup and it is now processing. But due to having 14 disks totaling around 7TB its taking a while. For the scheduled task, how often should I verify/resynch/validate the array?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 07/03/2010 08:46:59

I know the lack of a backukp system for the system drive is a negative. Is this how people are getting around it:

Image the C drive and put the tombstones on the D drive under flexraid protection?

Has anyone restored said partition and tombstones to test out this theory? I would think there would be problems as the system drive is probably IDed throughout the registry and I would think WHS would throw errors once restored to a new disc.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 07/03/2010 15:45:37

Unfortunately this is one of the things that are flawed in WHS (and part of why I am leaving it when I can).

1) Tombstones ARE in D: physical partition (i.e. second partition of first disk). You cannot move them. Don't confuse this with D:\shares that has all other data disks mapped on it.

1) You cannot normally restore to a new disk (except MAYBE after extensive registry hacking), since WHS stores/needs every disk's unique ID.

2) Even then, a backup is periodic. After the last backup, things constantly happen on a WHS (even if you don't actually write new data - and imagine if you do), so a restore would just leave you in an inconsistent state - probably irrecoverable as WHS doesn't have a system to force rebuilding of tombstones and internal indexes except "WHS reinstall".

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 08/03/2010 00:54:39

icon123 wrote:
Image the C drive and put the tombstones on the D drive under flexraid protection?

Has anyone restored said partition and tombstones to test out this theory? I would think there would be problems as the system drive is probably IDed throughout the registry and I would think WHS would throw errors once restored to a new disc.

I did. You are right, it doesn't work without tweaking. After restoring WHS system disk image to another drive it boots, but it doesn't recognize its C: and D: drives. It finds them but it doesn't see D: as a part of the pool.
I think it most likely can be fixed through registry changes. Probably limited to this branch where it stores drive information:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\Storage Manager\Disks\
But, I never tried to fix it.

The reason I experienced it is I installed WHS on Intel ICH10 RAID1 on Asus P5Q Pro motherboard. Then I started to enable additional SATA controllers. And it stopped working.
It could not boot from Intel RAID with 2 additional controllers. Everything worked before with the same controllers when RAID was not activated on ICH10. It could not load ICH10 RAID boot BIOS. So I decided to move the RAID to SiliconImage controller on the same board so ICH10 would not be a boot drive. Same 2 mirrored disks but different RAID volume name so WHS didn't recognized it.
After all I replaced 2 controllers with one - SuperMicro 8-port PCIe 8x controllers, and it worked fine. I detailed problem here: http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1498324

So, while I think that it is possible to restore WHS on new system drive with registry tweaking I decided to use RAID1 - it just looks simpler. Well, simpler after I figured out motherboard/controller incompatibility problem. That Supermicro controller costs ~$100 plus 2 SAS-SATA break-out cables $15 each. I wanted at least 13 SATA disks though. 7 mobo ports + 2 controllers 4+2 disks made it possible without ICH 10 RAID but didn't work with RAID enabled.

But, if you decide to go image creation/tombstone backup way I think it should work. Some people on wegotserved.com did restore WHS system drive to another drive. WHS doesn't really move files around so FlexRaid tombstone backup should work.
I reported one case in this thread when files were moved across the drives, but I think it was MyMovies for WHS. I have no problems once I disabled MyMovies monitoring service.
To handle new files added since last tombstone backup I added a command to FlexRaid batch file - dir /s d:\shares > T:\FlexRaid\mwhs-dir.txt. T: is on another server. This way I know folder listing so I can re-add new files since last backup. And I keep individual drive listings too so I know where each file is: dir /s C:\fs\E\DE\shares > T:\FlexRaid\mwhs-dir-E.txt

Thanks for chiming in. The raid 1 approach is slick, never thought about that. So worst case, without imaging or raid 1 system drive. You will have to do the restore or upgrade option (I don't remember what its called right now) on the WHS install and use the flexraid restore for the tombstones. This way you don't have to wait forever to get your tombstones rebuilt. Is this correct? If so, I can live with that as I don't customize the server too much. Mainly SageTV, which after an install of sagetv, my backup of sagetv should be able to be copied over it just fine.

