Windows home server 2011 powershell

I then moved down the path of scripting. After a bit of research I decided that PowerShell would be the best option with VB scripting being the second choice for me based off my current knowledge. I decided to go with PowerShell because that is the native task automation framework built into Microsoft Server and Windows 7 which I assume most of the WHS users are running Windows 7 client machines.

I have not given up on searching for a way to add value and increase the functionality in the home storage space. I have started the discovery phase again with the expansion of the remote WHS website shelved work there for me to explore more on as well if I choose. WadeTech My Copy! Share this: Pocket. Like this: Like Loading Firstly is because my case supports up to ten drives and I need to be able to make sure I have the capacity to make use of those slots.

In my design, I am going to be using both controllers to serve two different purposes in two different RAID modes. Drives labelled OS indicate drives used for the OS. The Operating System functioning is critical to the machine for obvious reasons, so it needs to be protected, but at a limited cost. The Windows Home Server installation automatically creates a 60GB partition for the operating system and allocates the remaining space to a D: partition which is by default used for your own personal data.

The Data in the case of the Windows Home Server environment is the critical piece: Shared copies of pictures, music, documents and digital video library are all stored on the server.

These files need to be protected from drive failure to a good degree, and also need to be readily available for streaming and transfer to and from the server. This controller offers the ability to use RAID unlike the on-board controller and will be a much higher performing controller which will reduce any bottleneck in the underlying RAID technology.

With two disks serving each half of the stripe, the performance will be impressive, and should theoretically outperform the expensive and high power consuming Black Edition drives from Western Digital. Once built, the provided Silicon Image management software can be installed on the server and can help generate alerts to provide warnings when a drive has failed so that it can be replaced as soon as possible to ensure that the data is protected.

I needed some resilient storage for data i need to have safe — documents, pictures, home videos, that kind of stuff. After lot of going back and forth, some unsuccessful attempts, i came up with a solution of creating a parity drive of taling up just above GB of each of the 3 drives, giving me in the region of 1.

To achieve this, i used this powershell command:. The one difference is the -NumberOfColumns switch which i used to specify i only want to use the space on the 2 TB drives — otherwise it created a tiny drive since it was also trying to use the small remaining space on the 1TB drive.

To check the current usage of the storage pool volumes i just run get-volume command. This has been quite a journey for me. I have to say that with this experience my view on Powershell has completely changed. This was the tool that ultimately allowed me to reach my goal. The other note i have is what i came across on some posts in relation to the performance of Parity volumes on Storage Pools. You can find plethora of posts complaining that the write performance of this type of volume keeps jumping up and down.

The performance of Simple volume was much more constant. Installing Remote Server Administration Tools So what you normally do is you open the search engine of your choice, type in Remote Server Administration Tools download and off you go.

Virtualizing the disks Next step was converting the data on the physical disks to VHDs. Server management As mentioned at the beginning of the post, configuring remote management of the Hyper-V server seemed to be simple. Had i known before i started… There are different approaches depending on whether the server and management workstation are in domain or workgroup, and so on.

Conclusion This has been quite a journey for me. Discussion disabled.