WHS v2 - Vail Released to Public View.

[JackMDS]

Today Vail was released to public View (it is beta changes might occur until the final release).

Few highlights.

The OS is going to be x64 only, based on Windows Server 2008.

There will be a capacity for a full backup of data and the OS partitions.

On the other hand, MC was Not yet intgrated to the system.

Read More here, http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/04/26/whats-new-in-windows-home-server-vail/

 

[ViRGE]

Yay! I'll have to throw this on a virtual machine and give it a whirl.

 

[RebateMonger]

Hmmm...the Wegotserved article says that WHS will be able to back itself up. That'd be nice, although since my personal WHS runs in Hyper-V, I'm able to just do an "Export" on my virtual machine.

No mention of how it'll handle volumes larger than 2 TB. Presumably it knows how to create and handle GPT partitions.

 

[ViRGE]

Hmmm...the Wegotserved article says that WHS will be able to back itself up. That'd be nice, although since my personal WHS runs in Hyper-V, I'm able to just do an "Export" on my virtual machine.

No mention of how it'll handle volumes larger than 2 TB.

Well it's 64bit-only, so it should be fully GPT-capable, no?

 

[pjkenned]

Rebatemonger, I have it in a Hyper-V VM right now. I've found some cool things. Expect an update later tonight or tomorrow.

Virge, not necessarily.

 

[RebateMonger]

I started a Hyper-V install, but it looks like I'll have to log physically into the Hyper-V machine to do the install and my monitor broke two days ago.

Interesting that MS wants a 160 GB disk for the "System" disk. That's twice the size requirement from WHS V1 and most folks wondered if it needed to stay so large now that WHS V1 PP1 and above didn't use a "landing strip" on the first disk anymore.

Arrgh! I'm working on my Hyper-V server with a fifteen-inch VGA monitor built by Gateway 2000 in 1993! I'm going to name it, "Holstein". My dog ate through the video cable going to my 17" LCD monitor two years ago. Things aren't going well on the monitor front. How did we manage to work on 12-, 13-, 14- and 15-inch monitors?

 

[ViRGE]

Interesting that MS wants a 160 GB disk for the "System" disk. That's twice the size requirement from WHS V1 and most folks wondered if it needed to stay so large now that WHS V1 PP1 and above didn't use a "landing strip" on the first disk anymore.

More interesting, the system partition is 60GB, even though a clean install is 10GB. Certainly the partition needed to be bigger than 20GB to leave some breathing room, but 50GB is a surprising about of free space to have.

Arrgh! I'm working on my Hyper-V server with a fifteen-inch VGA monitor built by Gateway 2000 in 1993! I'm going to name it, "Holstein". My dog ate through the video cable going to my 17" LCD monitor two years ago. Things aren't going well on the monitor front. How did we manage to work on 12-, 13-, 14- and 15-inch monitors?

Poorly.

 

[pjkenned]

I started a Hyper-V install, but it looks like I'll have to log physically into the Hyper-V machine to do the install and my monitor broke two days ago.

Interesting that MS wants a 160 GB disk for the "System" disk. That's twice the size requirement from WHS V1 and most folks wondered if it needed to stay so large now that WHS V1 PP1 and above didn't use a "landing strip" on the first disk anymore.

Actually, the WHS v1 installer required 64GB (or maybe 62GB). Less than that and you would get an error at installation.

I did the install over RDC to the Windows Server 2008 R2 box. Worked fine: http://www.servethehome.com/windows-home-server-whs-v2-vail-installed-hyperv-early-release-clue/

If that doesn't work, you could try headless installation http://www.servethehome.com/windows-server-codename-vail-headless-installation/ but that will wipe the entire machine.

 

[ViRGE]

Is it me, or is the option to schedule your client backups completely AWOL?

 

[notposting]

Haven't tried it yet, not messing with the production machine and need to sell some stuff to get a second rig going (and with more or less identical hardware as a backup).

Looks like the 10 drive limit is more a technical issue at this point, and making the drives readable in other machines is not necessarily off the table. Disappointed in the lack of MC backend integration (I don't want to watch or use the WHS, but a tuner farm capability, unified guide would have been sweet) but I guess it will also depend on how easy it is to come up with add-ins etc.

 

[JackMDS]

It could be that 160GB is just to conform with whats available on market.

Right Now it is the smallest regular 3.5" HD that are sold new in quantities.

As for Monitors. Yeah, the beta instructions are to do direct install Not headless one.

This page has a Good install description, http://mswhs.com/2010/04/26/windows-home-server-v2-vail-part-1/

 

[Maximilian]

Nice, think it would be possible to migrate my software RAID5 array from WS2008 R2 to this new WHS?

 

[pjkenned]

Is it me, or is the option to schedule your client backups completely AWOL?

Set your time to Pacific time (GMT -8).

As for the installation... it requires 10 or so clicks. Very easy.

If the SW Raid 5 array has data you want to keep, don't migrate it.

