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MS removing drive extender tech from WHS 2 (Vail)

C

Crucial

Diamond Member
Just read this blog post from the WHS blog about the removal of DE from Vail.

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/...indows-home-server-code-name-vail-update.aspx

"When weighing up the future direction storage in the consumer and SMB market, the team felt the Drive Extender technology was not meeting our customer needs. Therefore, moving forward we have decided to remove the Drive Extender technology from Windows Home Server Code Name “Vail” (and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials) which are currently in beta.

While this removes the integrated ability for storage pooling of multiple hard drives and automated data duplication, we are continuing to work closely with our OEM partners to implement storage management and protection solutions, as well as other software solutions."

This is a complete load of crap and is a horrible decision IMHO. By the growing comments on that site it seems like there are many others who feel the same.
 
Yea, WTF? That's pretty much the main differentiating factor that WHS had going for it. Now pretty much any free NAS product out there can easily compete.
 
Yeah, it's too bad that MS couldn't find a way to keep the storage pool in there.

I, along with plenty of others, were pretty vehement in our opposition to the way that the new DE was implemented. MS was trying to address things like data integrity (ala' ZFS) and to meet the needs of those using Windows Home Server with extremely large files. The latter was a weakness of the current Drive Extender. But in my experience, WHS' Drive Extender met the storage and backup needs of the "average" homeowner or small business quite well.

Assuming that MS keeps WHS' Client PC backup as-is and still provides some sort easy disk or folder redundancy, then this will still fulfill much of what most folks need. And it'll give what many requested --- direct access to their data. Unfortunately, that'll also mean keeping track of where files are being saved and how full each disk is becoming.

But it appears that MS isn't planning on offering a built-in redundancy method, relying on individual OEM vendors (or you) to provide redundancy. Personally, I prefer data backups over redundancy, but not everybody thinks that way.

It's particularly sad because the only things that WHS V2 really HAD to do were:
1) Be able to handle the new disks (4K Sectors and disks larger than 2 TB).
2) Be able to move very large files (such as Blu-Ray) and balance the disks without running out of disk space on the storage drives and without overwhelming the disks or CPU in the process.
3) Provide an easy, automated way to back up server data to external, network, or cloud locations.

While extended error correction would be nice, folks don't seem to be scurrying to implement ZFS-type error correction on storage servers. That could have waited a couple more years.

My suggestion to MS' "Connect" staff is to retain the current V1 Drive Extender but add a "buffer" area on one or more of the storage disks. If the server would be handling 50 GB-sized files, for instance, designate a 100 GB buffer area on one or more disks, reserved for file transfers and disk balancing. This, along with routines to avoid monopolizing CPU or I/O while the WHS is streaming media to clients, would eliminate most of the complaints that have come from users handling very large files.
 
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wow, this is pretty nutty if you ask me. maybe they had good reasons who knows but that is one of the main features that I would point to when recommending it.
 
Seems to me that if the unRaid folks can find a way to support large-format drives w/o a jumper then they will practically own the home-user market.
 
Holy <bleeping> <bleep>! I did not see that coming.

I know people were dissatisfied with some of the changes MS was going for with DE v2 - primarily the inability to read failing disk due to the funky formatting - but I did not see this coming. At a bare minimum I had been looking forward to the integrated file hashes, as 12&#37; would be worth the piece of mind.

Without DE, what is WHS now other than a stripped down version of Windows Server 2008 R2 with an integrated client backup system? I don't know about the rest of you, but DE was half the reason I bought WHS, as it allowed me to seemlessly combine my sprawling file collection without needing to worry about individual disk capacity. It hasn't been an entirely smooth ride, but I've come to rely on it and I have no idea what I'm going to do in 2012 when WHS v1 support ends.
 
ViRGE said:
Without DE, what is WHS now other than a stripped down version of Windows Server 2008 R2 with an integrated client backup system? I don't know about the rest of you, but DE was half the reason I bought WHS, as it allowed me to seemlessly combine my sprawling file collection without needing to worry about individual disk capacity. It hasn't been an entirely smooth ride, but I've come to rely on it and I have no idea what I'm going to do in 2012 when WHS v1 support ends.
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Exactly, you might as well recommend FreeNAS or a home built Linux solution once again. LVM+XFS is a lot better than straight NTFS ever will be.
 
I am extremely disappointed by this news. RebateMonger said it perfectly.

For me, WHS is dead. I love my v1, but will need to look elsewhere now for my home storage solutions going forward.

How's unRAID and flexRAID?
 
Khadgar said:
I am extremely disappointed by this news. RebateMonger said it perfectly.

For me, WHS is dead. I love my v1, but will need to look elsewhere now for my home storage solutions going forward.

How's unRAID and flexRAID?
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This.

I have no use for Vail now. The whole appeal of WHS for me was DE. I could take all my spare disks, add them to the pool (regardless of size, vendor, firmware revisions, etc), and see an aggregated total of space available. It also presented the nice pie graph showing what the space was being used for.

I recently migrated most of my drives to 2TB disks with 4kb sectors, and was seriously torn between WHSv1 (jumpered drives so it would be supported) or Server 2k8 R2. Moving WHS to Server 2k8 R2 was the best of both worlds, but now I have to say WHS is dead to me as an option. I'd rather find another way to handle it like unRaid (once I read up more about it to see if it fits my needs and requriements).
 
