NAS / backup / storage questions and solutions

You can install (&run) NAS software on an HP Microserver from a USB memory stick, you don't need a USB HDD.

Picking up on the RAID discussion earlier, the bigger the drives you use in any RAID configuration, the longer the rebuild time will be. You should always have a plan for dealing with drive failure regardless of what you end up with. In my book this means 3 copies of my data, the original copy, my backup server copy, and my server backup copy ;). In my case my backup server is running WHS2011, my server backup is an HP Microserver based NAS.

Having had 40+ years experience working in IT, I have lost count of the number of times disks have gone bad. I have seen multiple disk failures in RAID solutions too, rendering the RAID data useless. I would never trust RAID as my only backup, a point that has previously been made by several people in this thread.
 
Mr Bump said:
You can go the FREENAS route as per Alistair that is pretty damned simple, that's the only recommend I would make apart from W7.
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I'm sure it would be simple if the on-screen set-up/behaviour matched the manual... :runaway:
 
Alastair said:
I'm sure it would be simple if the on-screen set-up/behaviour matched the manual... :runaway:
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haha that's the world of Linux though, programmers love coding hate manuals...
I would be interested to how you get on with this and maybe you could post up some tutorials, maybe even look at connecting to hubic if its possible.
you can sign up for a free 25gb account.
 
I've got it up, and I have a volume established but I'm completely flumoxed by "zvol"

The manual is all over the shop, there's no logic to it. Every posted set-up guide is full on individual quirks and skip huge sections. I'm working on the basis that as long as there's no unique data transferred to the drives I can't lose anything! Half the interface pop-ups don't look or behave as described anywhere.
 
mike_6480 said:
I use a HP Microserver with synology software. Means I can easy add additional hard drives to it and also you basically get a synology NAS for a fraction of the price
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Hi Mike - have you a little more detail on that you could share?
 
Cheers Mike, I'll take a proper look in the morning.
 
Okay that looked pretty straightforward, may skip esxi only because I believe there's a 2TB limit on drives in the free version.

Thanks again.

Edit: I think that may be incorrect, I'll go esxi, should be interesting
 
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JohnN said:
Okay that looked pretty straightforward, may skip esxi only because I believe there's a 2TB limit on drives in the free version.

Thanks again.

Edit: I think that may be incorrect, I'll go esxi, should be interesting
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ESXi runs nice on the Micro Servers, you can install it to a USB stick to install in the mobo slot (pick a fast USB stick as boot up can be slow)
only issue I have found is you don't have good access to the HP management agents for the RAID controller etc.

You can also buy a cheap licence off ebay and get full control of the built in management ILO for about £15
 
Yep, go with ESXi, the snapshot feature is very useful.
 
Cheers Pauls - its looking a good path and suspect I'll be ordering today\playing tomorrow.

I actually use VMWare at work and it can be lifesaver - I'm just a user of it though (build VMs, snapshot, add "hardware" etc), not a full admin so it would be interesting from that perspective too.
 
PaulF said:
Yep, go with ESXi, the snapshot feature is very useful.
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It is indeed, however I am not sure I would recommend running a NAS on top of ESXi for those viewers tuning in and thinking that.

I have actually built the my new micro server received last week with Windows Server 2012 Datacentre Edition with Hyper V.
This gives the best of both worlds, full management capabilities of the hardware with the virtual loveliness parked on top.
 
Datacentre edition! How much data are you storing :-)

Good fun setting it up though.
 
PaulF said:
Datacentre edition! How much data are you storing :)

Good fun setting it up though.
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Paul I (currently) work for HP so have full access to free MSDN so its all free for me :-)

biggest benefit though is it allows unlimited VMs dependent on resources.
 
Mr Bump said:
Paul I (currently) work for HP so have full access to free MSDN so its all free for me :-)

biggest benefit though is it allows unlimited VMs dependent on resources.
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Cool, I work for (and have for a number of years) a HP partner so am aware of some of the benefits. We're also partners to most other major manufacturers too, IBM, Cisco, Sun etc.
The benefits we have access to aren't quite as good though :-(
 
I am just contracting on one of their projects, have been for a few years up in Erskine.
Can't get any good deals on the microservers tho :-(
 
Hyper-V on Windows 10 Pro works pretty well in a home environment, I am busy virtualising my WHS2011 server & will then build a separate CCTV VM to run alongside hosting IP network cameras.

I worked for IBM on mainframes for 30 years & spent the last 11 years before retiring working as a school IT. School IT was far more challenging!
 
I have another random NAS related question. I just got a new laptop tonight - windows 10, it cannot see my existing NAS drive on my network. my other pc can see it fine, I can log into the control panel on the new laptop over wifi, but it just can't see it.. any ideas?
 
Yes, it's a Win10 thing - you will need to map it under Network. I've had this with two Win10 laptops recently. Without mine in front of me (away getting the screen fixed at the moment) I can't recall the exact procedure.

I'd start by right clicking on Network on Windows Explorer and trying Map Network Drive or something with similar wording. Get the IP of the NAS from your router and use that as the address of the drive to be mapped.
 
I've had that problem for four months or so. After the November update neither of my W10 PCs could see anything on the network including themselves. With a bit of work from me and MS (independently), this has now improved so that my Insider PC can see everything but my upgraded PC can see the shares on non-MS servers but not their contents which is close to your problem. I'm waiting for whatever was changed in the Insider version to trickle down to the retail.
 
A quick question for you EXSi\Synology guys.

At which point do you set up the RAID1?
I taking delivery of a server (HP microsover Gen8) and 2x 3TB drives today (in the next couple of hours by the look of it :)), but I'm struggling to figure at which point the raid is done and how I get the disks to Synology is it:
  1. within the HP itself using its inbuilt raid just after BIOS - Dynamic Smart Array
  2. within Synology
If it makes a difference I'm going to put in a 240GB SSD I have kicking about to boot ESXi from.
 
