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A quick note, AdminiMe 2012 for the original Windows Home Server (Windows Server 2003 based kernel) has been released. I have covered AdminiMe a few times (also here for an upgrade), and it is an add-on I use in my Windows Home Server. Here is an excerpt of the changes: Continue Reading

One question I have been getting a lot lately has been whether or not I think Apple’s iCloud is going to be the end to the SMB/ Home storage server market. After all, many users do store their music, pictures, contacts and documents and etc. are often stored on network attached storage (NAS) devices. One thing users are constantly forgetting is that in the US, the majority of broadband connections are still unmetered, meaning incremental traffic does not incur an incremental fee. In other countries, this is not necessarily the case and data usage fees are going to fundamentally shape the way people view cloud services.

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After Microsoft released its free iSCSI target for Windows Server 2008 R2, we posted a guide on how to install the iSCSI target software on a server. The next logical step was to create a guide for creating a target. To simplify the demo a bit, I also decided to use a virtual disk. Continue Reading

Recently Microsoft released an iSCSI Target for Windows Server 2008 R2. This is something that many users have requested for a long time, and with the introduction of Windows Storage Server 2008 R2, it became a logical add-on to offer with Windows Server 2008 R2. Perhaps the best part of the software is that Microsoft offers this software with attractive pricing, in that it is free!

One can get information about the Miscrosoft iSCSI Target and access the download on TechNet. Continue Reading

One of the biggest storage management advancements in the past years has been the (re-) introduction of thin provisioning. Practically speaking, thin provisioning is one of the many technologies that have transformed some aspects of the age-old problem of storage utilization. Since storage utilization is a rough metric used to determine the amount of data, compared to actual capacity, a storage system is storing at any given time. Users and organizations with high storage utilizations therefore have less waste and are better utilizing a capital asset. Continue Reading

These days, IPMI 2.0 with KVM-over-IP functionality is virtually a requirement on server boards unless one is using an external KVM-over-IP unit plus an IP switched power distribution unit. Being able to remotely administer not just the operating system, as one can with tools like SSH/ Telnet, VNC and Remote Desktop clients is a huge advantage when things go awry. With the new onboard management features, one can power cycle a machine, change BIOS settings, change RAID controller firmware settings, flash cards using DOS based utilities, and recover from operating system kernel crashes where the OS fails to boot, all without having to physically be near a server. Last year, I needed to access some critical data on a server that experienced a Linux kernel panic and was able to remotely reboot and fix the machine, located in California, while on a business trip in Amsterdam. Being able to perform these tasks is generally well worth the $30-50 vendors charge for the functionality. This article will focus on Tyan’s onboard WebGUI allowing one to perform similar functions remotely. Continue Reading

One of the great new features in Microsoft Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (SBS2011E) is the ability to backup the system drives easily. This was a feature that Windows Home Server v1 was generally lacking and is something that users have taken for granted at this point with newer, more full featured versions of Windows Server platforms. Microsoft has been doing a great job of making server administration easy for the novice in SBS2011E and Windows Home Server 2011 and includes a simple dashboard interface to create backups. This guide will show, using the current beta version of SBS2011E both the easy way to configure backups and the more full featured, but harder way. Continue Reading

One important storage principle that many people forget is that RAID is not a backup solution, it is a method of achieving performance targets, redundancy, and up-time. Users backup their PCs to their local servers, but often forget to backup server data off-site. This is especially concerning for any data using the local server as primary storage. One option employed by users is to backup server data to the cloud which provides a redundant, off-site backup solution. Cloudberry Labs’ CloudBerry Online Backup for Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (code name Aurora) is a program that automates cloud backup and also automates server backup to a network share. Continue Reading

One of the biggest new features in Service Pack 1 for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V users is the new Dynamic Memory functionality. Instead of partitioning physical memory into separate silos for each virtual machine, Dynamic Memory basically allows the Hyper-V hypervisor to allocate a pool of memory to be used for various virtual machines and then allocate that memory based on needs. I have heard claims of 40% or better improvements in virtualization density (number of virtual machines on a physical machine) with Dynamic Memory, but in the past week I have only been able to increase density on my test machine by 25%. This of course varies by VM type and workload, but that is a respectable gain nonetheless. This guide will cover the basics to Dynamic Memory in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V installed. Continue Reading

One thing that virtually every major storage player and enterprise has been using for the past few years, and is continuing to use, is a tiered storage approach. This is mainly due to the fact that lower capacity, higher-cost drives tend to have higher performance than larger and less expensive alternatives. The basic premise is to have the most frequently used data stored in the fastest accessible physical storage so that more transactional requests can be accomplished quickly. Augmenting this fast storage is lower cost, high-capacity storage that keeps less frequently stored data online. This guide is meant to be a primer on how this works in a few common scenarios for small businesses and home servers. It should be noted that for home servers primarily storing media files, tiered storage makes less sense since waiting a second or two extra to do hours of relatively low bandwidth sequential transfers is not taxing on storage subsystems. Continue Reading