Syncing Two Windows Home Servers

You have two Windows Home Servers and you want to keep the files on the folder shares synchronized (i.e. mirrored). Why would you want to do this? Maybe you're ultra paranoid about hardware failure. Maybe you just built up a new powerful DIY box (to replace an older server) and want to weed out any stabilization issues with the new machine before you do the actual cutover. Whatever the case may be, how do you go about keeping the data on the two servers synchronized?

This article will show you how to use a free application (um, toy) from Microsoft called SyncToy 2.0. I first showed you SyncToy back when talking about the Flip Mino HD, so forgive me if this article appears to repeat some of the steps outlined there.

1. Download the SyncToy 2.0 installer onto one of your Windows Home Servers. I decided to "push" files to the other server instead of "pulling" them, but I don't think either way matters very much.
2. Remote into your WHS. You are installing the software from the desktop of your server, not from a client PC.
3. Run the installer and you will see a dialog asking permission to install Microsoft Sync Framework. SyncToy (the application) uses this framework to do it's stuff.
4. After the framework installs, SyncToy the application will be installed.
5. I won't bore you with the next 4-5 screen, but basically you can just click Next accepting the defaults. The app will then install and you click Close.
6. With SyncToy installed, we will now setup the folder pairs that you want synchronized. A "folder pair" is just that: a pair of folders (one on the "left" and one on the "right") that you want to keep in sync.
7. Click Start, All Programs and the on SyncToy 2.0
   
8. When SyncToy first runs there are no pairs setup, so click on Create New Folder Pair.
   
9. In my case, I am syncing data between my current server named HOMESERVER and the new one named SERVER. Clever names, huh? My goal is to have the server reflect any changes and/or new files that are on homeserver. Essentially server will become a mirror of homeserver.
10. With that in mind, we will start with the Photos share. On the left, I type \\Homeserver\Photos and on the right \\Server\Photos and click Next.
    
11. Next I select Echo as the type of synchronization and click Next. Echo will keep the right computer looking just like the one on the left.
    
12. The last step is naming my pair. Type in something appropriate and click Finish.
    

Repeat this procedure for each folder share that you would like to synchronize (probably all of them). Note that when syncing your Users share, you must create a separate pair for each user (e.g. \\HomeServer\Users\Donavon and not just \\HomeServer\Users).

At this point my pairs look like this (above). Let's see if we have things setup properly. Click on All Folder Pairs then Preview All. SyncToy will show you every action that it need to take, but in Preview mode it doesn't actually perform the actions (we'll have it do that later, while you are sleeping).

Scheduling

Once you have all of your pairs defined, we need to schedule these to run unattended and in the background. SyncToy 2.0 does not do this for you, but we can use the scheduler built into Windows 2003.

To schedule a SyncToy to run as a task:

1. From the Start menu, select All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Scheduled Tasks.
2. Select Add scheduled task to start the Scheduled Task Wizard. You will see a list of possible programs to run.
3. Select Browse and locate the SyncToyCmd.exe (in the Program Files\SyncToy 2.0 folder)
4. The wizard will next prompt you for a name and how often you want to run the scheduled SyncToy (for example, daily, weekly, et cetera). Select a frequency (I chose Daily) and a name that makes sense, such as SyncToy.
   
5. The next page asks when to start the task. Select a start time.  3am seems like a good time. That should give your WHS backup time to complete. You can adjust this time if necessary.
6. The next page asks for the user name and password to run the program under. You will likely choose teh username Administrator. Please note that you should use the same username setup on teh opposite server and use the same password in order for the folder share to work.
7. The final page contains an option to open the properties dialog when the wizard ends. Select this checkbox.
8. Modify the Run textbox to include the –R command line option. –R all by itself will run all folder pairs that are active for run all.
9. When you are finished the dialog should look like this:
   

Note: If the folder pair name contains a space, surround it with quotation marks, as the example above shows. For another example, assume that SyncToy is in the folder named C:\Program Files\SyncToy 2.0 and that you want to run a folder pair named "My folder pair." Enter the command line as follows, including the quotation marks: "C:\Program Files\SyncToy 2.0\SyncToyCmd.exe" -R "My folder pair." Note that there are two sets of quotation marks in this case: one is around the path to the SyncToy program file and the other surrounds the folder pair name.

