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This Summer, I will be installing a new server at a large middle school which is currently transitioning into a secondary school. Can anyone offer me some advice on what I should be including in the setup? I will have two host servers to play with. Both will run Server 2012R2 with Hyper-V VMs. My initial thoughts as to how to divide the roles needed are as follows: [TABLE=class: outer_border, width: 500, align: center] [TR] [TD]Host 01[/TD] [TD]vDC 01: AD, DHCP, DNS, DFS etc[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]vUTL 01: WDS/MDT, WSUS[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Host 02[/TD] [TD]vDC 02: Secondary Domain controller [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]vUTL 02: Sophos, Printers[/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] Host 01 will be the new server with 64GB RAM. Host 02 will be the current server, rebuilt from 2008R2 to 2012R2 and 24GB RAM. My initial thoughts are that I should be configuring DHCP failover. Are there any other redundancy features I should be building into the system? Or even any additional features that, whilst not necessarily offering redundancy, offer extra functionality to the domain? I also have two NAS devices to hold some form of backup. I was thinking of using the free version of Veeam to backup VMs (subject to storage space) to one NAS and then use the existing Macrium Reflect software they have to backup data to the other.

Not online backups, but taking backups offsite. How many of you guys actually take backup HDD's/Tapes etc offsite each night? I always have done, at present I'm taking 2x1TB encrypted drives off site every night, this isn't our primary backup, that goes to a NAS at the opposite end of school. But in the event of a whole school catastrophe, I have all the VM's and data etc and can be up and running once new servers are up and running. My question is (well second question), if I copied the primary backup (which is at the opposite end of school, on another floor, past more than a few walls that are supposed to retard fire) to a fireproof NAS/DAS would that be deemed enough of a backup so I didn't have to take backups offsite each night.

Just a quick post to find out how the fine people of edugeek setup your computers and storage for video editing. A little background. We have used Adobe Creative Suite in our Media department for a number of years and have setup a NAS where each student has a secure folder for saving projects, capturing footage, scratch disks and media cache etc... This system is not without flaws but it has worked very well for 5+ years. However with the uptake of HD cameras and content, which in theory streamlines the editing process, we are starting to see alot of systems crashing, hanging and generally being very slow when working on video projects over the network. I have discussed this with the rest of our ICT team and we have a number of ideas, I was just hoping that some of you may have implemented something that we have not thought of. Any advice or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

IPSec it seens might be what is causing our 2 NAS Servers not to talk to each other. Scenario 1. NAS in Town all users can connect to it. 2. NAS in Country only Town users can connect to it via the network. Now when Country tries to connect to the NAS they are unable to. How ever if they ping the NAS constantly they are able to connect to there own NAS we call COUNTRY. Town users can always connect to either NAS but normally send all there work to TOWN. Any suggestions on the issue? The reason its a big problem is the 2 NAS should be replicating. But cant do to the issue with the network not allowing users to connect to it without a ping. You help is greatly needed. Thank You! Mathew

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Please could you tell me the best option to buy. The price is below £6000 Thanks. 1.NetApp Storevault, S500 Base System, 2U, 12-bay Single controller, Dual Redundant, Hot Pluggable power supplies, power cords, fans, 1024MB DDR2 Memory, 256MB NVRAM, 2 Ethernet 10/ 100/ 1000 copper, 1 9-pin serial port. Network Appliance Data ONTAP Storevault Edition operating system, Integrated StoreVault Manager software, up to 255 snapshots, e-mail alerts, NIS, DNS, SNMP, NDMP, FlexVol. 2 Years NBD (Advance swap-out - Hardware only) warranty included. 250GB Hot-Swappable SATA Drive Module with driver carrier - minimum of 4 drives per system INT-S500-RAILKIT-A CIFS software license SnapRestore StoreVault Edition - currently FOC 9x5xNBD Advanced Exchange warranty (Hardware only) - Upgrade to 3 Years 9x5 Software Support & Maintenance - 3 Years 2.PE2900 III - Quad-Core Xeon E5420 2.5GHz/2x6MB 1333FSB English - Documentation and Rack Cord 1 PE2900 III Server Rack Chassis 1 Rack Bezel Assembly 1 16GB 667MHz FBD (8x2GB dual rank DIMMs) 1 PE2900 III - Additional Quad-Core Xeon E5420 2.5GHz/2x6MB 1333FSB 1 No Floppy Drive Option 1 73GB SAS (15,000rpm) 3.5 inch Hard Drive (hot plug) 2 300GB SAS (15,000 rpm) 3.5inch Hard Drive (hot plug) 5 PERC 6/i Internal RAID Controller Card (256MB cache, battery backup) 1 16x SATA DVD 1 Redundant power supply (2 hot plug PSU) 1 Power Cord, PDU (Rack) 1 Display : Not Included 1 Broadcom TCP/IP Offload Engine functionality (TOE) Enabled 1 No Mouse 1 No Keyboard Required 1 English Windows 2003 R2 SP2 Storage Server x64-bit, Standard Edition (HW RAID) With Docs 1 OpenManage Server Software, with CD & documentation 1 Upg to Silver 3Y (24x7) Premier Enterprise Support 1 You have chosen not to take the Dell PowerEdge installation service 1 Base Warranty 1 1YR BASIC NBD ONSITE 1 PE2900 Universal Sliding Versa/Rapid Rack Rails 1 PE2900 III - C3A - RAID1/RAID5 PERC5i/6i