 

[RebateMonger]

I did the install over RDC to the Windows Server 2008 R2 box. Worked fine: http://www.servethehome.com/windows-home-server-whs-v2-vail-installed-hyperv-early-release-clue/

I was able to figure out why I was getting an error message when I tried to insert the WHS Install .ISO file into the "Virtual DVD" drive. It was an error that the machine account, "User", didn't have permission to access the location where the ISO was stored.

I had to move the Install ISO into the folder where the WHS virtual disk was located. After that, I was able to do the entire install and configuration from RDP into my Hyper-V server.

Is it me, or is the option to schedule your client backups completely AWOL?

Yeah, I'm not seeing that, either.

A couple of odd things:

1) No System Reserved Partition. Win7 makes these 100 MB partitions when installing on a fresh boot disk. I don't recall whether Server 2008 R2 does.

2) Drive Letters! If you RDP into WHS v2, you'll see drive letters for each of the shared folders. On a 160 GB virtual disk I'm seeing:
60 GB System Disk
100 GB "DE Disk"
The shared data drives (V:, W:, X:, Y:, Z: ) each show 70 GB of space. So 30 GB of the "DE Disk" is being reserved. There's also a U: (Network Computer Backups), which is 73 GB.

 

[VirtualLarry]

10 HD limit? Are they kidding me??? I would expect the primary reason to move the base os from Server 2003 to 2008R2, would be to improve the overall technical infrastructure (remove 2TB volume limit by supporting GPT - even though Server 2003 supports GPT in the OS), and remove HD quantity limits.

"Another nice feature is that Vail now automatically enables duplication on your shared folders after additional drives are added."
Automatically? That doesn't sound good either.

The remote access media streaming and automatic transcoding really interests me, but most of my files are all DVD ISO images, not proper media files. I don't suppose those files would work, would they?

 

[Chiefcrowe]

I think the 10 HD limit is also crazy but I hope that is just for this beta and that will be removed. New versions shouldn't regress - I think the first version of WHS supported more drives!

 

[RebateMonger]

I think the 10 HD limit is also crazy but I hope that is just for this beta and that will be removed.

Unless I'm missing something, what's being said is that the "System" partition is 60 GB, but only 10 GB are being used by the OS. The rest is empty space.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Unless I'm missing something, what's being said is that the "System" partition is 60 GB, but only 10 GB are being used by the OS. The rest is empty space.

No, we're talking about the supposed limit of ten overall physical HDs connected to the server at any one time.

 

[JackMDS]

WHS = Windows Home Server.

It is Not WES = Windows Enterprise Server, hence the 10 HD configuration.

 

[RebateMonger]

No, we're talking about the supposed limit of ten overall physical HDs connected to the server at any one time.

Sorry. I'm off in another world.

 

[Geofram]

From an article off at wegotserved:

The Windows Home Server team have stated today that the 10 Drive limit is due to technical instabilities in the beta release, and the goal will be to life that limitation by the time the product reaches the market. Bulat Shelepov, Microsoft’s Test Lead for Drive Extender stated,
“We don’t prevent the user from adding more than 10 drives, it’s just not stable enough in this beta release. We’re testing on machines with more than 10 disks at the moment and are seeing occasional bugs, which we need to fix before raising our official limits.”

http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/04/27/perfectdisk-to-support-vails-new-drive-extender-technology-with-software-outside-of-disk-defragmentation/

Looks like the limit is just for this beta, due to a bug.

 

[RebateMonger]

Yikes! How could MS not have a "fix" for Western Digital Advanced Format disks when used as the Primary disk in WHS2? The reasons were apparent when WHS was based on Server 2003. But now?

"Issue

Server installation may fail when using Western Digital hard disk drives with Advanced Format

Description

Depending on the exact Western Digital hard disk drive model and firmware, Windows Server “Vail” setup may fail because of compatibility issues with the sector sizes that are reported by the hard disk drive.

Solution

It is recommended that Western Digital hard disk drives with Advanced Format not be used as the primary hard disk drive on the server."

 

[BD2003]

As much as I love my WHS, I cant think of a single reason to install this.

Seems like such a huge disappointment to me.

 

[RebateMonger]

As much as I love my WHS, I cant think of a single reason to install this.

I've had that general instinct for a while. But there are certainly issues like "large disk" compatibility that will need to be addressed by MS within the next year. Hopefully those will be addressed in WHS2.

The "ECC" feature sounds interesting. Sounds like something along the lines of OpenSolaris' ZFS. Of course, hard drives have their own ECC checks, but that seems to be failing us in these days of big disks and big arrays. So far, I haven't worried much about "bit-flip", since the disk failures that have caused me problems in the real world have been much bigger than a couple of flipped bits.

 

[RebateMonger]

This isn't in the documentation included with the WHS2 Beta. There are MAJOR changes in the way that WHS stores files. Many of these changes address issues discussed in the AnandTech forums, like WHS sytems becoming too busy at times to stream video and the new ability to use disks larger than 2 TB. There are many advantages to the new system, but some major concerns, too.

