We purchased 3 WD Sentinel RX4100 Servers. It came with Storage Server 2008 R2 Essential Operating System. This is the first time for me with Storage Server, but I like to know if we can use 2 Servers as Cluster and manage them centrally from our network. Also, I would like to know if there is any guide to configure the clustering it? Or, I would like to know how possibly I can use these servers for our best usage.
These servers were ordered by my ex-manager, and I have no idea what it was supposed to act as. I appreciate any help. I would love to use these servers at their best.
First, Microsoft does have an operating system called “Storage Server” which has it’s on set of bells and whistles. But This is not that. This is actually Server 2008 R2 with certain locks and limits. Like it is limited to 25 users and does not require CAL’s for those users. You may not install Line of Business Apps on it. It may join a domain, but Cannot be a Domain Controler.
My favorite use for the box is client PC backups. You run the connector install on a desktop and it gets a full backup each night. These backups are in a single Instance/de-duplicated database. As in I know a dude who is backing up 25 desktops and the backup database is on 500gb. You can restore single files or folders, or do a full BMR if the hard drive dies.
You can search SBS RWW or SBS RWA, Remote Web Workplace or Remote Web Access. But the box will provide a website from afar tto access files or desktops as well.
It also serves as just a plain ole NAS box. A place to put stuff :) Don’t know what capicity yours are, but they have some form of raid in case hard hard drive fails. But RAID is not a backup so you should perhaps have made copies from one box to another.
I appreciate your reply regarding this. The size of hard disks are 3x4TB with Raid 5 configured on it. With reading all of what you have mentioned, I understand that Clustering of 2 servers is NOT ALLOWED in this device. IS THIS RIGHT?
I have seen the PC backups option but I wanted it to make it more useful. Can I use it as a File Server?? What else features do you suggest me to do with these boxes?
Let me preface this with if you know anything about clustering you know more than I do. My take on it is you get 2 servers and connect them with high powered network to another box with the data. I never pursued it as that one box with the data was a single point of failure, why do it. Plus technet says Server standard which this is does not support failover clustering.
The only failover I like is new in 2012R2, hyper-v failover. So you have to run your server in hyper-V but it replicates to another hyper-v server over fast links as well as slow. Built in test failover, click to failover, just slick.
I have no clue what you need these boxes for :) Again, PC backup is why I use them. If you have folks that need to work from afar and you have port 443 available good stuff.
A file server of course. 8tb of space for “stuff” on each box. But if it is important stuff, you need to at minimum copy this stuff to another box or get a 3rd party soulution like shadow protect to back it up to one of the other bixes.
