Sign in
Microsoft.com
 
Microsoft
 
 
 

locked
Does WHS support S.M.A.R.T or SpinDown of drives not in use? RRS feed

 > 

  • Question

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote

    Global warming, polar ice caps, the Amazon rain forest... 

    Err, sorry.  :-)  As my future wife and I have been changing our lives over the last several years to live more self-substantiable, I find myself at a cross-road when looking at the current power-hungry devices in my household: the pc equipment.  And now, I am planning a massive WHS box?  Yep, to replace the 4 PC/Servers I have now with a single WHS server with WOL and running VMware's Virtual Server to consolidate other servers.

    Does WHS support SMART or the spinning down of drives that are idle?  This is a big decision maker in the PSU/case combination I have/plan on building. 

    Thanks,
    -E

    http://eduncan911.com
    Monday, September 29, 2008 6:03 AM

Answers

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    Hi,

    I think you may be confusing a couple of different things here.
    SMART is in essense, a monitoring tool to report on the hardware of a particular hard drive. As such, no, WHS doesn't directly use this information, however, there is an Add-In which can report the SMART information, such as temperature - disk errors etc.

    Spin down for power saving, is a standard on just about all systems, so can be enabled on WHS through the Power Options settings, just as a 'normal' PC is done. However, if you don't stop the SBCore service in WHS, (a function of WHS being based on SBS), then the server will awake on a regular basis.

    You best option to date, it another Add-In, called 'LightsOut', which provides details of how to disable this service, and allows you to have your server only operate when you want it to. Also, it provides a means of using your Client PC's to wake the server when necessary.

    Colin
    If anyone answers your query successfully, please mark it as 'Helpful', to guide other users.
    • Marked as answer by eduncan911.com Wednesday, October 1, 2008 4:23 PM
    Monday, September 29, 2008 10:42 AM
    Moderator

All replies

  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    Hi,

    I think you may be confusing a couple of different things here.
    SMART is in essense, a monitoring tool to report on the hardware of a particular hard drive. As such, no, WHS doesn't directly use this information, however, there is an Add-In which can report the SMART information, such as temperature - disk errors etc.

    Spin down for power saving, is a standard on just about all systems, so can be enabled on WHS through the Power Options settings, just as a 'normal' PC is done. However, if you don't stop the SBCore service in WHS, (a function of WHS being based on SBS), then the server will awake on a regular basis.

    You best option to date, it another Add-In, called 'LightsOut', which provides details of how to disable this service, and allows you to have your server only operate when you want it to. Also, it provides a means of using your Client PC's to wake the server when necessary.

    Colin
    If anyone answers your query successfully, please mark it as 'Helpful', to guide other users.
    • Marked as answer by eduncan911.com Wednesday, October 1, 2008 4:23 PM
    Monday, September 29, 2008 10:42 AM
    Moderator
  • Question
    Sign in to vote
    0
    Sign in to vote
    Hello Colin,

    I am not confused.  ;)  SMART is a monitoring instruction set, yes, but also is the instruction set to allow for temp, spin-down commands, etc.  Disk errors, you nailed it on the spot of what I was getting at.  Having WHS (W2K3) detect those errors and report it.

    SBCore - where can I read more about why that is running, what services it is responsible for, and so on?  If shutting it down, what will I lose?

    Thanks for pointing me to LightsOut!  That looks like it may do the trick.


    http://eduncan911.com
    Wednesday, October 1, 2008 4:26 PM