26 replies to this topic

[Anvar IT]

Hi All,

I've read here on the forum that the transfer speed (storage spaces) was not what it should be in the beta.
Can anyone confirm that the speeds have improved in the RC version?

Want to do a home server migration this weekend

Thanks for the reply

Edited by Anvar IT, 05 June 2012 - 01:25 AM.

[kittler]

I've been waiting for a good review here or somewhere else. I'm using drivebender but would love to change for a Microsoft solution just to be safe.

[krom]

That's kind of funny since it was Microsoft that introduced the data corruption bug in v1 back in the day. Just sayin'.....

[krom]

@Anvar IT BTW what do you mean by a home server migration? I hope for your sake you're not going to put your production data on 2012 RC. At least don't do it without a couple of good backups.

Personally if I were going down this road I'd pick a reliable hardware RAID solution along with a backup instead of relying on Storage Spaces or any of the DE replacements. I just think that would be a safer bet and more robust as well.

[Anvar IT]

@Anvar IT BTW what do you mean by a home server migration? I hope for your sake you're not going to put your production data on 2012 RC. At least don't do it without a couple of good backups.

Personally if I were going down this road I'd pick a reliable hardware RAID solution along with a backup instead of relying on Storage Spaces or any of the DE replacements. I just think that would be a safer bet and more robust as well.

Yes it would be a migrate for my home data. The problem for the moment is that I have multiple size drives (1TB - 2TB - 3TB), and my data (movies, music, documents) have a dedicated disc. But over the years the data has grow to size of 7TB with as result that some disk are quite empty (docs) and other are full (movies eg).
So I'm looking for a way to build a span from all my disks but with data parity and SRV2012 offered the perfect solution for that.

As a system admin I know this is not a good practice at all, to use an RC build but I'm running out of space and for the moment.

As for a good RAID solution, the controllers are not problem but the different size of disks are. This would mean that I have to replace all my 1 and 2TB disks to 3TB and this is not an option.
So software RAID is the solution, I'm going to take a closer look to ZFS to see how this could help me.

Recomendations and info are always welcome

[jmwills]

At least two of the forum members ran speed tests with Storage Pool from Server 8 and were not impressed. I really cannot see how that would have improved and not showcased as a feature in Server 2012. Just sayin.......

[ikon]

I know pcdoc ran tests and was not impressed with the throughput. That said, he was comparing to speeds he gets with an add-in RAID card. It's not surprising that the RAID card is faster than Storage Spaces, but the real question is whether Storage Spaces, or any of the Drive Extender replacements, is fast enough for your needs.

As long as your have enough backup, I think you could give it a go. However, I wouldn't chance it if I didn't have at least 3 backup copies of my data.

[kittler]

We are not talking about a 2006 product aimed to a very small base, this is the next server OS that will be shipped to production on all enterprise clients. I have no doubt that the chances of any data corruption (I've never had it anyway) will be none.

And speed may be a problem, but so is having to use and upgrade all same size disks.The question is: in comparison to real alternatives like Drivebender, how is the speed now and how it will be?
I see no reason to keep using Home Server and want to move away. 2012 promisses de-duplication (with will be great if I find some form of client backup on this), and Storage Spaces. On other works, this could replace home server V1 and, as a real server, do more.
I dont really care that much about performance: all I need is to stream 2 1080 movies an it to be steable enought so I have to access my server once a month or less. And if I can copy files to that drive at about 50MB/sec even better.

Edited by kittler, 08 June 2012 - 09:46 AM.

[Joe_Miner]

PCDoc's are the most current performance reports I've seen -- you may want to check out the TechNET Forums.

http://thedocsworld....erdict-for-now/

http://homeserversho...tripe-jbod.html

I'm planning to mess with it in the future to see what it does but it's a ways down my to-do list for now.

Good luck -- let us know what you learn.

[Anvar IT]

A little update, I've installed 2012RC on a Intel board with a Xeon 3450, SSD boot disk & 3 * 15k 146GB SAS disks. & few variating SATA drives

The installation & domain integration itself was quite easy, but afterwards the problems began. Installation of Remote Desktop Services failed multiple times, gave up after try n°5.
Then time to test out the Storage spaces, the creation of it was quite easy again. (best to read a few how to's at first) transfer speed was not that bad 55MB/sec local and 35MB/sec over the network.

After consideration and a lot off reading about the alternatives (flexraid, unraid, lvm, snapraid, ...) I've decided to go with a ubuntu server with LVM & snapraid.
Snapraid is used to create parity for the critical files like documents, other files are part of an LVM pool that spans the multiple disks.
Local transfer speeds now between the SATA drives are 130MB/sec and transfer speed over samba are +/- 70 a 90MB/sec.

So Ubuntu server is the way to go, the free solution wins and stays

Edited by Anvar IT, 08 June 2012 - 12:06 PM.

[ImTheTypeOfGuy]

Can you provide a link to the Ubuntu download?

[pcdoc]

I fell a bit behind after a hosing my server followed by a disaseterous Windows 8 install on my laptop. I still have the same three drives I used last time an will test the current version for any speed improvements.

A little update, I've installed 2012RC on a Intel board with a Xeon 3450, SSD boot disk & 3 * 15k 146GB SAS disks. & few variating SATA drives

The installation & domain integration itself was quite easy, but afterwards the problems began. Installation of Remote Desktop Services failed multiple times, gave up after try n°5.
Then time to test out the Storage spaces, the creation of it was quite easy again. (best to read a few how to's at first) transfer speed was not that bad 55MB/sec local and 35MB/sec over the network.

