Planning For A WHSv1 Replacement?

[ViRGE]

With the release of Windows 8 to TechNet, I suppose it's time to get off of my lazy duff and try to figure out what to do about my WHSv1 box.:| WHSv1 has served me very well over the years, but with support coming to an end here in January and the 2TB hard drive limitation rearing its ugly head it's not something that's going to get any easier to solve.

I'm thinking it's going to come down to either Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 Essentials, since I need the expandable storage pool functionality to hold all of my data, and file server functionality to serve it up. The problem is that with the file server role solved (to some degree, at least) I now need to figure out what to do about client backups; specifically, centrally managed client backups. Relying on the built-in Windows backup functionality isn't going to cut it since there's no data de-dupe and no notice about when backups are failing.

All of this pushes me towards Essentials, which I'm leery of due to the extreme price and the whole domain controller aspect. On the other hand, if I stick with Windows 8 it means I need to find a 3rd party backup system, which is itself going to be rather expensive. So neither option is a particularly great fit.

At this point I'm seriously pondering Windows 8, with WHS 2011 running in a VM above that. It's a bit heavy on the RAM (thank goodness RAM is cheap), but I suppose I could have WHS 2011 do the backups, writing down to the storage pool backed Windows 8.

Either way I can tell this is going to be a headache.:| So if anyone has any suggestions or insights into this matter it would be much appreciated, especially since I'm sure I'm not the only person in this boat.

 

[gmaster456]

Windows Server 2012 Foundation perhaps (supports up to 15 clients)? Although I don't know where you'd get it. It would have to be an OEM copy.

 

[ViRGE]

Foundation doesn't have a management GUI (seriously). So even if you could get it, it would be horribly gimped.

 

[JackMDS]

This seems to be a good creative solution - " Windows 8, with WHS 2011 running in a VM above that".

 

[MrColin]

Linux

 

[WelshBloke]

Linux

Is there a Linux solution that will automagically backup windows PCs?

I'm in the same boat as the OP and am really struggling to find a solution.

 

[notposting]

I've considered WHS in a VM, though I think maybe just Hyper-V...if I do that, I may switch to virtualizing most everything (HTPC, start using pfsense and/or untangle), and go forward that way.

Will probably wait until after everything is released this fall and see what some of the WHS sites say about the various options.

I keep adding more duties to my WHS v1 as well, especially since I picked up the two "25 projects" ebooks from WeGotServed recently.

 

[Paperlantern]

Is there a Linux solution that will automagically backup windows PCs?

I'm in the same boat as the OP and am really struggling to find a solution.

Crashplan

 

[Inspire]

I will replace it with Windows 7 or 8.

I already pulled off all of the data and I am testing WIndows 8 on the machine right now.

 

[ViRGE]

Crashplan

Crashplan loses me at "view ads or pay a monthly subscription".:|

 

[n0x1ous]

Virge,

I am in the exact same position as you. I have been running WHS V1 since release and its been rock solid and perfect for my needs. I ran it on an old E-Machines Athlon XP box with 2GB of RAM and a bunch of WD Essential External HD's. I skipped WHS 2011 due to no drive extender and while I followed the development of the 3rd party add-inn's (drive bender and stable-bit drive pool) I decided that I could not trust production data to these add-ins. So I waited and pinned my hopes on the wish that there would be a new WHS with Storage Spaces and I too had to now choose between W8 client and Server 2012 Essentials now that WHS is officially dead.

I weighed many points on both but in the end I decided that I am going with Server 2012 Essentials. I built a new box last week specifically for this and installed the Beta of 2012 Essentials.

New Server Box:

Gigabyte H77 micro ATX board
i5-3450S
8 GB RAM
Fractal Define R4
Corsair AX650
128 GB Samsung 830 SSD OS Drive
4 x 3TB WD Red NAS HDD (in a Parity Storage Space)

Hopefully some of my experience with the beta can help you make a call on this. Yes it auto-joins your client to the domain that you are forced to make (assuming Win PRO/Ult) however it works with Home Premium Versions as well which are unable to join a domain so clearly the functionality must work without being domain joined. I Installed the connector software on a win 7 ultimate x64 box and after installing the connector, I removed the client from the domain and put it back on workgroup mode. As long as the account name/password match a server login, shared folders are accessible no problem. Backups still work just fine. You need to add your router's DNS IP address to the DHCP Scope as a secondary DNS on the server otherwise you get no internet access after dis-joining domain but thats a one time issue.

So basically, despite a few wrinkles with the domain - the only thing that I am unhappy with is the price ($425), but considering I am planning on running this configuration for the next 7 years or so, I can stomach that one time cost after spending $1600 on the hardware.

It feels great to finally be able to use 3TB Hard drives and not worry about if they are AF or aligned properly. Oh one more thing. the requirements state a 160GB drive as minimum for installation, but its actually only 90GB (according to a developer on the project - they made it 90 so the requested feature of using 128GB SSD's for the OS would work) And I can confirm that its the case as it installed on my 128GB 830 without issue. Only used about 14GB from the clean install.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Linux + use rsync scripts to pull data off windows machines.

