WHS - First build

I found out about Windows Home Server (WHS). As of this writing, they are just coming out with version 2 (code named Vail) of this product.

The product allows you to:

1) Backup up to 10 PC's in your home (very nice backup by the way) with bare metal restore CD capability
2) Provide RAID-1 like file level duplication of shared folders
3) Provides Media sharing capabilities to devices like the XBox 360.

While is it not 100% DLNA compatibile, it is possible to add in components which will make it DLNA compatibile. Also, there are other add-ins that let you do things like Torrents etc.

The RAID-1 like functionality is called Drive Extender - very cool in that you can just use any drive lying around, plug it into the WHS and make it part of the storage pool. The Drive Extender will automatically make a duplicate copy of the file onto another drive in the pool. Microsoft does not support the use of RAID controllers at all with WHS. However, you can easily build a system with them.

When building a WHS system and considering using RAID instead of the builtin Drive Extender you have to think about a few things:

- Drive extender is automatic and works across different sized drives
- Drive extender means that you end up with 50% of the space
- Mixing hardware RAID and Drive Extender will be a big space waster

There is no way to say that a specific shared folder should reside on a certain volume - thus if you make a RAID-5 and combine it with other drives, you will still end up losing 50% of the space on top of the single drive you lost with the RAID-5.

You should either go all with Hardware RAID or all with Drive Extender. The exception might be the boot drive...I would seriously consider using RAID-1 for the boot drive.

Anyway...I took an old machine, put 5 320 GB drives I had lying around, added 3 2 TB drives I bought from Newegg along with a Highpoint JBOD controller and a couple of 1 TB USB hard drives. I now have a system with 8 TB of space. After about a month, I have 1 TB free, 3.6 TB of used space and 3 TB of space used for Duplication.

For my next buiild, I want to get the Norco 4220 case and use a real Hardware RAID controller like the Highpoint RR3540 controller - 16 drives.

Since the biggest cost in the whole thing is hard drives, I want to maximize my cost per unit of space.

Here is the math (I am only listing the items that would be different in the build):

If I do 20 drives using the WHS Drive Extender, I need 2 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards and then the rest of the drives are connected via the MB.

Cost - 2 * $110 = $220
Cables - $100
Total = $320

If I do 20 drives using the Highpoint card above and then one other 4 port card:

Highpoint RR3540 = $685
Highpoint 2640 = $120
Total: $805

Now....the cost of the drives is the same - 20 2 TB drives @ $140 each = $2800

So...total RAW space is 40 TB.

Using Drive Extender, I essentially end up with 20 TB of usable space.
Using RAID 6 on the RR3540 and RAID 5 on the 2640 I end up with 17 drives of usable space for a total of 34 TB. Or I could use RAID 1 on the 2640 for more redundancy. That still gives me 16 drives of space for a total of 32 TB.

Now...cost per TB

With Drive Extender = ($2800 + $320)/20TB = $156 per TB

With Harware RAID = ($2800 + $805)/32TB = $112.66 per TB
or with RAID5 instead = ($2800 + $805)/34TB = $106.03 per TB

Yes, I know I didn't include things like the case, power supply, motherboard, RAM, etc...but those things would remain the same for either solution.

So, while you might spend more on the equipment, you actually spend less per unit of storage with the hardware RAID. I also think that it is quite reliable - the drives have 3 year warranty, are hot-swappable with the Norco case and Highpoint solution, and with RAID 6 you can lose 2 drives and still have a working system. I think your odds of losing 3 simultaneously are very low. Even if you decided to leave one hot spare, you would have a total of 15 drives of space which is 30 TB and comes out to a cost of about $120 per TB which is still less than the Drive Extender method. You do lose the ability to just mix and match your drives and it doesn't make sense to try and use external drives (USB) and mix Drive Extender duplication with the hardware RAID. However, with a purpose built case and solution, I am prepared for sacrifice some of the flexibiilty for space and cost.

Also...to those that say you lose the ability to dynamically expand the storage pool, I disagree. The Highpoint card has the ability to do Online Capacity Expansion.

When I start actually building this, I will post some details.