After consideration and a lot off reading about the alternatives (flexraid, unraid, lvm, snapraid, ...) I've decided to go with a ubuntu server with LVM & snapraid.
Snapraid is used to create parity for the critical files like documents, other files are part of an LVM pool that spans the multiple disks.
Local transfer speeds now between the SATA drives are 130MB/sec and transfer speed over samba are +/- 70 a 90MB/sec.

So Ubuntu server is the way to go, the free solution wins and stays

What configuration of storage spaces did you test? Mirror, Stripe, or Parity?

[Anvar IT]

I fell a bit behind after a hosing my server followed by a disaseterous Windows 8 install on my laptop. I still have the same three drives I used last time an will test the current version for any speed improvements.



What configuration of storage spaces did you test? Mirror, Stripe, or Parity?

I did use parity, think that the stripe will perform better performance but of-course no redundancy then

Can you provide a link to the Ubuntu download?

Download the latest server version http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server and if you're not good with the command line, install webmin after the installation.
Webmin can offer all the LVM functions needed except for resize2fs (when you need it, google it )

Edited by Anvar IT, 09 June 2012 - 02:31 AM.

[Mr_Smartepants]

Download the latest server version http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server and if you're not good with the command line, install webmin after the installation.
Webmin can offer all the LVM functions needed except for resize2fs (when you need it, google it )

Here's a link to instructions for the 12.04 version of Ubuntu.
http://www.ubuntugee...ise-server.html

Edited by Mr_Smartepants, 09 June 2012 - 06:20 AM.

[pcdoc]

I did use parity, think that the stripe will perform better performance but of-course no redundancy then


Download the latest server version http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server and if you're not good with the command line, install webmin after the installation.
Webmin can offer all the LVM functions needed except for resize2fs (when you need it, google it )

If you were getting 50/s with parity, you did far better than I had with my testing. How did you test and what benchmarks did you use? Would like to replicate your testing when I get that far.

[Anvar IT]

If you were getting 50/s with parity, you did far better than I had with my testing. How did you test and what benchmarks did you use? Would like to replicate your testing when I get that far.

For the benchmarks I did just use unstoppable copier (gives correct transfer rates) to see how the speed was in real life transfers.
In my home network I have implemented the lvm pool now, the wife loves her series so another week without them would result in problems

But I work for a MS developer company as system admin so in a week or 2 I will review the Server 2012RC for my boss. If you want we can compare the test results, if possible in a different or similar setup.
Most of my test set-ups at work are a Xeon 3*** with +/- 4 or 6GB DDR3, a RAID1 with 10k SAS drives for OS and 4 disks for data (will be used for storage poles in this case).

Here's a link to instructions for the 12.04 version of Ubuntu.
http://www.ubuntugee...ise-server.html

And a little tut for LVM in webmin http://www.havethekn...ion-drives.html
PS: havetheknowhow.com has a few good howto's for Linux servers. And if you need extra info just check my blog http://blog.anvarit.com or send my a message.

[Joe_Miner]

For the benchmarks I did just use unstoppable copier (gives correct transfer rates) to see how the speed was in real life transfers.
In my home network I have implemented the lvm pool now, the wife loves her series so another week without them would result in problems

But I work for a MS developer company as system admin so in a week or 2 I will review the Server 2012RC for my boss. If you want we can compare the test results, if possible in a different or similar setup.
Most of my test set-ups at work are a Xeon 3*** with +/- 4 or 6GB DDR3, a RAID1 with 10k SAS drives for OS and 4 disks for data (will be used for storage poles in this case).

And a little tut for LVM in webmin http://www.havethekn...ion-drives.html
PS: havetheknowhow.com has a few good howto's for Linux servers. And if you need extra info just check my blog http://blog.anvarit.com or send my a message.

If you didn't mind I'd enjoy seeing some of your test results -- would you post or publish to the forums?

Thanks,

[Anvar IT]

If you didn't mind I'd enjoy seeing some of your test results -- would you post or publish to the forums?

Sure no problem, have to put in a doc for the boss. So a copy / paste on the forum is no problem.

On another note, what does everyone think about the new interface? I found it quite hard in the beginning, a lot of messages and not directly manageable (just my 5 cents)

[ikon]

On another note, what does everyone think about the new interface? I found it quite hard in the beginning, a lot of messages and not directly manageable (just my 5 cents)

Like everything new, it's going to take time to adjust. I remember what a paradigm shift if was to learn how to use Win95. I don't think Win8 is going to be that hard.

[pcdoc]

For the benchmarks I did just use unstoppable copier (gives correct transfer rates) to see how the speed was in real life transfers.
In my home network I have implemented the lvm pool now, the wife loves her series so another week without them would result in problems

But I work for a MS developer company as system admin so in a week or 2 I will review the Server 2012RC for my boss. If you want we can compare the test results, if possible in a different or similar setup.
Most of my test set-ups at work are a Xeon 3*** with +/- 4 or 6GB DDR3, a RAID1 with 10k SAS drives for OS and 4 disks for data (will be used for storage poles in this case).



And a little tut for LVM in webmin http://www.havethekn...ion-drives.html
PS: havetheknowhow.com has a few good howto's for Linux servers. And if you need extra info just check my blog http://blog.anvarit.com or send my a message.

Sounds great. I too would love to see what you come up with. My test hardware is not quite as beefy but the pattern will be the same.