I need a budget server that can accommodate 6+ hard drives to run a windows share. I already have the drives. CPU and RAM don't matter (as long as it can run server 2016) This is only going to be a share target for another server. I'll use the server tools to create a software raid. I'll probably run an £30 SSD or 2 for the OS. the old ml150s could do this but the new ones are too small and don't have the sata/power connections. otherwise I might look at a sinology box but I don't like proprietary systems (when things go wrong, a windows box can be troubleshooted).

We recently migrated our desktop/ documents redirected folders off our windows server onto our Synology NAS. All appeared to be working fine apart from syncing. When attempting to sync "the process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process" error occurs for every file. Having spent some time with Synology 3rd line support they have told me that the sync will not work as sync attempts to use the machine name account rather than the domain account to sync. With the NAS linked to the domain sync will not work with out removing all security. To which end they have suggested - Changing the account sync works with to a domain account, I can do this for SQL but not a clue about sync services any ideas? - Using a different product to sync, any suggestions for a department with no or very little budget? Is anyone else having issues between a domain Synology NAS and windows sync, I thought it should be possible with out issues but have been proved wrong.

Hi I have a problem with my NAS drive. the model is Buffalo Linkstation Duo LS-WXL. i cannot access my work that i have stored on there. so what i have done is taken both hard drives out and attached them to my pc via a SATA to USB converter unfortunately it was set-up using Raid 0 but the partitions seem to be there. so i did a Google search for recovery software. now i have seen one good one but i really cant pay the price. UFS explorer. it can see all my work but i need to buy the software to take the data from the drive. I'm sure there's a freeware alternative out there that could do just a good a job as a paid version. do any of you recommend anything Paid or free? but not too expensive just for a one of job. BTW im running windows 7 with the hard drives attached.

We are looking to add a NAS unit to our network as a central place to store videos, pictures, and other multimedia. I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations as to what unit would do a suitable job? Ideally, we are looking for a 1TB RAID drive that is robust. The plan is to then map these drives to user areas from the NAS. Cost wise, below £300 - I know this is low, but we don't have a huge budget for this. Any recommendations appreciated.

Hey all. I’m new to the forum and have been lurking and reading as much information as I can recently and its been really helpful. I would like to see what other people’s recommendations are for the best configuration of the equipment I’ve got. General details: I have created LAGs on the switches in the two cabinets giving 4 x 1GB links between the switches in the same cabinet and 6 x 1GB links between the two cabinets. The server spec: HP ProLiant ML310e Gen8 Xeon E3-1120-V3 3.10GHz 32GB PC3-12800E RAM 4 x 120GB 850 EVO SSDs (2 in Raid 1 running Server 2012 Datacentre hypervisor) 2 x Port built in 330i Gigabit ports 1 x 4 port PCI-e HP 331t Gigabit card Storage: Synology Disktation DS1815+ 24TB Red Pro (8 x 3TB) Im undecided on 1 12TB RAID-10 or 2 6TB RAID-10s I plan to run VMs as follows: 1 - DHCP, DNS, Active Directory 2 - File and print services 3 - WDS, WSUS and MDT/SCCM 4 - SIMS and FMS 5 - SQL Based student test system Im really not sure how’s best to configure the networking side of things. NIC teaming for 4 NICs shared to all VMs? Do some sort of separation for Outbidding and iSCSI? Any help would be much appreciated Cheers Phil

