Microsoft Abandons Drive Extender Technology for Vail

[panteragstk]

I just wanted a solution that provided a high quality backup solution for my computers on the network, compatible with sage out of the box, will be as stable as my server 2k3 box. If Vail meets these requirements then I will use it. I'll be using unraid for all file serving duties.

[gplasky]

I've always wondered how well this might work with SageTV for Linux.

Amahi

This have features amazingly similar to WHS.

The core functionality available in the base Amahi HDA install includes:

1. Protect Your Computers Backup all your networked PCs simply and easily on your home network. If one of your PCs "dies" you can easily restore it!
2. Organize Your Files Access, share and search your files from any machine on your network, making it easy to share and find your photos, music and videos.
3. Internet Wide Access Automatically setup your own VPN so you can access your network from anywhere: safely and securely.
4. Private Internet Applications Shared applications like calendaring, private wiki and more to come, will help you manage your home and your family!

Similar to WHS Storage Pool

Storage pooling
From Amahi
Storage Pooling is a technology to pool disk drives and make them look as if they were all part of a single pool of disk space.

The implementation technology in Storage Pooling is Greyhole.

Greyhole is a system module that uses Samba to create a storage pool of all your available hard drives (whatever their size, however they're connected).

From this pool, space is allocated for all Shares participating in the pool.

In addition, it also allows you to create redundant copies of the files you store in shares. You can use this to prevent data loss when part of your hardware fails.

In short, Greyhole offers:

JBOD storage pool (Just A Bunch of Disks)
Per share redundancy: file replication on a per-share
Easily recoverable files: you can read them with other systems

Interesting.

Gerry

[Skirge01]

That's interesting, Gerry. I found Greyhole before hearing about Amahi and read up on them both. I didn't see the Greyhole reference on the Amahi site, but I did see this note on the Greyhole site:

I’m now looking for adventurous souls who would like to battle-test it.
I’m sure there are bugs, and probably some of them will delete data it shouldn’t. So I’d like to find those ASAP, before I loose the 5TB of data I myself have stored in my own Greyhole server.
...
Big red warning: Do NOT store your only copies of important files on Greyhole! It’s not ready for that. It needs to be tested first.

I did see a comment from someone on the Greyhole site referencing #amahi, though. At this point in time, I'm not sure I'd trust either of them as a replacement for my WHS DE.

[gplasky]

I imagine both have a ways to go. Find the Amahi wiki and search for Greyhole on there. It's covered and it's just recently that it was added to Amahi. I'm mostly a Windows guy but I did have this set up about 6 months ago and running. And backing up PCs on the LAN. And hosting media files. Just like my WHS. I just don't have SageTV for Linux which is what I would really like to see run on there.

Gerry

[Nelbert]

Not sure about Amahi, but it depends how open the back end is. e-smith/sme server used to be great for a server but config to do anything not supported by the e-smith framework was a pain.
An alternative could be Zentyal (used to be ebox) which sits on Ubuntu 10.04 and plays nicely with the Ubuntu repositories. Biggest downside is why the heck it needs to run X for the management interface.

What linux really needs is decent support for ZFS not the fuse abortion it has. Recovery, configuration and extension of ZFS pools is much easier and less error prone than the linux md-arrays/LVM. The Sun Thumper with 48 SATA drives running full tilt under ZFS was a major price/performance achievement.

As far as MS pulling DE completely from Vail it will probably kill it. Anyone relying on the Intel/Windows software raid needs to have their computer taken from them, which comes back to hardware raid which is overkill and overpriced for a typical windows home server target user. Only thing left going for Vail is it's Win 2K8R2 with the media/bda support built in and it should have decent native backup tools, unlike a normal Win 2K8R2 server.

[Dreameriz]

This is really stupid of them because they should be pounding this away so its solid because the need will only be need more in the future if they think that even when we get to 10 tb drives there will be people and bunnies that need this as media gets bigger and hd and with 3d I rember when people thought a 6gb drive was big and could not be filled up. Plus that has this happens it would be more user friendly just on windows systems home has well because normal people don't care how many hard-drives they have all they want is easy access i know lot of people who hat and ask why do i have a c and d drive or more it just like ram people people dont want to just that it works and whsv1 was great and the face it was in one shared drive file it was a great idea and made it easy to maintain things and think on any windows this feature is needed

[Polypro]

If they went into the red with WHS v1 and never made a dime...hey, it's a business. But this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Vail is dead IMO. They won't sell one copy to anybody that knows anything. DE and the client backups are the primary features for a "Home" server. Like others have stated, put a switch in at install: "I am using this on a home network with less than 10 computers - Activate Drive Extender" or "I am using this in a small business environment and have my own disk management solution - Do not install Drive Extender". They have DE working in "Fail" now... and I have had zero problems in v1. The other problem with most of the "alternative" suggestions for a replacement (UnRAID, Synology, Thecus, Amahi, etc...) is that they aren't Windows. How am I going to run ComSkip or Show Analyzer? How am I going to run my security camera software, etc..... Now I have to transfer all that stuff back to computers I wanted to get it off of in the first place? MS is hosing it's users bad here. Luckily, v1 will run for the next 20 years...if I started up a configured Win98 computer today...it would work just fine.

