Drive Extender no more for Windows Home Server Vail

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freitasm

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#72320 24-Nov-2010 08:26

Microsoft has decided to not implement Drive Extender in the next Windows Home Server Vail beta, saying OEMs can use their own solutions.

Stupid, stupid... Way to kill a product.

davidcole

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#408712 24-Nov-2010 09:01

So unsure how vail will work going forward. The whole premise of Home server is disparate disk sizes and the uses not having to care where to load files - as it manages that for us.

So if I have to care about disk sizes and where to store files, then i think I'm just going to install windows server 2008 and put WHS V1 as a VM.

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gjm

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#408721 24-Nov-2010 09:14

wow...talk about a brain fart....must have been a hell of a dodgy curry

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davidcole

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#408728 24-Nov-2010 09:23

"Server solutons from OEM's will now have the ability to include larger drives, this will reduce the need for Drive Extender functionality."

How? what's the difference with 5 250GB drives or 5 2TB drives? it's still many drives - maybe they're expecting people to only run one or two drives in total - not 20 (don't laugh there's a guy here with 20 2 TB drives in his rig).

allan

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#408774 24-Nov-2010 10:27

Seems a very strange decision as it destroys the heart of the WHS solution really, with the ability to add any size disk and just have it work. Given that the comments at the blog announcement link above are running at 100% negative, you have to ask where the Customer Feedback has come from to support this idea.

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#408914 24-Nov-2010 14:20

Wow... just wow! Well I really cannot see how they see that as anything other then a way to kill WHS.
No dissimilar disks and no folder duplication. Way to rip the heart out of WHS :-(

Well one good thing. Makes it a real easy decision on whether to upgrade or not.

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fastmikey

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#409109 24-Nov-2010 19:49

Talk about screwing the pooch... there's a lot of peed off WHS supporters out there right now.

Puts into perspective HP reselling the Drobo now.

freitasm

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#409298 25-Nov-2010 08:48

From their official blog, after the storm:

"Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail, and continue to work on all the core features outside of Drive Extender. We fully expect to be able to show some of our new and partnered OEM solutions at CES."

It means it won't be coming back. What a shame. This was the technology that made the whole redundancy automatic, no end user knoledge of RAID, duplication, replication, backup needed...

What a bad decision.

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tumnasgt

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#409315 25-Nov-2010 09:12

I had been planning on upgrading my server when Vail came out, as the motherboard has some funny quirks (like a broken battery socket), but it looks like I'll just be reinstalling V1. On the bright side, that's $200 of Windows licensing I don't have to pay.

It seems like an amazingly dumb move, as a WHS server costs quite a lot more than a basic NAS, and the drive management was really the selling point. Automated backup is nice, but it's not that hard to write a script to do that and schedule it daily (even if it isn't as clever).

Ramsu

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#409328 25-Nov-2010 09:35

Big loss, I was thinking about purchasing a WHS system, maybe I still can, before the new version.

Although this may suffice if I went down the the linux route: (although still in beta)
http://code.google.com/p/greyhole/

Read more here: http://www.pommepause.com/blog/2009/12/greyhole-easily-expandable-redundant-storage-pool-using-samba/

davidcole

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#409335 25-Nov-2010 09:43

I see a lot of people babbling on about freenas and unraid and drobo etc. But to me they just don't get it. It's not just DE that makes WHS good, it's DE + the backups.

So while these others will fix your storage issues, it wont fix your backups and you'll have to roll a different solution to that.

I suspect guides will start appearing for a virtualised WHSv1 running on something else.

Ragnor

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#409429 25-Nov-2010 12:44

So back to installing Macrium Reflect free on your machines and backup/image to any NAS or other storage you like.

It's probably a way more flexible option anyway.

browned

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#409502 25-Nov-2010 15:18

All I need is DEv1, but it would be nice if you could schedule demigrator tasks and it supported drives larger than 2TB. Job done.

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#410778 29-Nov-2010 17:12

Ramsu: Big loss, I was thinking about purchasing a WHS system, maybe I still can, before the new version.

Although this may suffice if I went down the the linux route: (although still in beta)
http://code.google.com/p/greyhole/

Read more here: http://www.pommepause.com/blog/2009/12/greyhole-easily-expandable-redundant-storage-pool-using-samba/

IMHO, unless it's as easy as WHS, it will remain a niche product for the Linux crowd. Don't really think it will fly in the Home Server arena. Slightly complex repair such as removing a surviving HDD from a defunct WHS server to be read in another windows installation ?

Sad, as WHS, would be an ever increasing segment as the general populace need an easy to use system for the ever increasing requirement of data storage for music, photos and movies. Not to mention a residential gateway for IP movies, etc.