DriveExtender is dead... long live DriveExtender - Windows 8 features new "DE"

[SunnyD]

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/...rage-for-scale-resiliency-and-efficiency.aspx

Basically, it looks like DriveExtender on steroids. I'm excited.

 

[ViRGE]

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/...rage-for-scale-resiliency-and-efficiency.aspx

Basically, it looks like DriveExtender on steroids. I'm excited.

Now I know how women felt when the saw Elvis perform in the 50s and 60s. I suddenly want to start screaming and swooning, I'm that damn excited!😱

With that said, the slabs may be an issue. It looks like MS is going ahead with the old DE v2 chunk idea, meaning files are going to be split up and stored everywhere. So a single disk failure can destroy multiple files with no way to recover them. If that's the case then parity mode (RAID5) would seem to be the bare minimum mode you'd want to use if you intend to have a space extend across multiple disks, because it will tolerate a single disk failure.

Of course with Win8 not even in beta, we're going to be waiting a long time. A new WHS wouldn't be ready until at least a year after Windows Server 8 is released, which means it would still be late 2013 (if not 2014) before we saw WHS v3.🙁

Edit: The foreword on the blog notes that Storage Spaces delivers on "many of its [WHS's] core requirements". Based on this description, is there actually anything DEv1 can do that Storage Spaces could not?

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Another article on this:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft...-8s-coming-drive-extender-style-storage/11569

 

[ViRGE]

So it looks like there is at least one difference between SS and DEv2. DEv2 was planned to have checksums. SS will not.

Storage Spaces do not check-sum data. However, applications/consumers of spaces can maintain their own check-sums and then utilize the redundancy possible through Storage Spaces to deal with failures within any one copy of the data.

It sounds like there is an API for applications to do their own checksumming, but of course that's not the same thing. So fanatics looking for a ZFS replacement may come away disappointed, though this is no worse than DEv1.

 

[BD2003]

Now I know how women felt when the saw Elvis perform in the 50s and 60s. I suddenly want to start screaming and swooning, I'm that damn excited!😱

With that said, the slabs may be an issue. It looks like MS is going ahead with the old DE v2 chunk idea, meaning files are going to be split up and stored everywhere. So a single disk failure can destroy multiple files with no way to recover them. If that's the case then parity mode (RAID5) would seem to be the bare minimum mode you'd want to use if you intend to have a space extend across multiple disks, because it will tolerate a single disk failure.

Of course with Win8 not even in beta, we're going to be waiting a long time. A new WHS wouldn't be ready until at least a year after Windows Server 8 is released, which means it would still be late 2013 (if not 2014) before we saw WHS v3.🙁

Edit: The foreword on the blog notes that Storage Spaces delivers on "many of its [WHS's] core requirements". Based on this description, is there actually anything DEv1 can do that Storage Spaces could not?

There's nothing DE can do that storage spaces can't as far as I can tell - but that's only part of the WHS equation. There's also the client backup and web server.

If they build the centralized client backup into win 8 then WHS is dead.