Monday monday monday......not thinking completely straight today and I'm currently configuring our Netgear NVX NAS to have 4 shares tech resources, backups, staff resources and student resources. For obvious reasons I want to secure each area so using the AD integration would be ideal. I've set security mode to Domain with ADS domain type set and joined, in the DC specify section I have put the IP of our curric DC. We run two Vlans with two DC's one admin, one curric the NAS has two NICS one configured for each Vlan. The NAS is picking up security groups from the admin DC but doesn't appear to pick up any groups from the curric Dc. It does however pick up Curric AD Users but I cannot figure out why it will not pick up our curric AD groups have I missed something obvious?

Storage Magazine has recently produced a great review about the brilliant Overland DX2 Snapserver. Well worth a read if you get a few moments. Just click here. The SnapServer DX2 is a high performance, scalable NAS server; and the first storage system in its space that you do not have to provision. With DynamicRAID, hard drives can be added or replaced at any time to grow existing storage pools. Volumes grow automatically as drives are added, simplifying the management and reducing the time required to adapt to changing storage requirements. Overland and Net-Ctrl are currently running a special limited time promotion on both the Overland DX1 and DX2 solutions, purchase an eligible SnapServer DX Series model and receive up to 4TB of capacity for FREE Send me a PM if you're interested in this limited time offer, or if you have any questions.

Hey everyone! I need some advice or feedback... We are a fast growing company that is outgrowing our storage needs, and are looking to upgrade. We are looking for a scalable storage solution that can: Grow with us and is easy to scale and maintain. Support different storage pools with different speeds and configurations to be tuned for our specific user needs (see below)... Designers: Work with large files such as psd, ia, and a little bit of video Video Editors: Work with everything from HD to 6k footage and need a lot of bandwidth for editing with streams from the storage server Business User: Work with standard business apps and files such as excel, pdf, keynote, ppt, etc... So the storage must be configured to all us to meet the needs of video, design, business storage, and dumb storage (archiving and backup). The system are looking real hard at is iXsystem for a TrueNAS unit. We posted a few questions about storage here, but I would like your opinion about the specs and if you think this solution is an excellent one. Have in mind that our main requirements are: easy to manage, easy and cheap to scale (grow as we grow). * TrueNAS Z35 3U (ZFS - NFS, CIFS, HTTP, FTP, iSCSI, AFP - Snapshots, Compression, Shadow Migration, Cloning, Remote Replication) - 16 x 3.5" Caching SAS Drive Bays - 256 RAM - TrueNAS Extreme-Performance Write Cache (SZR) - TrueNAS High-Performance Read Cache: 800GB SSD - TrueNAS 10 Gigabit Quad Port Controller - Zpool #1 - VM OS Storage - (5 x 400GB SSD) - 2 x 400GB vdevs in RAID10 + 1 x 400GB Hot Spare ~745GB Usable - Zpool #2 - Fast Storage (38 x 4TB SAS) - 18 vdevs (4TB Mirrors) in RAID10 + 2 x 4TB Hot Spares ~64.8TB Usable -Zpool #3 - Backup Repository (24 x 4TB SAS) - 4 x 16TB vdevs (5 x 4TB) in RAIDZ + 2 x 4TB Hot Spares ~58.4TB Usable Questions: This system is being quoted for around $90k. What do you think about the company, system, and specs? Fair Priced? How is ZFS file systems for a NAS/SAN and would it meet all our needs or is there a better option that you might know of? What concerns would you have? Can it scale well? Is there a much cheaper solution that we should look hard at? Thanks again and would love any feedback / suggestions (even willing to pay for consulting) Cheers!

Hi All, Currently planning the new virtualised server structure and intend to implement WDS to image and manage the desktop estate. Quickly realised storage for this and things like backups of software are going to push the limits of our SAN rather too soon, so wondered if anyone had any experience or knowledge of good NAS solutions? Ideally looking for rackmount, about 4Tb to start with, and needs to play nice with AD (Vanilla W2k8) and needs good transfer speeds. Look forward to your thoughts