Storage Server Crashed - Backup Server Introduction

[nicklmg]

@nicklmg Wow, Intel Xeon Quadcore for the Amazon Link. So descriptive

I asked for part # clarification, one was not provided. In the video he just says "a quadcore Xeon."

[SimonZerafa]

HI All,

 

So was all of the data eventually found and determined not to be corrupted, or was any of the data lost from the server?

 

One assumes there is now a backup of that data elsewhere?

 

Was one 'interesting' video in the so called 'Chinese' sense of interesting :-)

 

Kind Regards

 

Simon

[Patrick3D]

When critical servers are designed, RAID card failure is planned for.  IT guys are anal about making sure that replacement cards are the same firmware revision and everything as the dead card to maximize the recovery chance.

 

Chipset raid wouldn't work well for SSD raid.  It also is limited to maybe 6-8 drives.

 

At a publicly traded corporation, sure; at a small private company run by 20-30 year old's with no prior enterprise IT experience, no.

[leadeater]

At a publicly traded corporation, sure; at a small private company run by 20-30 year old's with no prior enterprise IT experience, no.

 

Ouch, I can feel the burn all the way from here. It is true though, I even have spare cards for my servers at home just in case and I often purposefully break a design and fix it so I know how and that it can which means future setups that use it also can easily be fixed in the event of any failure. 

[TheRandomness]

I don't think I'd trust any PSU (redundant or not) made by Cheiftek.

[Shadohd]

I tried setting up my windows server for backup but I cannot find how to make it work in a workgroup.

 

In the configuration wizard, it's only asking me to setup a domain.

Linus mentioned a workaround to make it work inside a workgroup, but I haven't found one yet.

 

I've attached a screenshot of where i'm at.

 

Any ideas?

 

Yeah I hit the same thing which messed up my server a bit. Tried removing all changes after and it was left in a bad state. Finally got it working after a day of intense google.

 

From my googles tho, I believe the server will still be in a domain but the backup clients wont have to join the domain with a registry hack. https://tinkertry.com/how-to-make-windows-server-2012-r2-essentials-client-connector-install-behave-just-like-windows-home-server

[unijab]

If I was Linus, when he replaces the motherboard and sets that server back up... I'd take a slightly different route with it.

 

I'd get 2 HBA cards... Say the 9207-8i 

Then 2 SAS expanders... like the 36 port Intel one.

 

You'd need a backplane that was redundant for my plan to be most beneficial.

You would be limited to using either software raid or a file system like zfs.

 

But you'd be more protected against hardware failure... except for the motherboard.... again.

[Loud Software]

Yeah I hit the same thing which messed up my server a bit. Tried removing all changes after and it was left in a bad state. Finally got it working after a day of intense google.

 

From my googles tho, I believe the server will still be in a domain but the backup clients wont have to join the domain with a registry hack. https://tinkertry.com/how-to-make-windows-server-2012-r2-essentials-client-connector-install-behave-just-like-windows-home-server

 

Thanks alot for your help, I was able to do the registry hack on other Desktops to skip domain join.

 

Now all I have left is a laptop telling me that the server is offline.

 

But overall it now mostly works.

[Miklos]

Seriously, stop using unraid already, you would have had zero data loss had you used a HBA and ZFS (FreeNAS is a nice alternative to unraid in terms of UI) and you end up with an ugly hack like mirroring 4 drives then striping them, loosing the capacity of 6 drivers out of 8 due to inferior software.

 

You would have the same redundancy by using RaidZ3 across 8 drives only loosing 3 to redundancy. RAID 1+0 is never a good solution compared to ZFS, never.

[leadeater]

Seriously, stop using unraid already, you would have had zero data loss had you used a HBA and ZFS (FreeNAS is a nice alternative to unraid in terms of UI) and you end up with an ugly hack like mirroring 4 drives then striping them, loosing the capacity of 6 drivers out of 8 due to inferior software.

 

You would have the same redundancy by using RaidZ3 across 8 drives only loosing 3 to redundancy. RAID 1+0 is never a good solution compared to ZFS, never.

 

The failed server was 3 hardware RAID 5 arrays put in to a Windows Storage Space pool using a virtual disk with simple mode configuration. UnRAID has absolutely nothing to do with the server failure and far as I could tell from the video all data was recovered.

