Need help setting up my new Lenovo TS140 server. A little background. I work for myself and provide computer and tech services to very small businesses and residential customers. I’ve been using the HP Microserver N40L running Windows Home Server 2011 for the last couple of years.
Here’s how I currently use it:
- backup customer hard drives to it via direct connect with USB to SATA (or IDE) adapter. Run a robocopy script to copy entire hard drives
- backup customers hard drives with Macrium Reflect server edition. Same bare metal connection with USB to SATA (or IDE) adapter.
- restore data files from server to re-imaged customer PCs, this is done across network
Those first three items represent about 80% of what I do with the server. When I backup and reformat and reinstall a customer computer I’ll keep their entire backups for 30 or more days in case I get a frantic call back because something wasn’t on their repaired PC. It gets pretty full.
Other uses include:
- very light file sharing locally
- run WD tools to test a drive or two
- run Recover Keys to dig out product keys from customer backups for reinstall.
- ran a Minecraft server for a while when my son was into that.
- experimented with a ScreenConnect server
- and client computer backup for one or two of my Windows PCs.
Just recently I installed Plex on it. I think I like that and may continue to build on that and use it more.
So I could just install the same setup on my new hardware but I’d like to do more. I’d like to be able to run multiple OSs so I can have a little lab for learning and experimentation. I’d like to have the following OSs running or available:
- Windows Home Server 2011
- Windows Server 2011 Essentials
- Windows Server 2012 Essentials R2
Maybe there could be another one or two if resources permit. Maybe some desktop OSs too. I realize I may not have all of them active at once since the “bigger” OSs want to be domain controllers.
Software-wise it looks like I’d use the free VMware server product and put in as much RAM as I can reasonably justify, even max it out if appropriate. The biggest question is storage. How much and how to configure it.
WHS 2011 only deals with 2TB drives for the most part. That will be my go to OS for day to day stuff as described. I can keep 2TB pretty full with customer computer backups and drive image storage. I’d like for those volumes to be on redundant storage if possible like a RAID 1 or RAID 5.
So I guess my biggest question is what drives to buy and how to configure them. I think I’ll stop writing here and see if anyone has any ideas or questions before I bore you to death 