A few days back we had a 27 minute power outage during a lightning storm near the Automated Home. Not an unusual occurrence in itself – however this was to be much more significant. After a few days of wailing as well as nashing of teeth right here are the lessons learnt as well as why we now have an in-expensive however efficient UPS on our server.
Death of a Drive – in some cases a power cut or surge will kill your PSU. However, on this occasion, trying to re-start our Jukebox WHS device we understood it was the system drive that was toast. This was the only drive we’d re-used from the old server – possibly foolishly – a rather elderly IDE drive. We were trying to save all the SATA bays for huge data drives as well as utilize the IDE line for the boot disk.
When we developed our WHS box last year we stated this – “Backing up the WHS system drive seems to be the weak link in the present version [of Windows house Server]. From what we can see there’s no simple method to do this, bar having a separate rob 1 system just for it. The partnership between the C: partition as well as the D: storage pool partition needs to be in sync, so imaging the OS drive with Acronis / Ghost or similar will be out of date as well as for that reason useless soon after it’s been done. nevertheless if the system disk does die you ought to be able to set up a new version of WHS on a new disk which will then re-gain you gain access to to your un-harmed data, albeit with the loss of any type of add-ins or other customisation to WHS you had.”
Lucky – as well as that [turned out to be] quite precise – our data did make it through (phew), however there’s still significant pain as well as down time included in getting things back up as well as running again. The device has to find out of the rack, lid off, dead drive swapped out for a new one. This is complied with by hours of the OS reinstall (make sure you select Server ‘Reinstall’ in a situation such as this – see the FAQ). then there are chauffeurs to find, important updates as well as reboots. As we stated above, all customisation is lost too. Our server was backing up the most essential data to an outside USB drive utilizing SyncBack, in addition to a 30GB backup to the cloud utilizing JungleDisk.com. These apps had to be re-installed as well as configured, plus our many essential WHS addon – Disk manager – had gone too, needing much more work.
Add to this the frustration element when the rest of the home can’t gain access to their video or music data for a number of days as well as you realise why £60 spent on a UPS all of a sudden appears like extremely great value for money.
Of program this part of the story has an air of closing the steady door after the equine has bolted, however we want to make sure this doesn’t occur to us (or you) again.
APC PowerChute – Click for full size version
Never once again – We still envisioned a UPS was an costly beast – we were wrong. We looked around for a appropriate design as well as selected the £60 APC Back-UPS CS 350 after a recommendation. It’s a neat bit unit, silent as well as with support for numerous OS’s including WHS. We like the method its battery is quickly eliminated for replacement in the future too.
Our server consumes around 100 Watts as well as the APC software application predicts around 25 minute running time on its battery. In our experience that will keep it up during many power cuts – a great 90% of which are of the ‘flicker’ or the off for a second or two as well as then back on variety. significantly it protects the server from power surges too.
The UPS software application runs on the server as well as communicates with the battery pack through USB (or serial). In the event of a longer power cut the software application will initiate a managed shut down or hibernation of the server before its battery runs flat – ensuring your data is risk-free from corruption.
The system has 4 x C14 IEC sockets on the rear. 3 of them are battery supplied with a fourth providing surge security alone. You can quickly produce an extension board in your Node Zero supplied from one of the battery sockets. It’s simple to plug in your (relatively low powered) router, wireless gain access to point, switch etc so your server as well as laptops might continue to gain access to the Web during a power cut (providing the phone service stays up – as is commonly the case). The CS 350 likewise has an RJ-45 Modem/DSL socket to safeguard your router from surges too.
Play not work – So gone are the days when a UPS was an costly high-end or only discovered in company server rooms. now there’s no reason for not providing your data that additional layer of protection, as well as providing you peace of mind. lets spend those hours as well as days viewing our films as well as listening to our music, rather than re-building servers!1,043 Reviews
APC by Schneider electric Back-UPS BX – BX1400UI – Uninterruptible Power supply 1400VA (AVR, 6 Outlets IEC-C13, USB port, Shutdown Software)
Back-UPS BX offers guaranteed power as well as surge security for desktop computers, wireless networks, gaming consoles as well as other electronics
1400 VA/700 Watts – Automatic Voltage policy (AVR)
PowerChute shutdown software application – USB Connector
£147.59
purchase on Amazon
Available from Amazon : WHS Server failure FAQ : Building Our diy WHS
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Last update on 2021-10-04 / affiliate links / pictures from Amazon product marketing API