Next stage of my first business customer, getting a server set-up (storage, sage etc)

Mr-White said:
How have you set the sata controller mode in the bios ?
You should at least see the Seagate drive that it was shipped with, maybe check the connections or reset the bios.

MW
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Ignore the bit about not being able to see the drives now, thats sorted, just wanted to see if it was ok to use the build in Windows version of Software RAID using Disk Manager or if there is a more preferred version with better options (for free)
 
Software Raid will do if thats all you have available to you, Aslong as your backup routines are in place you should be oK on the budget your working from. Make them aware however that hardware RAID is always preferred, espexially if they outgrow this server and call you for the next one ;)
 
I believe the onboard one is a hardware raid controller so I'd be tempted to use that as long as there is some way of monitoring / reporting on the array.

If there isnt, I'd be using windows software raid 1 and monitoring the event logs.
 
I was under the impression that the NL40 hardware RAID wasnt that good performance

Will go for Windows that way I can set-up some monitoring.

RAID.jpg
 
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I haven't seen it mentioned already but under no circumstances try and host Exchange yourself for a business of 5 users with one server. That's what Google Apps was invented for.

If you want to make money on the offering because you are also providing support, migration services etc then register as an Apps reseller.
 
Yep it's only its testing stages at the moment ;) All mirrors are now synced, although i tested by shutting down and pulling out disk0, booting it up, when it was booting it was asking me to select which instance of OS, there was the main one, if i selected that it would fail to boot, if i selected the second boot record it works fine.

Not had a chance to play around with it today to be fair as i have prepping to go and terminate cat6 in a block of flats tomorrow. First time doing this on this scale, alone. Obviously not going to be done in a single day :p
 
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It will address the boot time on disk 0 or disk 1. By default its 0 and as you pulled the disk it couldn't find it. However as you found out you have a copy on disk 1 so you got the server up.

You said you have hardware raid available? Have you tried building with this and testing speeds? I'd go for reliability over speed. Can't be that bad.

HardwarE always over software raid.
 
Going back to my question previously from owners of this server, and similar setup, what is the performance like as I have read some very mixed reviews about the microservers hardware raid, also the monitoring what could I use to monitor?

I have used a microserver for a few years now as a physical box and now ESXI host, but have never tested the RAID side of it

I don't mind playing about but I have a busy week this week, if anyone has any useful stats or performance tests I would appriciate it if not ill look up tomorrow when I'm back
 
It's not hardware RAID, you can't use it with ESXi as it won't see any arrays (the RAID controller in it relies on software to work properly).
 
Ok so in order to use this onboard controller that uses the CPU (I hope this isn't going to put too much overhead on the processor

What software is everyone using? Free of course
 
It will depend what OS you require. Windows will support it along with a few versions of Linux I expect (RedHat/CentOS probably!). ESXi won't be supported as it isn't a 'hardware' RAID controller at all. More of a cheap software/firmware RAID chip.

You could certainly try it and see if it is better. Windows "RAID" will just use the CPU as well :)
 
Well this server in question for this person is running server 2008 and thats it.

If the Microserver is indeed using a sort of hardware/software raid set-up combined, what software am I going to have to use to get this working? (as above must be free)
 
Ok so in order to use this onboard controller that uses the CPU (I hope this isn't going to put too much overhead on the processor)
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RAID1 won't really be much CPU overhead and would be roughly the same as using Windows RAID1 would be anyway.
 
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I am having a few problems setting up this RAIDXpert, I am trying to basically set-up the mirror

So to clarify

I have so far

Enabled RAID in the BIOS, booted to server 2008 set-up, partitioned the first drive, there is the initial boot partition, the OS partition and the data partition. I have installed server 2008 on C

Booted in to server 2008 and installed RAIDXPert, I can log in to it, I like the email notifications it offers, however its only showing physical drive view which shows 2 x 1 TB drives, no portioning info

Then another view logical drives, again showing both drives, no partitioning info

I want to be able to mirror all partition's, but there doesnt seem to be any other views on this RAIDXpert to be able to do this?


EDIT: I think it may be because I needed to create the logical drives when I boot up using the on-board controller

raid1.jpg
 
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