P.S. Hey Acronis, time to step up here. Network based, 10 seat or less backup for the same price (or less) than Vail. Yeah, duplication and disk management will still be missing, but if I have a constantly updating image of all data...I can live with that. As it stands now, 4 computers cost $160 and the solution is kind of clunky and repetitive (running on all computers)...and your business stuff is too expensive.

P

[brainbone]

Originally Posted by davephan

The disk imaging products for server editions, such as Symantec and Acronis are pretty expensive.

R-Drive Image works on server editions. Not bad for $45.

[kevine]

I don't know if this will make a difference but Steve Ballmer is now looking into the decision to cut DE.

[Nelbert]

TBH I doubt it. Damned if they do, damned if they don't.

They we're already taking alot of flack over DE v2 about the way it split single files across multiple disks and the inability to read the disks in anything other than another vail server.

A group of Beta testers (ie niche tech users) complain about an OEM only variant of windows losing a feature vs potential sales/upgrades of SBS which currently doesn't have DE.

SBS users generally don't have a need for DE as their providers have that covered when they supply the server. I expect most typical end users don't care about it/understand the implications anyway. I'll bet it's mainly just the tech savvy people who are buying OEM version, not appliances, that understand the difference.

Where does WHS sit on the balance sheet? Not very high up I'll bet, especially compared to SBS.

[Oats]

Drive extender and duplication never really mattered to me. My main use for WHS was the backup of networked computers. If Vail still does that and allows me to backup the server to an external I still think it is worth the upgrade.

[toony]

While I was shocked at the news I am relieved to some point. I was waiting to see if my system would run more stable going from current WHS to Vail.

At least I know it's no use to wait any longer as I really only use the drive extender and the client control centre.

Now I guess I'm going straight to Win 7 64bit and will have to figure out which raid and client backup to use.

[Nelbert]

For windows alternatives there is FlexRAID, but I guess the unRaid prophets will bash it for not currently supporting realtime parity.

One thing nobody ever mentions about unRaid (aside from it not working on Windows) is it requires the largest drive in the system to be the parity drive. Even unRaid make that info hard to find. So if you have a 1tb disk and 2 x 500gb disks you still only get 1tb of space. On the paid versions a cache drive is recommended due to the performance hit unRaid suffers in it's mdadm extension implementation, the code while open source still hasn't been accepted into the mainstream kernel.

What are the disadvantages of unRAID compared to similar products?
No striping. So, although it performs well, and better than many NAS solutions, is generally slower than a RAID 0, RAID 5, RAID 6, or RAID 10, etc.

I've nothing against unRaid but too many people here seem to act like members of the Church of Jobs when they talk about it.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Nelbert

For windows alternatives there is FlexRAID, but I guess the unRaid prophets will bash it for not currently supporting realtime parity.

One thing nobody ever mentions about unRaid (aside from it not working on Windows) is it requires the largest drive in the system to be the parity drive. Even unRaid make that info hard to find. So if you have a 1tb disk and 2 x 500gb disks you still only get 1tb of space. On the paid versions a cache drive is recommended due to the performance hit unRaid suffers in it's mdadm extension implementation, the code while open source still hasn't been accepted into the mainstream kernel.

I've nothing against unRaid but too many people here seem to act like members of the Church of Jobs when they talk about it.

I use unRAID and I don't think I am a member of the unRAID cult, not the way some Mac owners seem to be...

I found that information about the parity drive needing to be the largest or equal to the largest data drive right away. I did not find the information about WD advanced format drives until it was too late, requiring me to back off 8.6 TB of data off the unRAID server, re-build the unRAID server, and move the 8.6 TB of data back onto the unRAID server. That process took about two weeks to complete.

To me, FlexRAID had a very big disadvantage when I was comparing the two. I can't remember the big disadvantage to using FlexRAID now. I think I would have to search for my previous posts to remember what I did not like about FlexRAID.

