Windos Home Server (Vail) on DELL R210/R310

As Vail is based on 2008 R2, there should be no reason why it shouldn't run on an R210 or an R310.  You should be able to use the 2008 R2 drivers on the Drivers and Downloads page for that server for any device not already part of the driver database.

Just looking down the road of this project ... what RAID controller do you plan to use?  And what disk configuration/storage space did you hope to have?

I'm not planning to use any RAID controller.

WHS uses the so called data pool where all HDDs are use as a special kind of software RAID.

I plan to have about 6TB storage in total (RAID 5 maybe).

My PCs:

Alienware Aurora ALX 2TB

XPS 420 1TB

Inspiron 530 500GB (RAID 1)

Dimension 9150 320GB (2x 160GB)

Acer Aspire 5xxxG 320GB

MacBook 250GB

6TB should be enough.

Chiller3333

Having a RAID controller won't affect that.  Windows will only be aware of the logical drive (array) created and handled by the RAID controller - it will not be aware of the individual disks attached to it.  It simply will provide a dedicated processor to make the writes to multiple disks, helping keep your data safe without the need for the OS to do any extra work.  You then would not need to run software RAID from Windows (nor should you).

Maybe you are already aware ... watch out for the 2TB limitation of an MBR disk.  You cannot boot to a partition that is larger than 2TB unless you enable and install on an EFI-enabled system (not BIOS).

Sounds like fun!

I would go with a tower server, more option to expand in the future. i use a small sc440 for WHS v1 and i've crammed 4 disks into it and it runs fine.

Raid is not supported but that doesn't mean you can't use it. WHS is designed for the home user and raid is considered for the commercial market. Microsoft wrote the disk extender part with that in mind and it provides file duplication across physical disks. In VAIL the disk extender has been re-written and now uses a different format from V1. The overhead in used space is around 33%. So raid and disk extender will cost space on your total storage. Also having a raid card will create some challenges during installation.

Vail is beta, so don't trust your important data to it..

There are some user forums here which are good, the vail forum has info about the disk extender.

I just remembered this 2TB bound.

I'll use the onBoard RAID controller and WHS will manage all the HDDs including redundance.

I wnat to use a Rack Server because we'll have a Rack Case in the basement where also the switch etc. will be located in.

I know that Vail is beta. We'll move to the new house in about 1 month. I'll wait for Vail to be released before I'll buy the server.

Granted, I haven't played with Vail yet (used V1 for a bit), but I'm not sure I understand how hardware RAID could not be supported, since Windows won't even know its there.  The only reason hardware RAID would not be a good idea is if you couldn't disable the disk extender, which would nail you twice for a storage penalty.  Is the 33% overhead constant, regardless of how many drives there are?  If so, that is a huge hit if you have more than 3 drives.  If it is something simlar to RAID 5, at least you pay 33% for three drives, 25% for four, 20% for five, etc.  There is only one "challenge" during installation by using a hardware RAID controller, and its not really a challenge - when/if Windows can't find any hard drives, simply load the 2008R2 drivers from CD or USB. 

I think I'm boing to use drive Extender. In Case I need more Space I'll use eSATA or USB 3.0 HDDs.

By supported i mean by microsoft. WHS was designed to be used without raid. Drive extender technology means an average home user can easily add storage and get some protection using file duplication. Not using raid keeps the hardware costs down and the OS simpler to manage..

People do use raid and it works. So using raid is down to the skills of the user and price. Disk extender is an integral part of WHS and i don't think it can be turned off.

I know what you ment.

I think this Disk Extender is pretty smart and a lot easier to use for me than a RAID.

I've got the used skills to run a RAID (I'm running many of them at home) but I think it'll be easier for me to work with the server when it oly uses Disk Extender.

Thanks a lot to all of you.