Setup a raid 5 or 6 with md raid and you can live expand as needed. It's a very solid system. The nice thing is that it's not proprietary. There's no special database or other thing being depended on that if lost, ruins the whole array. You can easily boot up with a live CD or reinstall the OS and reassemble the raid if you need to.

 

[dagamer34]

Crashplan loses me at "view ads or pay a monthly subscription".:|

Good, reliable backup should never be free otherwise they are pulling a fast one on you. Someone has to pay somewhere, especially when you are dealing with hundreds of TB of data for all your customers.

The last thing you need is some free solution you've been relying on for years go belly up right before your hard drive poops out. It's a lot cheaper than trying to recover data from an HD which will probably run you in the hundreds to thousands of dollars!

 

[ViRGE]

Good, reliable backup should never be free otherwise they are pulling a fast one on you. Someone has to pay somewhere, especially when you are dealing with hundreds of TB of data for all your customers.

The last thing you need is some free solution you've been relying on for years go belly up right before your hard drive poops out. It's a lot cheaper than trying to recover data from an HD which will probably run you in the hundreds to thousands of dollars!

I'm not against paying. I'm just not going to pay a monthly subscription. If they had a one-time paid version (local storage only), then that would be different.

 

[MrColin]

Is there a Linux solution that will automagically backup windows PCs?

I'm in the same boat as the OP and am really struggling to find a solution.

Yes, look at the FOG project on sourceforge (for image backups), or as stated, rsync for incremental backups of specific data. The built in windows backup would be capable of backing up to a network share on a schedule as well.

 

[ControlD]

I moved from WHS v1 to WHS2011 and finally to unRAID. I simply use the Windows built in backup and have it save the image files on my unRAID box. You can also use something like Acronis to automatically make incremental backups to the server as often as you would like. There are any number of solutions out there (CrashPlan as has been mentioned, etc.). One nice thing about unRAID is that you can easily add more data drives to the system, of any size as long as you have a large parity drive, which is a decent alternative to drive pooling. Unlike WHS2011 unraid runs quite well on low powered hardware which is also a bonus (dual core Atom 510 in my case).

 

[joutlaw]

I recently replaced my HP ex485. I was able to reuse a lot of my storage which kept costs down.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2249028

WHS 2011 is pretty nice and so far I like it better than v1.

 

[Griffinhart]

I've been using SBS 2011 with WHS v1 running under VM for backups. It has been working out pretty well for me. If SBS 2011 did backups, I'd use that exclusively.

 

[Paperlantern]

I'm not against paying. I'm just not going to pay a monthly subscription. If they had a one-time paid version (local storage only), then that would be different.

The free version does local backup to an external drive automatically with e mail notification of completion. For like a dollar a month you can do backup sets and a few other features like backing up to another computer offsite even. Im not incinuating someone should back up hundreds of TB of customer data with this thing, he's talking about A HOME SERVER here. It's a good solution. Once it's set up it just runs you arent looking at ads anywhere because you aren't in the software.

To each thier own, it's brilliant for my scenario, I save everything from every machine in the house onto my file server, the server has an external FireWire drive that crash plan utilizes as its destination. It keeps it synced on its own with no scripts, no scheduled tasks, no headaches.

Can't complain. If you are dealing with a few hundred meg to even several TB of personal data, I still recommend it. It's a hassle free, encrypted backup to an external drive.

 

[sep]

Currently using whs2011 until it is no longer supported or something better comes along. Need to upgrade hardware soon to take on more home server tasks. Old dual core conroe runs all server tasks and 2 vm`s and now need DVR for security.

Prior to this I was using acronis to make images weekly monthly for my non critical data. It seems you have many options.

 

[TheKub]

So I waited and pinned my hopes on the wish that there would be a new WHS with Storage Spaces...

Has Storage Spaces changed? Last I looked they worked at the block level and when you combined multiple sized drives into a pool you could only utilize the smallest drive equivalent (ie max pool size = smallest drive * number of drives).

 

[ViRGE]

Has Storage Spaces changed? Last I looked they worked at the block level and when you combined multiple sized drives into a pool you could only utilize the smallest drive equivalent (ie max pool size = smallest drive * number of drives).

That has never been a limitation for Storage Spaces as far as I'm aware of.

 

[nsafreak]

Linux + Amahi + Crashplan

It's what I use and it's been working great for me. Really once you setup the client program & server program you don't see ads again unless you have to pull the program up again to do something and that's something that I rarely have to do at all. It sends me a regular e-mail to let me know that backups are complete, or if they did not complete.

 

[TheKub]

That has never been a limitation for Storage Spaces as far as I'm aware of.

By happenstance I found the original article that I read. Perhaps it was not/no longer accurate?

http://helgeklein.com/blog/2012/03/windows-8-storage-spaces-bugs-and-design-flaws/

 

[JackMDS]

Upon the latest release of the Windows 8 Server line it seems to me that if money is Not the issue the initial suggestion of Win 8 Server Essential and Virtual added server is till the best option.

If price is an issue then I would go with Win 8 Pro.

It has both Storage Spaces and Hyper-V, so similar concoction can be used.