WSE network storage folders instead of local folders?

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Has anyone successfully moved any of their Storage shares from local connected storage (local hard disks) to a NAS, network share or mapped drive location?

I’ve successfully virtualized my physical WSE12R2 box in a Hyper-V VM. However the Dashboard requires that all storage locations be local devices on the server. It will not accept mapped drives or UNC paths, of course. So far, I’m exploring symbolic links and directory junctions although not aggressively.

I’m retiring my old WSE server hardware, but hoped to retain the client computer backup functionality within virtual environment. If I add a VHD hard disk to the VM with 1 TB of space for client backups, it’s going to be included in the Hyper-V Host’s windows server backup which I was hoping to avoid.

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miles267 asked 4 years ago

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We use a Drobo 5C here, which combines all of its individual drives into one giant drive pool, and then we create individual VHDX virtual hard drives on it for each of our storage drives that are required by Essentials. This works great for us.

Basically, we use the “Disk Management” applet on the server (or the “Hyper-V Manager” if you’re using Hyper-V) to create the individual VHDX files (dynamically expanding to the desired size and encrypted via BitLocker), and then we attach them as individual drives (e.g. SERVER_FOLDERS S:\, FILE_HISTORY H:\, CLIENT_BACKUPS X:\, SERVER_BACKUP, etc.). We then use the “STORAGE” page of the server Dashboard to move the server folders over to those attached virtual drives. On the “DEVICES” page of the server Dashboard, we then run the “Customize Backup for the server” task and choose which of those virtual drives we want included in, or excluded from, our server backup (and obviously, we don’t include the giant Drobo drive pool in the server backup; only the individual VHDX files that exist on it).

We’ve been doing this for many years now without any issues whatsoever.

Mike answered 4 years ago

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