UnRAID's main disadvantage is the slow I/O when moving many TB's of data in and out of the unRAID array. The concept of booting to a flash drive is very nice. No constant MS patching needed, it just works. The data throughput is fast enough for at least two HD playback streams. I haven't tested more streams. I haven't tested recording directly, but I have heard it is best to not record directly onto the unRAID server drives. The cache drive does seem to help the throughput. My cache drive is only 1 TB, so the cache drive can be smaller than the data drives.

UnRAID is supposed to be developing a P + Q parity system that will allow any two drives to fail with no data loss. The current unRAID system has a big advantage over RAID 5, where you only lose 1 drive's data if two drives fail. With RAID 5, everything is gone with a two drive failure.

Since the unRAID system is so stable and does not require constant patching, I will probably migrate my SageTV computer to Linux when I have some more hardware available for it.

Some people have talked about combining the two servers into one server, but I think your better off running one server for SageTV and a separate server for your video library storage.

Dave

[Fuzzy]

Personally, I would prefer FlexRAID's method for media storage over UnRAID. The only disadvantage I see to FlexRAID is it's lack of 'live parity generation'. Though for media storage, it's not like I need constant, immediate protection to my files (You don't have the immediate protection if using UnRAID with a Cache drive either). Having the parity updated nightly or even weekly would be enough for most. UnRAID, on the other hand, would require a second 24/7 PC in my household, which definitely is a major negative.

So, with FlexRAID, I'd get the full speed of unprotected storage, with the long-term protection of parity, all on my existing windows based sagetv server...

Of course, I haven't implemented either... mostly due to laziness, and the fact that I really don't have that much ripped yet in my library for it to matter... I have 4TB of new storage sitting on my desk though, so when that is introduced to my system, I may start looking to FlexRAID it up.

[PGPfan]

I use both WHS (not Vail) and unRAID, and I'm not an unRAID 'church' member. They each have their advantages and disadvantages. However for me, although there are similarities between FlexRaid and unRAID (looked into FlexRaid for my WHS box) there is no comparison with ease of use - unRAID absolutely smokes FlexRaid. Frankly, I have no desire to spend the time to learn FlexRaid, my entertainment system is used to relax, NOT give me one more thing to learn to maintain. That is unRAID's biggest trumpcard - it's a freakin breeze to use.

-PGPfan

[Fuzzy]

Also like to point out, that the private beta of the FlexRAID Live features are starting this week. That alone will significantly ease the configuration hurdle, as you no longer have to worry about managing the syncs youself. Just set up the protected areas, and go from there.

[skyfox]

Microsoft should buy out unRAID, include the technology into the server products and we can be done with this mirrored pool - infact all card based RAID - forever.

I dont know about you, but at home you want hassle free 'add a drive, and do whatever it needs'. Small companies, small IT outlay. Large companies can invest in more hardware, getting speed from more drives over expensive arrays. (The company I work for just installed 260TB of SAN array today, very expensive.)

Software RAID works these days on dedicated machine due to the CPU power available, we just need an 'ultimate' solution. WHS + unRAID.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by skyfox

Microsoft should buy out unRAID, include the technology into the server products and we can be done with this mirrored pool - infact all card based RAID - forever.

I dont know about you, but at home you want hassle free 'add a drive, and do whatever it needs'. Small companies, small IT outlay. Large companies can invest in more hardware, getting speed from more drives over expensive arrays. (The company I work for just installed 260TB of SAN array today, very expensive.)

Software RAID works these days on dedicated machine due to the CPU power available, we just need an 'ultimate' solution. WHS + unRAID.

I would hate for Microsoft to but Lime technologies. Microsoft would probably screw it up, you'd have to constantly apply patches, and it would need to be rebooted all the time to keep it running.

UnRAID could be used on a second computer for the video library, which is hard to store on the SageTV computer when it grows pretty large.

The unRAID server is much more reliable than the Windows XP SageTV computer. I'm seriously considering migrating the SageTV computer to the Linux SageTV version, still using a second computer for SageTV, but running Linux instead of Windows.

Dave

[madpoet]

I'm closing in on completing a full Norco 4224 unRaid system (got to finish modifying my fan board!) and when I'm done it will be just about perfect I loved WHS. It was a great system. But ultimately unRaid met my needs cheaper and cleaner. It's still tough with some things because I'm not a Linux guy, but thankfully there are addons and the like that make it a much easier product. I just set up an APC UPS last night, installed the unMenu package for APC, and poof I have a fully working UPS with Linux communication that can monitor and auto-shutdown