Verifying

After you let it run overnight, the next morning you may want to verify that the sync actually worked. You can spot check a few files, but there is a better way. Remember the Preview All procedure that we ran above? The first time it yielded a list of operations to perform. If SyncToy successfully ran, there should ne no operations to perform at this point. Run SyncToy and click on All Folder Pairs then Preview All.

SyncToy also keeps a handy log file that will show you all operations performed. Click File, View Log.

Conclusion

SyncToy is a useful little utility that WHs users should be aware of. This article talked about keeping two servers in sync. But you could even use SyncToy to initially get two servers in sync (and to verify that they are in sync) before decommissioning your old server (i.e. use SyncToy as essentially a migration tool). Even if you don't need it right now, keep it in mind. I bet you will find other instances down the road where SyncToy will come in handy.

Better than Cloud Backup, 1.5TB of Disaster Proof Backup for your WHS

Hands On: the ioSafe Solo

People are always approaching me with the same basic question. If I am now trusting all of my irreplaceable family data (family photos, digital home movies, tax records, etc) to one computer, my Windows Home Server, what do I do if something happens to it?

The answer comes on several layers. First, you can enable data duplication for folders which makes sure that each file is on at least two physical hard drives. This is so that data is never in jeopardy if a single hard drive fails.

Cloud Storage

That's fine and good for something like a simple hardware failure, but what about the case of catastrophic failure such as flood or a fire? Most of the talk has revolved around cloud storage such as Jungle Disk or the Amazon S3 backup solution found on the new MediaSmart Server.

Cloud backup has it's pluses and it's minuses. First of all, it's slow. Even with today's broadband capabilities found in many households, upload speeds are still relatively slow. According to speedmatters.org, the national average upload speed is a mere 230kbps.

Second, it can be costly and have recurring fees (at least as in the case with Amazon's S3). I have all of my family photos stored on S3 and pay around $8/month in storage and monthly access fees. I can't even imagine how expensive it would be to also store all of my music and videos on S3 (or how long it would take to transfer).

Third, many people take issue with storing personal data in the cloud, even on secure systems such as Amazon's S3. Sure the data is encrypted, but it's still stored on someone else's system. Who knows when the day will come that some hacker breaks in and looks at photos of my dog. I don't see this happening any time soon, but some people do. Of course, I don't think the moon landing was fake and some people do (you know who you are).

Off Site USB Drives

So what's a fella to do to protect his data without resorting to cloud storage? Well, you could get a USB drive and keep it at an off-site, secure, undisclosed location (Dick Cheney's not using it any more, so why not). This requires you to pro-actively move things around. I don't know about you, but I'm too lazy for that.

In fact, that is the exact procedure described in the WHS help file:

ioSafe Solo

But there is another option, ioSafe's Solo USB hard drive that is fireproof (up to 1550 degrees) and waterproof (up to 10 feet for 3 days). No, seriously. ioSafe has taken a standard 500GB, 1TB or 1.5TB Seagate drive and encased in a fire/flood proof case. The thing weighs a metric ton, but will give you peace of mind.

Here are some unboxing photos that I've places on the Windows Live Group for WHS (you will need a Live ID and will probably have to join the group if you haven't one so already):

Here are some specs on the ioSafe Solo hard drives themselves or read the ioSafe Solo Datasheet (PDF):

Dimensions (inches): 5.0W X 7.1H X 11.0L	Weight: 15 lbs
Ambient Temperature Operating.................40 - 95°F Non-operating...........0 - 1,550°F Up to 30 minutes per ASTM E119	Humidity Operating (non-condensing) 20 - 80% Non-operating: 100% Up to 72 hours @ 10' depth

Pricing

Pricing for the ioSafe Solo can be complicated when you are on their website. There is the cost of the unit itself and then there is an upfront charge for the data recovery service and then there are promotional discounts. Here is the bottom line:

	3 year warranty 1 year disaster recovery service	3 year warranty 3 year disaster recovery service	5 year warranty 5 year disaster recovery service
500 GB	$149	$199	$249
1TB	$199	$249	$299*
1.5TB	$299*	$349*	$399* $299

* do you see those little asterisks? They indicate that the 1.5TB drives comes with a free upgrade to the 5 year disaster recovery service. So a 1.5TB with a 5 year disaster recovery service (i.e. "the works") is the same price as a 1TB drive with 5 years and only $50 more than both a 500GB drive with a 5 years and a 1TB drive with 3 year.

