Storage

Setting Up Shop in Windows Azure

Richard Green on

Several months ago after numerous outages with my old American web host, I moved some of my sites over to a UK hosting company. For this reason and that reason, I didn’t complete the migration of all of my sites over to the UK host and the time is upon me that the agreement with the old American host is up for renewal in a couple of weeks.

After some persuasion, I’ve managed to convince a the other half that some of the sites could be dropped as they just weren’t used anymore – Just one site left to sort and that’s in the hands of a friend to arrange.

This left me in a position where I only had one site of my own left, this blog. When I was first reviewing options for moving to a new host, I looked at Windows Azure. I’m working with Azure heavily in a project at work so I was comfortable with the environment enough to want to deploy a multi-language enterprise site there so why not my own sites? Well at the time, cost was an issue. To run all of my sites in Windows Azure Web Sites Shared mode would have cost about three times as much as the hosting agreement elsewhere. This is down to the fact that in Windows Azure to use a custom domain name you need to be on either the Shared or Standard tier; the Free service tier limits you to using *.azurewebsites.net addresses.

So with just one site left my thoughts returned to Azure. I did some sums and it looked like it was going to cost about the same for Windows Azure as it was going to, to renew the UK plans but on a way more solid platform which tonnes more features, scalability and support. Not to mention that Windows Azure services outperform those of its competitors up to 3x if you believe the hype (I do for the record). I’m hedging my bets actually on my costs being lower. The Windows Azure Pricing Calculator puts a Shared Web Site at £6.16 per month but that’s based on 684 hours (28 days @ 24 hours per day) of compute time as Windows Azure now calculates billing based on hours of compute time. As my blog isn’t visited that heavily and I’m using the amazing WP Super Cache plugin for WordPress, I think I can do it for about half of this actually but month one will tell – I’ve always got the bug out option with Azure as I’m on pay as you go monthly with no upfront commitment.

So after migrating the MySQL database in the ClearDB free 20MB database service which fits perfectly for my MySQL WordPress instance database at a wee 9MB and after copying over all my files and doing some WordPress PHP magic to move some of the URLs I had it working. Makes you realise how quickly WordPress moves though! I was already two versions behind the latest and all of my plugins were out of date so first job was to fix those which I did in quick order.

Custom Domain registration is a simple case of configuring a few CNAME records and updating my domain root A record and done. My registrar FastHosts have a great interface for updating DNS and they use a 1 hour TTL which means that the updates happen really quick although one thing I think Microsoft are doing actually is that they are performing live queries each time and not relying on cached DNS entries and potentially long TTL times. I updated my A record and Azure knew about it within about a minute of the change.

So surely I did more than just move host and upgrade? Damn right I did 🙂

I’ve finally fixed the Twitter hook on the blog which means my latest tweet is now actually shown. This was fixed by replacing the Twitter plugin I am using with one which actually works with the new Twitter oAuth developer framework. I’m now using Advanced Twitter Feed Integration if anyone else out there is looking for a Twitter plugin that works. I’ve removed the old jQuery Lightbox plugin as the new version of WordPress has improved this functionality so renders it pointless. In a more functional space, I’ve fixed the CSS which was causing issues with the collapsible navigation from working properly so you’ll now actually be able to read the text as well as see the pretty Windows Phone inspired plus and minus buttons. I’ve also updated my permalink structure to drop the year/month/day element. My URLs are now simply the domain plus the post name. Much cleaner and the chances of me wanting to recycle a post name are slim to zero so it shouldn’t come back to haunt me.

The coolest thing I’ve setup is the Windows Azure Storage for WordPress plugin. I’m not sure what my mileage with this but I’ll give it a month or two and see – purely a cost factor though, not functional.

This plugin connects to a Windows Azure Storage Account and stores content that you upload to the blog into Windows Azure Storage BLOBs instead of directly into the Web Site instance. This is good news in theory because it offloads transactional tasks and storage from the web instance giving me the potential to reduce my compute time on the web instance and it also allows me to use the Azure CDN feature for even more massively improved performance if I wish (although the performance is pretty awesome already). Configuration of the plugin is super simple thanks to the fact that the plugin is actually written by Microsoft and once connected to the Storage Account Container and enabled, anything you upload either in the web interface as media or via a third-party editor like pictures, videos or other post content get’s stored out in the Storage Account Container. Simples.