Microsoft says some of the changes to the Drive Extender required a change to a storage pool that works on a block level rather than a file level like WHS1.

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whsvailbeta/thread/32844aae-9f41-41cb-8a4a-f6c26ddfdd6f

"Drive Extender is a storage technology first introduced in Windows Home Server's first release. The 1st generation of the technology was file based, and worked on top of "vanilla" NTFS volumes using reparse points. To address the customer feedback we have received and improve the system's resiliency to partial drive failures (seen many times by our support), the Drive Extender technology was updated to use block based storage below the file system similar to software RAID systems.

The following isn't an exhaustive list, but does try to enumerate the major new features as well as features which are no longer supported in the “Vail” version of Drive Extender:

Features carried over from the previous release:

· Duplication can be turned on/off per folder.

· Duplicated folders can survive a single hard drive failure.

· Storage pool can be easily expanded using different drive types and various sizes.

· Graphical representation of storage usage (AKA the pie chart) - isn't present in the beta, but is planned for the next milestone.

New/Improved features:

· For duplicated folders, data is duplicated in real time to two separate drives - there is no hourly migration pass.

· File system level encryption (EFS) and compression are now supported for Drive Extender folders.

· File conflicts are gone, duplication works as intended for files in use as it is performed at the block level now.

· The remaining amount of data to synchronize/duplicate is reported per storage pool.

· All storage operations are executed in the background without blocking other server operations. Specifically, drive removal can be issued without impacting the online state of shares.

· Drives in a storage pool can be named with a custom description to enable physical identification of the drive in the server.

· Drive serial number and exact connection type is reported for each drive.

· Drives which are bigger than 2TB can be added to a storage pool.

· iSCSI storage devices can be added to the a storage pool.

· The system drive can be excluded from the storage pool.

· A new low-level storage check and repair diagnostic operation was added.

· All storage operations are performed with very low I/O priority to ensure they don't interfere with media streaming.

· A new "folder repair" operation is available which runs chkdsk on the folder's volume.

· To protect against silent storage errors (bit flips, misdirected writes, torn writes), additional information is appended to each 512-byte sector stored on drive. In particular, each sector is protected by a CRC checksum, which enables Drive Extender to detect data read errors, perform realtime error correction and self-healing (up to 2 bit errors per sector if duplication is disabled, and any number of bit errors if duplication is enabled) and report the errors back to the user and application. The overhead for this additional data is roughly 12% of drive space.

· Data drives in storage pools can be migrated between servers, and appear as a non-default pool. A non-default pool can be promoted to a default pool if no default pool exists.

Deprecated features:

· A data drive from a storage pool cannot be read on machine not running the “Vail” server software.

· Data isn't rebalanced across drives to ensure even distribution. The data allocation attempts to keep drives evenly used. A periodic rebalance operation is considered for the next version.

Known interop/support issues:

· As with other software RAID solutions, Drive Extender isn't supported with BitLocker.

· Drive Extender cannot share the same drive with other software based RAID systems (such as Microsoft Dynamic Drives)

· Running low-level software storage tools—for example, defragmentation, full drive encryption, or volume imaging—on server folders may cause issues. These tools have not been fully tested in this release. Please avoid running these tools on the server.

· Internally, the “Vail” software has been tested with up to 16 hard drives and with up to 16 TB of total storage capacity. We’re aware of a number of bugs that occur beyond these limits, so please keep your beta installations under 16 drives and 16 TB total drive space."

================================

More information on the new block-level Drive Extender. This is a HUGE change. Data can't be read on anything but a WHS2 system right now. And, THEORETICALLY, if you store a lot of multi-gigabyte files, pieces of those files could be spread across more than one disk.

http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/whsvailbeta/thread/49a8c753-0f27-48af-a60f-a4eee49636cb

Drive Extender v2 is a volume driver that sits *under* the file system. In other words, on a running Vail machine Drive Extender presents its data as regular NTFS volumes (each share, e.g. Music, Videos, etc. is a separate volume with its own drive letter), and all applications that live on top of NTFS and interact with NTFS through the documented interfaces should work just fine. In fact, application compatibility has *dramatically* improved compared to WHS v1, and making sure that we look just like regular NTFS volumes to applications (both local and remote) was one of our primary design goals for v2.

Internally, these NTFS volumes are sliced and diced into 1 GB chunks, which are distributed (in multiple copies if duplication is enabled) across multiple physical disks according to our own on-disk schema. DEVolume.sys (our driver, working only on Vail at the moment) is the only driver currently in existence that can parse this layout and present the aforementioned NTFS volumes to applications. Consequently, any system not running DEVolume.sys is currently unable to retrieve the data from directly connected DEv2 disks -- that includes all client Windows OS. This affects only situations when DEVolume.sys is not loaded / running -- primarily recovery scenarios, as mentioned in the original post.