ServeTheHome – Intel Xeon AMD Opteron RAID Controller Reviews

In previous articles we have shown how to set up a basic Hyper-V virtual machine that works with FreeBSD and FreeNAS as well as how to configure the Hyper-V VM and boot FreeNAS in it. The next step of course is to install FreeNAS to a vhd, so it no longer needs to run off of the LiveCD. This is primarily important so you can configure FreeNAS and save that configuration through reboots. Also, as FreeNAS seems to only work with drives attached to the IDE controllers, installing FreeNAS to a vhd allows one to free up one IDE channel for another drive (by removing the default DVD drive).

Continue Reading

To install FreeNAS in a Hyper-V virtual machine one needs to do some configuration of the virtual machine, just as one would with a physical machine. Allocating hardware resources is much easier in Hyper-V versus physical machines because you can do it remotely through screens instead of physically taking a box offline and installing hardware. This guide will show the basic Hyper-V virtual machine setup for installing FreeNAS, an open source NAS appliance based on FreeBSD.

Continue Reading

As many have read, I have been trying different NAS solutions on the Big Windows Home Server. This guide will show the base procedures for installing open-source NAS/ SAN appliances such as FreeNAS, OpenFiler, Ubuntu (and other Linux distros), OpenSolaris (and variants such as CentOS) into a Hyper-V VM. 

For this guide, I will be using screenshots from the Hyper-V manager in Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2. Microsoft offers a free Hyper-V Server R2 product for those that want to try and do not have access to a Server 2008 R2 testbed. Later I will detail installing the OS’es onto the Hyper-V platforms, but I wanted a base article that showed the basics so I can link rather than duplicate later (think of this as WordPress Dedupe). It should be noted up-front this guide is for a non-Windows Hyper-V installation. Also, everything below can be changed as necessary for your environment/ installation. 

Continue Reading

Now that the Big WHS is stable, and I have a bit more storage capacity than I need, I decided that Windows Home Server running virtualized in a Hyper-V virtual machine is good, but I wanted to test out some of the free WHS alternatives. A quck listing of the NAS operating systems installed on the current box shows is:

1. Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 hosting, using Hyper-V:
2. Windows Home Server (My WHS VM)
3. FreeNAS
4. OpenFiler
5. unRaid
6. CentOS
7. EON
8. Ubuntu

A complete NAS: Hyper-V, WHS, Windows Server 2008 R2, CentOS, unRaid, Openfiler, Ubuntu, FreeNAS, EON all on one machine

Continue Reading

I had heard rumors of 32 drives being the limit, so I figured, why not? I had more than 32 1.5TB and 2TB disks in hot swap bays, and could easily handle the connectivity. Plus, since I am booting the new WHS from a VHD, I knew that WHS could mount VHD’s meaning I could somewhat quickly test 32+ disks with VHD’s and 32+ physical disks, and also virtualized and standard configurations. See the below picture for what this looks like:

Here are a bunch of VHD's in Hyper-V that were used for testing

HP has created what to some will certainly be a killer add-in. The add-in allows a user to transfer files from the TiVo to the MediaSmart WHS and back and then also watch shows from any PC or Mac provided you use the correct software for TiVo’s DRM.

Continue Reading

Things have been progressing on the Big WHS front. First off, my main PC is now is using the WHS Connector software and has back-ups scheduled on the new WHS. The old WHS is still assembled, but it is not powered on at this point, just in case something goes wrong with the current setup. I also decided to play around with some other popular NAS/SAN solutions while I was at it.

Here’s a quick screen shot of the Windows Server 2008 R2 hosting Hyper-V virtual machines with Windows Home Server, OpenFiler, and FreeNAS:

Windows Server 2008 R2 with WHS, FreeNAS, and Openfiler in Virtual Machines

Continue Reading

Just as a note to anyone running multiple large disks in Raid 6 for Windows Home Server. I was setting up new Raid 6 arrays on the WHS this weekend, controlled by an Adaptec 31605 and was greeted by a nice error message. WHS is limited to four volumes per physical drive using basic discs. A quick search of the Adaptec site showed the problem and a proposed fix, dynamic disks. While this would be great under normal circumstances, WHS does not play well with dynamic disks.

Continue Reading

Microsoft Windows Home Server allows for multiple user accounts, and each user account can be set up with different permissions to various folders. This can be an invaluable tool to restrict access to documents and folders on a WHS. First the list from least to most access is:

1. None – The user cannot view or otherwise modify files in the shared folder.
2. Read – User can view files, and do things like open the files, but cannot move, modify, add, or delete them.
3. Full – User can open, add, remove/ delete, modify, move files and sub-folders Continue Reading

Recently I received a question regarding how much memory (RAM) is supported in Windows Home Server.

The answer is fairly straightforward. Microsoft built WHS upon the Windows Server 2003 32-bit kernal. Practically speaking, this means that WHS does not have support for RAM amounts greater than 4 gigabytes (GB) thanks to Physical Address Extension (PAE). Continue Reading