I just read this article on anandtech.
Wow.
Wowie wow wow.
As a LONG time user and LOVER of WHS (since early betas) I can not believe they dumped DEv2. Wow. I'm really floored. It is one the MAIN things I LOVE about WHS (and I'm power user).

As others have said in here already WHS v2 is dead to me. I will ride WHS until it's dead though.

Wow.
 
Maximilian said:
So whats the point in WHS now? Seems like a pretty worthless product without drive extender...
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Well, it still does those great WHS client PC backups/restores. I and my clients don't really use the file server portion of WHS. Either they already own a Windows file server or they share folders on a desktop and use WHS to back up those shared folders along with the rest of the PC they are located on.

But many home users DO use WHS' file serving capability. Including some who have pretty big file shares. For them, losing Drive Extender is going to hurt.
 
RebateMonger said:
Well, it still does those great WHS client PC backups/restores. I and my clients don't really use the file server portion of WHS. Either they already own a Windows file server or they share folders on a desktop and use WHS to back up those shared folders along with the rest of the PC they are located on.

But many home users DO use WHS' file serving capability. Including some who have pretty big file shares. For them, losing Drive Extender is going to hurt.
Click to expand...

It wont hurt me at all. I just wont be switching to V2 (in all honesty it didn't offer too much that I needed/wanted in the 1st palce), It will hurt MS though by losing a lot of sales I'd think.
 
Homerboy said:
It wont hurt me at all. I just wont be switching to V2 (in all honesty it didn't offer too much that I needed/wanted in the 1st palce), It will hurt MS though by losing a lot of sales I'd think.
Click to expand...

The place it will hurt you are:

WHS v1 doesn't like over 2 TB HDs last I checked (could have changed now though)
WHS v1 does not support 4kb sectors (i.e. WD Advanced format) which is what drives are going to migrate to.

So, sure you can use it for the next 2-3 years, but beyond that it's going to be questionable. For the record, I will be using it as long as possible.
 
DisgruntledVirus said:
The place it will hurt you are:

WHS v1 doesn't like over 2 TB HDs last I checked (could have changed now though)
WHS v1 does not support 4kb sectors (i.e. WD Advanced format) which is what drives are going to migrate to.

So, sure you can use it for the next 2-3 years, but beyond that it's going to be questionable. For the record, I will be using it as long as possible.
Click to expand...

Well right. I guess I was meaning to imply "until the point of no return"
Honestly 2TB drives are pretty sufficient in cramming A LOT of content into a machine with a decent amount of HDD slots. While using 3TB drives etc would be "nice" I don't see a burning NEED for it. Hopefully, by the time WHS is "impossible" to use anymore, there will be someting else out there to take it's place.

Long story short, either way there is NO SALE for v2
 
This is a little(very) disappointing. I don't have WHS, but I was always interested in it, primarily for the DE capabilities. I envisioned using it as a dumping ground for my old drives as I upgraded, so I could put my old equipment to good use. In fact, that was really the only selling point instead of just running a Linux server. The other features are nice, but I can live without them. Oh well. Saves me $100 I guess.
 
I built second WHS a few months ago and really considered waiting on V2. The combination of removing the DE and the new file system stuff will probably mean I won't ever use V2 now.
 
I couldn't believe the news. Just for my clarity, how is WHS different than any other PC now? Am I correct in understanding that any multi-disk storage setup I put together will have to be managed by me? In other words, I would be installing them as individual drives or if I want some sort of redundancy or failsafe, I would have to manually setup software or hardware RAID?

Unless I am missing something, now you can have the same functionality of WHS2 by building a PC, putting in some hard drives, turning on folder/file sharing (built into Windows XP, Vista, 7) and using an backup/imaging program that does incremental backups.
 
No, you're not missing anything. There's nothing to distinguish WHS from any other NAS or always on PC with a backup utility.
 
sygyzy said:
I couldn't believe the news. Just for my clarity, how is WHS different than any other PC now? Am I correct in understanding that any multi-disk storage setup I put together will have to be managed by me? In other words, I would be installing them as individual drives or if I want some sort of redundancy or failsafe, I would have to manually setup software or hardware RAID?

Unless I am missing something, now you can have the same functionality of WHS2 by building a PC, putting in some hard drives, turning on folder/file sharing (built into Windows XP, Vista, 7) and using an backup/imaging program that does incremental backups.
Click to expand...

Meh thats what im getting from this, dont see any reason to ditch my server 2008 R2 setup now. 🙁
 
😵

Wow. I really don't know what to say about this.

Drive extender and folder duplication were THE reasons I bought WHS v1 in the first place. To think I was actually considering upgrading my old P4/875P to accommodate Vail's 64-bit limitation. Not anymore.

Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall.

So, how is Amahi/Greyhole these days?
 
This cloud has a silver lining. Trust me. I've been using WHS 2.5 years and just trust me on this. The client backup feature of WHS works perfectly, but the storage service works like &#37;$*. I've been through all kinds of issues with V1, and both Vail Betas. It's worthless as a duplicated storage service. I've seen all kinds of errors and performance issues with it.

This just saved many people the pain and problems of WHS. Vail solves some problems and creates others. For client backups use it, for storage look at other options.

I switched to Nexentastor and I am happy as a clam. Extremely satisfied.

EDIT: I made a large post over at the AT article on this. You can see all my reasoning there including specific errors. I submitted so much to MS connect. Waste of time. Really just waste of time and effort. There are FAR better storage solutions out there. You problem-free just get a Drobo, I have no first hand experience with it but I can assure you that it is better than WHS.
 
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