 

You are quite welcome to give constructive criticism of a product you think has flaws but at least make sure you are talking about the correct product when doing so. 

[Miklos]

The failed server was 3 hardware RAID 5 arrays put in to a Windows Storage Space pool using a virtual disk with simple mode configuration. UnRAID has absolutely nothing to do with the server failure and far as I could tell from the video all data was recovered.

You are quite welcome to give constructive criticism of a product you think has flaws but at least make sure you are talking about the correct product when doing so.

Fair enough, just with all the recent videos of unRaid I assumed incorrectly.

Doesn't change the flaws of the new build though.

[unijab]

The failed server was 3 hardware RAID 5 arrays put in to a Windows Storage Space pool using a virtual disk with simple mode configuration. UnRAID has absolutely nothing to do with the server failure and far as I could tell from the video all data was recovered.

 

You are quite welcome to give constructive criticism of a product you think has flaws but at least make sure you are talking about the correct product when doing so. 

 

the raid 5's were put in a software stripe (raid 0)

[leadeater]

the raid 5's were put in a software stripe (raid 0)

 

Storage Spaces simple mode is a stripe setup like raid 0. Couldn't find the video content where he said exactly what it was but I though I remembered Linus saying it was a Storage Spaces configuration not Windows software RAID, doesn't matter too much either way as the result is essentially the same. If you happen to know in which video it's actually mentioned I'd like to know, want to re-watch it and already tried finding it.

[unijab]

Storage Spaces simple mode is a stripe setup like raid 0. Couldn't find the video content where he said exactly what it was but I though I remembered Linus saying it was a Storage Spaces configuration not Windows software RAID, doesn't matter too much either way as the result is essentially the same. If you happen to know in which video it's actually mentioned I'd like to know, want to re-watch it and already tried finding it.

 

Based on this screenshot... he used disk management to create the stripe...

 

https://youtu.be/N0qtu5NXhuQ?t=4m55s

[leadeater]

Based on this screenshot... he used disk management to create the stripe...

 

https://youtu.be/N0qtu5NXhuQ?t=4m55s

 

Thanks, I was mistaken

[evrydayzawrkday]

Man so much hate on Nick..

 

To summarize what I read and saw:

 

1) The raid card fried, which in a normal case you could simply swap out the RAID card for a similar one with the same firmware (since the metadata is on the drives themselves, so you just need import the virtual disk) but..

 

2) The three virtual drives were a *sigh* in a Windows Storage Space pool which does stripping and

 

3) They got all the data back (basically mounting the individual volumes within Linux, probably more advanced than that but I am a Windows guy not a Linux guy)

 

Lesson learned:

 

RAID is never going to be a backup solution. Use backups (not directed at LTT, but people in general)

[unijab]

Man so much hate on Nick..

 

To summarize what I read and saw:

 

1) The raid card fried, which in a normal case you could simply swap out the RAID card for a similar one with the same firmware (since the metadata is on the drives themselves, so you just need import the virtual disk) but..

 

2) The three virtual drives were a *sigh* in a Windows Storage Space pool which does stripping and

 

3) They got all the data back (basically mounting the individual volumes within Linux, probably more advanced than that but I am a Windows guy not a Linux guy)

 

Lesson learned:

 

RAID is never going to be a backup solution. Use backups (not directed at LTT, but people in general)

 

If you havent seen the video on vessel...

The motherboard was likely what killed the raid card. It was continuously throwing pci errors.

 

The system had to be recovered with one of their test benches.

 

[lak]

Curious question for LMG. Given that your video production data as well as the underlying storage medium is such a valuable asset to the company - have you considered hiring a Storage/Backup infrastructure architect to actually review your infrastructure? It seems as though issues are being addressed on the fly and production stability of the storage/backup infrastructure is poor and unpredictable (I'll take this one back if an alerting system has been deployed to Prod). I understand this is an added cost, but would be something to consider in the near future as your data volume grows and the necessity for demand forecasting becomes even more critical - likewise for backup infrastructure.

[Terminashunator]

I hate to be one of "those guys" but I'm trying to set up Beyond Compare on my media rig, and any advice on how to set it up is greatly appreciated. The setup right now is a basic backup / sync, preferably every 30m or so, to backup my C (100GB), D (350GB), and E (3TB) to a dedicated Z (3TB) drive. I've tried to read the FAQ and Beyond Compare site, but it's a little above my pay grade.