Hi,
Long time reader, first time poster.
I have been using my WHS 2011 for a couple of years now. Mainly to share folders from a central location and to backup the clients PCs.
Until now I had only Lights Out as add in. I love it. It turns the server on only when is needed. In 405 days of usage saved me $140.00 in electricity bill. Not bad at all.
I have 5 HDD in my server, all SATA:
500GB (60GB system drive + 440GB storage)
500GB storage
1TB storage + clients backup
200GB storage - very old drive. I might retire this one soon
2TB server backup. Unable to use as storage as is dedicated for server backup
I am trying the DrivePool and Scanner at the moment. It is great to have all the storage capacity in one place, but....
I am not happy with the backup. I am using the Windows Home Server Backup. Because it is a cluster level backup, I cannot directly backup the DrivePool virtual drive (G drive). I have to go through every physical drive and select or unselect the folders I want or not to backup. When DrivePool does the balancing, it might move the folders around and I have to check again what is backed up.
On top of that it takes a way longer to back up the server. Before DrivePool, it used to tabe about 30 mins to backup the server and now it takes more than 4 hours and 50% of backup instances are incomplete or unsuccessful.
Finaly to my questions:
What would be the best backup solution when using DrivePoll? I am not interested in cloud backup. I need just local backup. I wouldn't mind a file based backup as this way I can add the backup drive to the pool as well.
If i am using a third party server backup solution how the client backup would be afected? Can I still use the current Windows Backup for clients?
Will Lights Out still work with a third party server backup solution?
Any recommendations will be welcomed.
Thank you.
Dan.