Storage Architecture for Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Richard Green on

Two of the best features in my eyes in Windows Server 2012 Essentials over Windows Home Server 2011 are both related to disk.

RAID Support
Windows Server 2012 Essentials is a grown-up Windows Server unlike Windows Home Server 2011 which in an aim to simplify the server in the home idea for consumers, removed the ability to use hardware RAID the operating system volume. This was a horrible thing for Microsoft to do in my opinion.

Storage Spaces
In a nod to Driver Extender from Windows Home Server (v1) Windows 6.2 kernels running on Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 both support Storage Pools and Storage Spaces. This allows you to pool disks together to produce simple, mirrored or parity volumes from a single pool of disks. It’s like RAID on steroids because it means you only waste the chunks on disk that you want to for volumes that you want to protect, not all of them.

So taking these two ideals into consideration, what am I going to do?

Step 1 is to get the operating system off of the pair of 2TB disks I have, where there is a 60GB partition for the OS and a 1.8TB partition on one disk, and a 1.8TB partition on the second mirrored from the first disk using Windows Disk Management mirroring.

Step 2 is to maximize the utilization of the capacity of my six 2TB disks.

To achieve step 1, I am investing in a pair of SSD disks. For Windows Server 2012 Essentials to accept them they have to be over 160GB, so I am looking at the Intel 520 Series 240GB disks which are currently on Amazon reduced from £300 to £180. These will be connected to my SATA RAID controller in a RAID1 mirror and will be installed in a Lian Li 5.25″ to dual 2.5″ adapter, allowing me to utilize one of the three 5.25″ bays in my case which I will not ever use otherwise, opening up two slots for 3.5″ high capacity disks for future expansion. Needless to say, a pair of Intel 520 Series 240GB disks will give the operating system volume unbelievable IOPS and will allow the server to boot, reboot and access the OS extremely quickly. I’m also going to leave it as one super-sized 240GB partition so that I never have to worry about Windows Updates or software I install on the server causing me to need to think about repartitioning in the future.

To achieve step 2, it’s simple. Connect the now completely free to breath six 2TB disks to any of the on-board or two remaining SATA RAID controller ports, and configure them in Windows Server 2012 Essentials as a single, six disk Storage Pool and carve my volumes out of this 12TB raw disk pool using the protection levels I see fit for my needs.

Thanks to the ability to over provisioning (or thin provisioning as Microsoft incorrectly refer to it in my opinion) on Storage Spaces, I can create spaces larger than my current capacity and add disk or replace existing 2TB disk with 3TB or 4TB disk as available to extend the live capacity.

Over time, as I require more disk there will be one ‘problem’ in that I will have depleted all of my SATA ports. Luckily, my SATA RAID controller supports Port Multipliers, and a cheap and potentially nasty Syba 5 to 1 SATA Port Multiplier for about £45 means I can extend my capability to an extra four ports which at that point reaches the capacity of the case chassis. Power also isn’t an issue as my Corsair AX750 power supply was selected at the time specifically because of it’s amazing ability to run at peak power efficiency at extremely low consumption levels and also to support up to 12 SATA disks with its modular cabling design.

So there we have it…my design for Windows Server 2012 Essentials Storage Architecture. It’s by no means conventional but then I don’t really think anything about my server build is, with it’s 4U rack mount configuration packing a build-out consuming less power than your average light fixture.

I only designed and stood up the Windows Home Server 2011 setup little over a year ago. I think we all secretly knew that Home Server as a product family was a dying breed and that Microsoft would either kill it off completely or encompass it into another product family sooner than later to drop the support overheads. Thankfully it happened sooner I feel: Yes, it means that I have to rebuild my setup not that long after it was actually first built, but thankful because it meant I haven’t invested too heavily in customisation or further expansion of my current setup leaving me playing the corner flag with a legacy product at work. Luckily now, with Windows Server 2012 Essentials being a core SKU in the Windows Server family, it will be three years until the next major release. Although a Windows Server 2012 R2 release may appear sometime in the middle of the three year release cadence for server operating systems, at least being on the RTM release for the same product should make that migration a hell of a lot easier.

Azure Backup for Windows Server 2012 Essentials

Richard Green on

Last night, I posted saying that I think Microsoft had missed a trick in not taking advantage of the Windows Azure Cloud Backup features in Windows Server 2012 Essentials, and today it looks like I must eat a slice of humble pie.

