WHS 2011 / Storage Server 2008 R2 / 2012 Essentials

[newfiend]

[Topic split from: http://thegreenbutton.tv/forums/viewtop ... 159#p40014]

FWIW I use Storage Server Essentials 2008 R2 which is a cloaked WHS2011 that allows backup of up to 25 client PCs.

That's it's main role with some space for archived TV.

Does this include drive pooling? just curious.. or is it the same as WHS 2011 and you have to use a plugin for pooling?
newfiend~

[STC]

No pooling. Same core as WHS2011, just a different look and less restrictions (Active Directory Domain join being one).

The location of the SSE box is in a separate building to the office and businesses fed by fiber / separate electrical supply etc.

My requirements are daily transparent PC backup only. Something which WHS2011 and this do very well, with an offshoot of storing some media on it. I also dump copies of SBS2011 Hyper-V daily images over to it.
I backup important data to the cloud and use this box mainly for local disaster recovery for client PC's. I figure when a drive goes it will be either in the Storage box or the client side, so I can recover either way.

I've already performed some fire drills and the solution works well.

[newfiend]

Would you mind explaining active directory domain join? I'm still new to server stuff.. Sorry don't want to get too off topic here either.. Apologies to the OP.

Sent from my Lumia 920 using Board Express.

[STC]

Here's a nice explanation.-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Directory

Most large offices have some sort of AD running.

It suites our home/work/office environment in a maintenance sense where I have quite a few clients and things going on.
Once time is spent setting up systems and processes, you can then spend less time administering everything and it pays off quickly.

[edited]

[Motz]

I would say if you are thinking of choosing you should go for the new 2012 essentials as it has all the features of WHS2011 but also is built on a brand new foundation. Now that I have had a few drives die in my WHS2011 I am making the big switch to Essentials. My friend did it and it is soooo much better.

[STC]

Agreed.
I have it installed in virtual to play with.
I use 2012 Standard running as core which hosts two live VM's.

Storage Server is solely aimed at the 11-25 client small office backup and storage market IMO.

The thread went off topic in so many ways sorry lol. I have already split it off.

[newfiend]

Motz.. Are you finding that your hdd's are failing prematurely in WHS 2011 machines?

Sent from my Lumia 920 using Board Express.

[Motz]

Motz.. Are you finding that your hdd's are failing prematurely in WHS 2011 machines?

Sent from my Lumia 920 using Board Express.

I have never had a hard drive fail in my life before WHS 2011... and in the last year since I have been using WHS 2011 I have had 3 different ones fail... including the OS drive as well. They are all new drive under 1 year old as well

Don't get me wrong I am not saying it is WHS 2011's fault at all, who knows what the issue could be.

[newfiend]

What Brand HDD's? just curious. I put these in mine.. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136792
newfiend~

[bob_p]

I shifted from WHS 2011 to WSE 2012 a few months ago.

WSE 2012 has some benefits over WHS 2011:

• You can handle up to 25 clients
  It will handle drives larger than 2TB
  You have more flexibility in storage through using combinations of RAID and/or the new Storage Spaces
  While it creates a domain, Microsoft provides instructions for installing clients without requiring them to be part of a domain
  For Windows 8 clients, it will provide file versioning support for user files stored on the clients, in addition to backup

I'm running WSE 2012 in a virtual machine on a Windows Server 2012 system.

The biggest challenge I had was getting backups of the WSE 2012 system disk. Windows Backup of the server itself seems a little finicky right now - and it took a few days to find a strategy that worked reliably.

But now that I've got everything installed - it's been running smoothly.