I think after WHS system restore there will be no drives in storage pool. And when you add a drive WHS will format it. The difference between reinstall and restore is the restore scans your disks and recreates tombstones (which may take forever).
So, I don't think FlexRaid restore tombstones helps in this case. Probably there will be will be no opportunity to use it. Really need to make WHS believe that new system disk is the old one. Search wegotserved.com forum, it should be possible.

I thought that was the whole point of flexraiding the tombstones, for system drive restore purposes, so you didn't have to rebuild the tombstones on a system restore. I thought someone from here acutally did this. I will have to reread this thread.

I currently use the duplication option, but like many others, I am reaching a capacity with my movies where duplication doesn't make since. Therefore, I want to go down the flexraid route, but make sure I understand it's and WHS's limitations.

Ok, I've been reading through this for some information about just HOW to Restore Tombstones in WHS, and unless I just missed it, I'm not finding a link to this. I moved my WHS to my ESXi Host and stood it up as a Virtual Machine because I stumbled upon a thread on a different forum that said FlexRaid would restore tombstones, and that all a user needed to do is install FlexRaid and run the restore-tombstone command...well, I tried and it didn't work so I obviously goofed somewhere. There's not really much for instructions for FlexRaid that I can find so I'm left to reading posts and doing searches to try to piece together the info, but this hasn't provided much for direction. On my WHS server I have installed the Basic Host 1.4, the Web UI 1.4, and the Basic CMD Client 1.0 in hopes that one of these would allow me to do the restore, so I opened the CMD line client and attempted to run the command restore-tombstone it tells me invalid command - ignoring and I've also tried restore-tombstones nada!
Help, I'm just trying to get this thing back to 100% as the machine that WHS was physically living on is on its last legs, and besides I wanted to Virtualize my stuff onto one machine so that I could unplug some things from the wall and save some electricity $.

For anyone who isnt aware of this, MS has recently dropped the price of WHS2011 (64bit) with 10 Cals to around £40/$40 which would make it the perfect choice for an MS based storage appliance running Flexraid (assuming somebody wanted to stay legal)

Combine that with the HP Microserver while the cash back offer is still on and you have a pretty slick alternative to a proprietry "NAS" for

£140 (£240-£100 cashback) for the server itself
£72 (£102-30 cashback) for 3 years next business day onsite warranty
£40 for WHS2011

Total of £252 for a server grade machine with low power useage and with 3 year onsite piece of mind plus whatever additional drives you want to put in it

Put flexraid ontop of that and I dont think any proprietry NAS appliances really compare for price/features/functionality

Well, late to the party as usual! Sorry to see that this thread may have died. Maybe this might revive it? I have been running WHS v1 for over a year. Have 22TB with everything duplicated. Not practical for sure. Have read thru this whole thread multiple times, googled lots of other places, forums, etc trying to get educated. To say stuff is scattered and confusing is an understatement. In any event, I still wish to try Flexraid on my WHS for media shares, as most here are doing. I am sitting here trying to decide whether to try 1.3 or 2.0. 1.3 seems to have a lot more information posted, and I believe it's a non-expiring final release. Have been thru all the Wikis (old and new) and trying to find as much info about installing and using Flexraid on WHS.

Any help to consolidate all this thread info, wikis, etc for me would be greatly appreciated. I believe I have a good understanding but would like to be sure.

