WHS

Migration to WHS 2011, Part II– Data Duplication & Backup Plan

Posted on April 17, 2011. Filed under: Backups, WHS, WHS 2011 |

Data Storage Implementation

In this post I’ll explain my chosen data storage architecture in light of Drive Extender’s (DE) removal. I will also outline my backup strategy which has nothing really to do with duplication. In fact many WHS v1 users mistakenly thought of DE as backing up the shared folders on the server. Folder duplication does not protect your data from user errors like accidental deletion, etc. Any user error will be reflected in the duplicated folder thus the need for additional backups.

My WHS is the music, photo, and recorded TV hub for the household. Life would not stop if the server crashed but we would certainly have degraded performance and my IT credibility would suffer. I want the WHS to be back in business rapidly in the event of HDD failure. Therefore I have the OS partition on a pair of 250Gb drives in RAID 1 configuration. This allows for a 60Gb OS partition(C:) with a 172Gb mirrored partition left over. I use the extra partition(F:) to mount the Photos and Music folders via the WHS dashboard. If one of these drives fail I will be back in business with a reboot.

After playing around with the Disk Manager in Server 2008 R2 I decided to test out drive mirroring in the OS. Read times did not suffer which was my primary concern so I selected mirroring via Dynamic Disks. By mirroring two 2Tb drives I can have 4Tb of storage in my server with 4 hot swap drive bays. This is 2x more than I currently need and provides fault tolerance to all my storage. The mirrored pair (G:) is used for the balance of the shared folders on the server. This implementation effectively replaces DE but requires much more technical know-how to get it done. The “Home” is Windows Home Server is gone as far as I’m concerned. I hope OEMs fix this with some software additions to the dashboard.

Currently, Client Computer backups are being done on one 500Gb drive(D:) which is not mirrored. This is fine since presumably the data resides on the original computers if the backup drive fails. I would lose the backup history but I am fine with that level of risk. I don’t feel the need to backup my client backups. The 500Gb drive using one of the hot swap bays in the machine and will one day be swapped for a 2Tb drive.

The Server Backups are rotated to external HDD drives of 2Tb each (H:). One is kept offsite.

The storage picture is shown below in the Disk Management Console.

 

Backup Plan

When considering Server Backups you are limited to a Maximum of 2TB in total size. For those that rip CD’s and DVD’s as a convenient way to stream media this can be a problem. Media folders can quickly grow the backup size beyond 2Tb. You have to limit what you backup or use a 3rd party backup solution to work around this limit.  For server backups this is acceptable given the variety of solutions the WHS crowd is going to desire.  

To help understand your backup needs it helps to think of your content in terms of content & risk classifications.

Content breakdown

• Content Class 1 – priceless personal photos, videos, documents that are irreplaceable; add code repository if you’re a developer
• Content Class 2 – purchased music, videos, software and other data replaceable but at a cost of time or money (including content indexes & organization (i.e. what Zune Pass stuff do you have downloaded in your music collection today?)

Next think what levels of risk mitigation are required for your backups. This will be a primary driver for you backup solution be it cloud based, offsite storage, or simply on another HDD on the LAN.

Risk Mitigation breakdown

• Risk Class 1 – Theft of content results in personal loss (identity theft, continued charges for services, etc.)
• Risk Class 2 – Destruction of content via fire or other natural disasters at single physical location
• Risk Class 3 – Loss of single hard drive or system
• Risk Class 4 – User error/data corruption

One or more of these Risk Mitigation Classes may apply to your data. Each has different implementation solutions.

Risk Class 2 & 3 are easy to get your head around. The content is destroyed at one physical site or drive as result of natural disaster or system failure. Site destruction requires an offsite solution. WHS can help with this via CloudBerry & KeepVault Addins, or you can take control with manual rotation of backup drives. Don’t forget to store your cloud credentials somewhere safe like your head, parents house, and/or a fire-proof/water-proof vault.

Class 1 is data theft versus data destruction. Think of someone walking off with your laptop, desktop, server, etc. Your data is not just gone, it is in the hands of those that can misuse it.  Your data must be first encrypted locally since the laptop is in the hands of thieves. Again, Cloudberry, KeepVault, or manual rotation of backup drives can recover your backed-up content but not your laptop so protect your data at the source with Bitlocker or other encryption.

Class 4 is the most frequent threat and all content types need this class of risk mitigation. This implies that a series of backup snapshots must be maintained versus a single daily snapshot for example. WHS provides this by default.

Backup Storage Choices

My personal documents (Content Class 1) are the only things requiring Class 1 Risk Mitigation from theft. They are encrypted locally and pushed to the cloud with KeepVault. They are also on a the external backup disk.

My photos & Videos need protection from a natural disaster but no real personal/financial harm can come to me if they are stolen. Physical offsite backups have me covered but even backup systems fail. Therefore, I also push these precious items to the cloud.

I have the original media as a backup for any DVDs or CDs that I have ripped. I stream music & video on demand these days and rarely listen to physical media. I can’t remember the last time I bought a CD, DVD, or Blu-ray. This will be even more common in the future. If a fire tragically strikes it will destroy my CDs, DVDs, vinyl and even more precious non-digital things.  These items are Content Class 2 and are just backed up on the LAN as they are too large for WHS backups and too expensive to backup to the cloud. LAN backups protect me from myself in case of accidental deletion. Natural disaster is a risk I can live with for this content.

With the large media files backed up on the LAN, I can easily live with the 2Tb limit of WHS 2011.

Backup Storage Summary

 

LAN Backup Solution

There are many potential LAN backup solutions. If you go with CloudBerry Backup you get the option to backup to the LAN as well as the cloud. No such luck with KeepVault which allows backing up to attached drives or the cloud. This may work if you have enough external HDD capacity attached to your WHS. I needed another cheap solution. Since I was dealing with static media files a simple copy upon addition seemed like a good solution.

I found a well established shareware solution in Directory Compare. This software has a GUI when needed and is easily scripted. You can point it at multiple source and target directories to compare and take actions on the result set. You can Mirror the target to match the source including deletions. However this is not what I need. You can Update the target with new files found in the source. You need to also employ the Ignore Everything but filename & extension option in the comparison. Doing this protects you from corruption of the source files since the file will only be copied forward the first time it appears. Any changes in size or timestamp will be ignored.

Updating is the normal case for media files. Simply add the new content to the LAN backup(target) as it arrives and forget about it.  You can schedule a task to do this frequently. Sometimes you do delete media files from the source intentionally. In this case, I suggest you periodically run Directory Compare with the GUI and manually select the Mirror action. This mirrors the source and target deleting files as appropriate.  You have complete control and visibility with the GUI to override individual files.

This solution does not fully provide Class 4 Risk Mitigation since there is only one backup set. However, the content being protected is static and media files are only copied to the target when the first appear. They are not changed or deleted unless you manually intervene.

Summary

This implementation works for me providing robust backup and fault tolerance. You may have better solutions. Please drop me a line if you have alternate ideas. I’d love to hear them.

Dave

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