Just ordered the NAS for $150 and 4 1.5TB drives.
Reference setup by ahodge @ 11-20
Questions:
1) WHere will I store the WHS OS - if RAID5 4 drives is not setup yet
2) Documentation to setup RAID5 with OS included on RAID5
3) Does WHS contain mutiple containers?
Any other suggestions?
I think you're hosed.
A) WHS apparently cannot handle "drives" bigger than 2TB, so you probably can't put it on a 4.5TB RAID5 built from 4x 1.5TB drives.
B) The SS4200E BIOS doesn't appear to have the Intel RAID BIOS included - it allows setting the SATA drives as "RAID" but there's no sign of the BIOS utility to create the RAID sets. (I only had a single SATA drive in mine when I tried this though.)
I've been struggling with this one myself - WHS really wants to be installed (insists on it in fact) as a 20GB "SYS" partition (holding the OS) and a [DriveSize - 20GB] "DATA" partition on the first drive, with any other drives used for combination bulk storage with optional *FILE* mirroring. I've played with some other configurations, but they all involve lying and deceiving the Drive Extender service - which just doesn't seem smart in a box where one really wants reliability.
I *think* it should be possible to create a RAID set - perhaps using a WinXP or Win7 install on another drive entirely - and have the SS4200E BIOS recognize/deal with it, but I've not proven that yet. Even if it is, then you run against the 2TB WHS drive limit *AND* the fact that WHS really wants to do *FILE* mirroring. You could certainly turn off the file mirroring in WHS and rely on the underlying "RAID", but that may be painful in other ways.
If you do a default WHS install you're reliant on doing a "Server Reinstall" if your boot drive fails. Apparently this does work, but it's not the kind of reliability most of us expect when we hear "server"
Presuming that it *IS* possible to get the onboard chipset pseudo RAID to work:
I'm sort of inclined to try an do a mirrored boot drive via the BIOS/ICH7R pseudo-RAID to protect WHS against a boot drive failure, then put the remaining 2 drives in as "normal" WHS storage - i.e. with *FILE* mirroring. WHS will "waste" some space on/from what it believes to be the boot drive (the mirrored set) because it will mirror those files onto other volumes. The downside of course is that for 4 drives of capactity N, you'll only get 3N/2 effective space [2N mirrored boot set for N usable, plus 2N for drives added to the WHS storage pool individually gives 3N capacity, but since WHS will mirror all the files, you end up with half that effective....] so 4x2TB drives yields 3TB of effective space: which isn't such a hot deal IMO.
Alternatively one might BIOS mirror each pair of drives and tell WHS to do *NO* mirroring, which brings the effective capacity up to 2N. (4x2TB drives as two mirrored pairs yielding 4TB of effective space). Still not hot....
Of course if I'm wrong and WHS *CAN* handle > 2TB "drives" then your original idea is great: one BIOS/Software "RAID5" set for 3N effective capacity. (4x2TB drives for 6TB of effective space.) Unfortunately, what I've read suggests that a 6TB drive won't work in WHS. You'd probably also want a dual core CPU since that software RAID5 won't be speedy....
The final option is to punt and use the OS the way M$ wants you to: and get approximately 2N effective capacity (approximately since 20GB is pulled out for the OS). That's as "bad" as the two mirror sets approach as far as utilization, but you get the advantage of being able to mix drive sizes since WHS natively groks non-homogeneous storage chunks.
Can you tell I'm conflicted?
Richard