580guy wrote:Well, late to the party as usual! Sorry to see that this thread may have died. Maybe this might revive it? I have been running WHS v1 for over a year. Have 22TB with everything duplicated. Not practical for sure. Have read thru this whole thread multiple times, googled lots of other places, forums, etc trying to get educated. To say stuff is scattered and confusing is an understatement. In any event, I still wish to try Flexraid on my WHS for media shares, as most here are doing. I am sitting here trying to decide whether to try 1.3 or 2.0. 1.3 seems to have a lot more information posted, and I believe it's a non-expiring final release. Have been thru all the Wikis (old and new) and trying to find as much info about installing and using Flexraid on WHS.

Any help to consolidate all this thread info, wikis, etc for me would be greatly appreciated. I believe I have a good understanding but would like to be sure.

True. Working on it.

Read this: http://wiki.flexraid.com/2011/06/04/support-for-whs-v1-in-flexraid-2-0/

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 18/09/2011 13:39:46

True. Working on it.

Read this: http://wiki.flexraid.com/2011/06/04/support-for-whs-v1-in-flexraid-2-0/

Thanks. I have read this also. Doesn't make too much sense to me yet, but hopefully it will once I get back to my server and play around with FlexRAID. Will probably try 2.0 first.

One question that I can't seem to answer is:

If my system drive fails on WHS, and I do a restore (keeps my shares), then the installation of FlexRAID is gone except for the parity drive. Once I re-install Flexraid again, is there a way I can use the previous config (if you can back that up and save it somewhere) or do I have to start all over from scratch with FlexRAID and have no protection until I re-create the array and re-create parity?

I feel like the PPU is sitting there untouched and I shouldn't have to re-create it? Can this be done? Could a scriipt be made to make copies of config files to save somewhere for eventual restore in this situation?

Thanks for your time.

Edit: just found out about FlexRAID-Config.db. So that answers that!!
http://wiki.flexraid.com/2011/06/24/backing-up-and-migrating-raid-configuration-data/
(always finding more to read around here).....

I have just bought WHS 2011 and not installed it yet.
1: But if I download FlexRAID now, do I then have this problem:
"I can change the filesystem type to NTFS. However, this doesn't trick Windows Media Center into seeing the storage pool as an NTFS volume. It still says I can't use the storage pool because it's not formatted as NTFS. I wonder if WHS users will have the same issue."
(Found here: http://www.openegg.org/forums/posts/list/20/966.page).

2: What version of FlexRAID shall I download to get the addin? ...is that FlexRAID View??

I'm a little confused and hope someone can help me with my first steps with FlexRAID

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 21/09/2011 09:53:51

Ken4000 wrote:I have just bought WHS 2011 and not installed it yet.
1: But if I download FlexRAID now, do I then have this problem:
"I can change the filesystem type to NTFS. However, this doesn't trick Windows Media Center into seeing the storage pool as an NTFS volume. It still says I can't use the storage pool because it's not formatted as NTFS. I wonder if WHS users will have the same issue."
(Found here: http://www.openegg.org/forums/posts/list/20/966.page).

2: What version of FlexRAID shall I download to get the addin? ...is that FlexRAID View??

I'm a little confused and hope someone can help me with my first steps with FlexRAID

Try reading the wiki articles first: http://wiki.flexraid.com

The add-in for WHSv2 is not yet ready.
That said, the next release won't really need an add-in as WHSv2 will see the FlexRAID drive as a standard drive (natural integration).
See this thread: http://www.openegg.org/forums/posts/list/972.page

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 22/09/2011 01:07:04

Brahim wrote:
Try reading the wiki articles first: http://wiki.flexraid.com

The add-in for WHSv2 is not yet ready.
That said, the next release won't really need an add-in as WHSv2 will see the FlexRAID drive as a standard drive (natural integration).
See this thread: http://www.openegg.org/forums/posts/list/972.page

Thank you Brahim for the answers to my questions

If I download it now, install and configure it for a start. Can I then upgrade to the new release just by upgrading the software or do I need to start over?

Now the 10 million question: Are there a date for when the next release will be available for download in a stable version to us deadly people?

Best regards
Kenneth