New WHS 2011 Build
After playing around with WHS1 running on an old desktop and an external 8 bay case (DAS801T), I was starting to get irritated by having to switch off the external case separately – Lights Out worked fine on the server, but still left one box sitting there humming and glowing overnight.
Also had a few issues with getting AV to update.
And then the price of 3tb drives dropped to an “acceptable” level. So I bought one, and tried to get it into the server – I finally gave up after all sorts of attempted registry hacks – lack of patience more than lack of information.
It was time for research and a one box solution. I’d already built a mini-itx box to sit under the tv as a media centre, so felt reasonably comfortable in a new build.
Shopping list – a big box for 8 drives, and a MB to support them
– Fractal Design R4 caught my eye, so then a Gigabyte FA285XM was found with 8 SATA ports, an AMD A6-5400 drops into this, as well as 8gb Ram.
– Corsair CX750 power supply (since found out there is a Modular version where you can remove used cables – that would have been nicer)
– And treated myself to a couple of new Seagate 3tb drives
– A few more cables, DVD drive, and a PCI expansion card (miscounted the number of SATA ports required , forgot the System Drive and DVD – DOH!!)
Total came in around £600, with WHS2011, Stablebit Drivepool and Scanner, and AVG Server edition adding £120 for software – so I ordered it, and sat back to wait for the postman.
Over the next few days, various boxes arrived, and one HUGE one with the Fractal case (thanks to next door for accepting that one as I was out).
An interesting weekend followed putting it all together – got to say the case is excellent and so easy to work on.
Started with a 1tb drive for the system, and stuck this into one of the optical bays – to keep the main 8 bays for data.
Crossed fingers, and pressed the ignition button, no lights, but a gentle breeze from the fans, and the screen lit up.
Short version – insert WHS2011 disk and let it do its job – pretty straight forward, usual driver updates etc – there are some excellent guides on installation – and without these, I’d have been puzzled/stuck – so big thanks to everyone who put the time and effort into them.
It works !! Connected desktop software, and Dashboard appears – we have Server!
Now we need to copy the old data onto the new drives, I just stuck the old drives into the new box, and used Teracopy to move and copy about 6tb of stuff into a more organised folder structure – I’m sure there’s an easier way, but I just went for a simple copy / move of around 900gb at a time, and left it running.
After about a month now, its all up and running happily.
Final (I wish – I just can’t help but tinker) system has 1tb system drive, 4 x 3 tb + 2 x 2tb and 1 x 1.5tb for data (DrivePool of 16.3tb – thanks to binary 1.2tb vanishes!) and a final 1.5tb drive for backups. Also did an external backup to a usb drive.
Also, I’ve got the DAS box ready to store the older drives, so I can have another backup.
Next important step is try a full recovery – it’s nice having backups of everything, but as I’ve been told lots of times, unless they’ve been tested – they’re not really much good. That’ll be a weekend soon with an old drive going in place of the system drive and see what happens.
Thanks to everyone everywhere who has contributed – without your help I’d not have a beast of a server – but would have a much healthier bank balance!
Hope you enjoy this – I’ve definitely had fun putting it all together! One pic attached - this was part way through the build before all the drives and extra expansion cards were added.
Cheers to all
John