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@JohnN Raid can be setup in the server provisioning applet or just as you say on boot up, it should prompt to enter raid config F8 I think.
 
Thanks Paul

I just wasn't sure which way to go, I'd sort of guessed using Dynamic Smart Array might be the better option as I'll be using the HP flavoured VM anyway, then just let EXSi see the whole disk for storage and split up as I see fit with the VMs - no doubt I'll have more than just one eventually as I play a bit.
 
JohnN said:
Thanks Paul

I just wasn't sure which way to go, I'd sort of guessed using Dynamic Smart Array might be the better option as I'll be using the HP flavoured VM anyway, then just let EXSi see the whole disk for storage and split up as I see fit with the VMs - no doubt I'll have more than just one eventually as I play a bit.
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yeah pretty much, my esxi host was built from a bootable usb to a usb mounted in the internal slot and that is the preferred way I think.
I have a P410 controller running my mirrored 2gbs in a single volume.
 
Perfect - having realised now that I cocked up on my order (the floppy to USB power adapter will be the wrong way round :rolleyes:) I'm going to switch to running it from the internal USB using a stick - until I was poking around looking at the server this morning I didn't realise it was an option, in fact I almost went microsd once I saw the slot in there, a nice and unexpected addition.

Just waiting on the drives arriving now.
 
JohnN said:
Perfect - having realised now that I cocked up on my order (the floppy to USB power adapter will be the wrong way round :rolleyes:) I'm going to switch to running it from the internal USB using a stick - until I was poking around looking at the server this morning I didn't realise it was an option, in fact I almost went microsd once I saw the slot in there, a nice and unexpected addition.

Just waiting on the drives arriving now.
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yeah its not very fast to boot from I have an old Sandisk cruzer in it and it can take 30mins down and up again.
 
ouch... still hopefully it wont need to bounce too often.
 
JohnN said:
ouch... still hopefully it wont need to bounce too often.
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yeah I think the USB stick might be jaded to be honest, the last host I had booting of a stick zoomed up and down in minutes, perhaps you can report back.
 
Mr Bump said:
yeah I think the USB stick might be jaded to be honest, the last host I had booting of a stick zoomed up and down in minutes, perhaps you can report back.
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Hi - it took a bit but the boot time is fine I'm pleased to say.
 
JohnN said:
At which point do you set up the RAID1?
I taking delivery of a server (HP microsover Gen8) and 2x 3TB drives today (in the next couple of hours by the look of it :)), but I'm struggling to figure at which point the raid is done and how I get the disks to Synology is it:
  1. within the HP itself using its inbuilt raid just after BIOS - Dynamic Smart Array
  2. within Synology
If it makes a difference I'm going to put in a 240GB SSD I have kicking about to boot ESXi from.
Click to expand...

If you are going to be running Synology - not sure if it will read the built in RAID/BIOS setup? Synology have there own version of RAID "Synology Hybrid RAID" - which can be selected when you plug in the HDD's via the Synology GUI.
 
A bit late now, I just finished it :)

It worked fine, I built the disk as a raid 1 using the HP software, then used the entire disk in VMWare, set 2.5GB as an attached disk to it and all was good.
 
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I'd not heard of SHR before - it does look very good, not sure how they protect 9TB using a single 3TB drive - same principle as RAID 5 I guess, but I've no doubt they do - very flexible too - clever, however that would have only protected data on synology (which to be honest would have been fine as the other stuff will be play anyway), but RAIDing at root will also protect all the stuff on anything in the virtual environment.
 
Not sure how it all works, but been trouble free since i installed, well over the 6 month mark now. I see what you are saying allowing BIOS to do the RAID - are you installing a RAID card also? I'm relying on synology as the main OS - but i think i read you may have VM's etc so the option you are suggesting will be better for you. Good luck!
 
Professor1991 said:
What about personal cloud ?
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starting to sound like a sales rep now, but....

you have a number of options with synolgy - such as Clouds Station (by Synolgy) or OwnCloud, or bit torrent sync. Or you can have google drive or similar sync to the server.

For Windows OS you could try AeroFS etc
 
Right, old thread but I have finally decided to take the plunge with a HP microserver as they are still doing the £55 cashback.. so will it be fine running with the 4Gb of ram that it ships with? Is this the list as below

HP microsever - inc 4gb ram (currently £180 with £55 off)
2 x HDD - any suggestions? - 2TB to start, then can I add more as needed or replace?
Windows 7 license
USB drive for windows install
keyboard, mouse and screen - can this be done with a TV through HDMI? as I don't have a screen at home (laptop and AIO PC)

Also, can I use a mains network extender for faster data transfer from the server to my PC? or do I need to run cables under the floor?
 
To me Windows 7 is not server software; I use mine headless i.e. without screen and keyboard and did all the installation remotely using the ILO card and a boot image of VMWare ESXi, and then loaded up the various server images to make it perform and do what I want to do. To me I would choose first what it is that you would like it to be; do you want it to be a computer you use interactively? Do you want it to be a network server for applications?, for data sharing?, for printing? That should determine what OS you want to run on it.

Likewise for networking - I connect to a switch because I have other servers - The switch does have a gateway to connect to the router which has homeplugs inbetween due to the distance, but it all depends on how you create your local area network, what is where and what speed expectations you have. My most used devices are connected to the same switch that the Proliant (and Synology) are on, and get the full 1Gbps experience. Our home cinema plex clients also have a homeplug and the connection between that homeplug and my switch where the NAS/Servers are is 749Mbit/s which is sufficient for HD streaming.

Ultimately it all depends on what it is that YOU want to do with yours.
 
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