So unless money is tight (and how can money be tight with a disaster recover plan), spend the $299 and get the 1.5TB drive and the 5 year disaster recovery service. You can read about the various Disaster Recovery Service plans, but again, my suggestion is to go with the Full Ginsburg.

Fire! Fire!

I just love how the non-operating temperature is over 1500 degrees Fahrenheit. Watch this cool video from CES2009 where the ioSafe people both drop it in a swimming pool and set the unit on fire! the video is a little long (9 minutes) and you can tell the guy on the video likes to talk, but the demo is pretty cool.

Creating a WHS disaster recovery plan

How can you effectively use the ioSafe Solo as part of your Windows Home Server disaster recovery plan? As far as I see it there are two approaches that you can take:

Plan A

With this approach, you build a system comprised of a standard SATA system drive and use two or more ioSafe USB drives for data storage. With data duplication turned on, you will have all of your files (minus re-creatable system files) stored on disaster proof drives. If you ever experienced a fire, the WHS would be destroyed (you can rebuild that), but all of your data will be secure.

Once the ioSafe drives are back (you need to send the charred remains back to ioSafe to be recovered), simply plug them in, rebuild the system drive using the system recovery DVD and you are back in business my man!

Plan A is more costly (requiring multiple ioSafe drives) but provides complete protection for all of your data. Note that because your entire system (minus the system drive) is running on USB connected drives, the data throughput speed will not be as snappy as with internal SATA systems.

Plan B

The other less costly approach is to build up a standard system utilizing standard drives, like the one you probably have right now. Power Pack 1 introduced a feature that will let you backup certain high value shares to an external hard drive. Plan B would make that external hard drive a fireproof/waterproof ioSafe Solo drive.

Here's how:

1. Plug in the ioSafe Solo USB hard drive into your WHS.
2. Open up the WHS Console and click on the Server Storage tab.
3. You should see the the newly added drive appear under Non Storage Drives
4. Right click on the drive and click Add
5. The Add a Hard Drive wizard will run. Click Next at this initial unnecessary screen.
6. Select Use this hard drive to back up files that are stored on your home server and click Next.
7. As this is a new drive, you can skip the formatting. The ioSafe drive comes pre-formatted as NTFS, so just click Next.
8. You will be prompted to give your new drive a name. Probably not Spot or Rover, but something a little more memorable. I chose BURN BABY BURN. How cold I possibly forget which drive that was?
9. One more confirmation screen and we're ready to go. Click Finish to proceed.
10. Milliseconds later (if you chose not to format the drive) and the process is complete.
11. Click Done and you should see BURN BABY BURN under the new heading Server Backup Hard Drives.

We now have the drive setup as a backup device. But how does WHS use it? It's not as automated or glamorous of a process as you might have hoped, but it does the trick.

1. Click on the Computers & Backups tab.
2. Right-click on your server's name and click Backup Now.
3. Choose the shared folders that you wish to back up. I chose my 82GB Music share and my 65GB Photos share. You will probably want to keep these setting for next time, so check the box.
4. Go out to lunch, this will take a while. Better yet, seen any good movies lately?
5. During the backup, the blue "runway lights" on the front of the ioSafe Solo will flash blue/purple. This is very subtle and it took me awhile to detect that it flashing at all.
6. After a good night's sleep, I woke to this dialog:
7. 25,759 file were successfully copied, but 30 files had failed due to long filename problems. This was a problem corrected on server storage drives with PP1, but because this backup drive is an NTFS partition, fully qualified path names are restricted to 260 characters. I consider this a flaw in Home Server Backup strategy. On the other hand, I'm going in right now to try and decrease my path name for those 30 files.
8. After correcting my long file names, I did the backup again and everything is right a rain. One cool feature of the server backup is that it will only keep one copy of a file on the external drive. So when I did another complete backup, the new backup only copies the 30 files that it was unable to copy before. The rest of the 147GB worth of files will simply be links, but this is transparent to the user.

So there you have it, 147GBs of my precious family data is now secure. I can now purge my Amazon S3 account and stop Jungle Disk from doing it's nightly thing, saving $8 per month.

Bottom Line

At $299 for 1.5TBs of disaster-proof secure onsite backup, the ioSafe Solo just may be the ultimate Windows Home Server external hard drive. It's relatively low cost, large capacity and speed over cloud storage make it a no-brainer. My Solo 1TB drive is on loan from ioSafe, but they may need to come to my office and pry it from my cold dead hands if they want it back!

Have you gone out and bought one yet? Why not? Do it now!