After some reading on the subject this evening, it appears that Microsoft are actually incorporating it, but not natively. To access the feature, you need to install a plugin. A blog post on the Small Business Server TechNet Blog details the installation steps to get the plugin installed and working (http://blogs.technet.com/b/sbs/archive/2012/09/18/windows-azure-online-backup-and-windows-server-2012-essentials.aspx).

Users of Windows Server 2012 Essentials can get a free six month trial for the service, however information on pricing is hard to find and understand: There is nothing on the trial signup page which offers an insight into what you will pay beyond the trial? Using the extremely complicated (and for good reason due to its capability and scale) Azure Pricing Calculator gives you a hint as to what you will pay but I think Microsoft need to provide some confirmation around the storage options.

Storage is offered in two different flavours: Geo Redundant and Local Redundant with the former seeing your data replicated throughout the Azure global infrastructure and the latter seeing your data only being replicated within your geographic region, but I can’t seem to find anything that states whether either option is valid for the backup service, or if you must use a particular option? Geo Redundant storage is £7.58 per month for 100GB, while Local Redundant is £5.64 per month for 100GB to give it some context.

The two storage types will have implications on your views on the United States and their laws such as the Patriot Act. If you are precious about your data (you should be) and don’t want these authorities to be able to view it under law without your consent which is essentially what the Patriot Act boils down to, then you may want to consider against the Geo Redundant option as after all, Local Redundant still gives you way more availability than your single on-site server. The region that your data is stored in is determined by the country you select during registration, so make sure you set it correctly.

Compare the above prices to those of one of the most popular Windows Home Server cloud backup solutions, Cloudberry and Azure directly looks good. For the same 100GB of storage, you will pay $9.30 a month for Amazon S3 or $12 a month for Google Cloud Storage, plus a $29.99 license cost for the Cloudberry product.

The thing to be conscious of, is this small catch: retrieving the data. Azure provides free unlimited inbound (upload) traffic so you pay nothing to upload your backups, but download is priced per gigabyte per billing cycle. If your server was to fail and you need to pull down your 100GB of data back to the server once it is recovered, then in a single billing period then you will pay £6.55 for 95GB (the first 5GB is free), but the key to remember is that this is a one time cost if and when the server fails. This price also will vary based on your geography. The price I’ve shown is for US and European egress data. If you like in another location, then the price is £10.37 instead, so bear this in mind.

Looking at this as a home user and not an SMB, I think paying £5.64 a month is a very small price to pay for piece of mind that all of my family pictures and important documents can be protected to a much higher degree than I can do at home with a Mirror Storage Space and an external USB or eSATA disk on-site backing up the server. From the perspective of an SMB then your data is your business so only you can value what your data is worth, but I would guess a lot. If you are an SMB without the luxury of a full time IT professional or a well managed agreement with a Microsoft Partner for supporting your environment, then I would guess that this service could one day prove invaluable.

SkyDrive Limits Update

Richard Green on

Today, Microsoft released its latest revision to the Windows Live SkyDrive file hosting and sharing platform. As a result of the change, the user storage limits have been reduced from 25GB to 7GB. If you have an existing Windows Live ID, then as a loyalty reward, you can get a free upgrade to 25GB, allowing you to keep your existing storage limit.

To do this, simply login to SkyDrive at http://skydrive.live.com, login as normal and select the Upgrade banner near the top of page. Hurry though as this is being reported as a limited time offer.

Windows Server Becomes iSCSI

Richard Green on

iSCSI is kind of the holy grail is storage these days.

Everyone wants it, a lot of people can’t afford it and then there’s also a lot of people who want it, can afford it but don’t understand it, and then lastly there’s cool people who give you it for nothing.

So whilst aboard the USS Richard Green on it’s travels across the Internet, I discovered this site:
http://www.starwindsoftware.com/free

Their current software, StarWind Free 4.1 for Windows allows you to take any box running Windows and turn it into an iSCSI Software Target and for free.

It’s not without it’s limitations I may add. You are limited to 2TB of data storage, but that’s it.

Whilst you may not want to run this in a live environment, for lab and testing environments it’s great because it means you don’t need to go out and buy dedicated hardware for running iSCSI.