New Windows Home Server Product Announced

[Aaron Ledger]

Original Article Link

The product naming up in Redmond is astonishing sometimes.

[mikinho]

I’ve been using it for a while now and honestly I really like it for home use.  Having a relatively cheap SAN via iSCSI solution is nice.

[robinhoody]

thats awesome for home use, I bet its even more useful in a very small business with less than 25 users thats perfect. 

[Anonymous]

[quote=”Mikinho”]
I’ve been using it for a while now and honestly I really like it for home use.  Having a relatively cheap SAN via iSCSI solution is nice.
[/quote]

For the iSCSI, are you able to provide access to a local physical disk or instead do you locally create a VHD which is then accessed on the network as a HD?  I assume that you are limited to creations of VHD(s).  Assuming that is the case, do you have any thoughts on usability, performance, etc.? 

I’ve used the free version of StarWind iSCSI.  I preferred providing access to the entire physical disk, which I was able to do during the initial 30 day review period, instead of my current use of VHDs.

[mikinho]

You are not limited to VHD.  Right now I only have two iSCSI targets, 1 is a RAID6 array for my media and the other is a dedicate WD Black as my data drive on my development system.

I’ve been wanting to evaluate iSCSI Remote Boot so I can remove all the hard drives out of my bedroom HTPCs but I don’t want to test it until I get a managed switch and I can’t afford that right now.

In terms of VHD usage for recording….I did do that for a while and had no performance issues.  I would only recommend it if with fixed VHDs and if your hardware supports VT-d (Intel) or AMD-Vi (AMD).

[Anonymous]

Interesting.  Previously, I had taken a look at the iSCSI target that comes with Storage Server 2008R2 and I thought that it only allowed the use of VHDs.  I’ve reinstalled the iSCSI target on my 2008 R2 Server, which is VT-d capable, and I am only seeing a dsicussion of VHDs.  Below is the info from the help screen:

With Microsoft iSCSI Software Target, an iSCSI target provides storage to an iSCSI initiator by controlling and managing initiator access to the iSCSI Software Target storage services. When you create an iSCSI target, you identify the iSCSI initiator that can log on to the iSCSI target. After creating an iSCSI target, you can change which iSCSI initiators can access the target and configure other properties, such as enabling authentication. You can also manage iSCSI targets by using Microsoft iSCSI Software Target VDS Hardware Provider and a management application, such as Storage Manager for SANs, that uses this provider.

[u][b]Disk storage for an iSCSI target is provided by creating or importing virtual disks. You then assign one or more virtual disks to each iSCSI target. After you assign a virtual disk to a target, the iSCSI initiator can access all the virtual disks that are associated with the iSCSI target when the initiator logs on to the target. If the initiator is not logged on to the iSCSI target, it cannot access any virtual disks. [/b] [/u]

[mikinho]

Are you running RTM?  I’ll following up tonight.  I’m currently disconnected from my home network.  I’m part of the Comcast IPv6 beta and it hasn’t been going well the last few days.

[Anonymous]

[quote=”Mikinho”]
Are you running RTM? [/quote]

I’m running Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard.  I installed Microsoft iSCSI Software Target Version 3.3.16544 by extracting the installer from the *.iso for Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Embedded (Standard, Enterprise, Workgroup) with iSCSI Software Target 3.3 (x64) – DVD (Multiple Languages). 

One more thing – as mentioned in an earlier post, I was able to use a full HD with iSCSI when I was using the StarWind iSCSI target.  As a result, I assume that I am either using the wrong iSCSI target or I am missing the settings when creating the target.

Similar to you, I am interested in moving the recording hard drives from my MCE clients to a SAN.

[Author]

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