Microsoft Abandons Drive Extender Technology for Vail

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by davephan

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.

I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. I think the truth on the patching issue is closer to saying that you can't patch unRAID, rather than you don't have to patch unRAID. Most of the patches you'd really want to apply for Windows are security updates. unRAID, on the other hand, doesn't claim to be a high-security system. I think the community's position is pretty clear that you need to stick unRAID beyond a firewall and keep untrusted users off your network. In that situation, you can pretty much run a WinXP server indefinitely without patching it too.

And unRAID has the same problem as Windows when it comes to reboots. For a Windows server that isn't doubling as a workstation, you ought to be able to get away with running it 24/7 without reboots. The problem is that you need to reboot if you do most updates. But, you need to reboot an unRAID server any time you do an update too.

That being said, I agree with your conclusion that Microsoft and unRAID would not be a good partnership. It's not like Microsoft couldn't just recreate a Windows version of unRAID on their own- I don't think LimeTech has any valuable IP, in part because you could look at unRAID as a sort of RAID4 system.

Plus I don't think unRAID would fit in with small business or corporate environments very well due to performance reasons. In anything other than a single-user environment I think you'd actually want the performance benefits of striping.

On a side note, I don't expect to see P+Q parity in unRAID- at least, not anytime soon. I don't know if LimeTech has ever seriously discussed the idea publically in the same way that they've said AFP support is supposed to be coming (for several years now). This was discussed at length of the forums, and I'm quite convinced what the community members on the forums would like to see would violate one or two NetApp patents. Maybe the patents are bogus, but if they are little ol' LimeTech is not going to be the one to challenge them.

[Fuzzy]

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.

MS is trying to move AWAY from location based storage in general, so what would UnRAID really gain other than the parity redundancy? the 'Add-A-Drive' scenario is something MS thinks is fine my just.. well.. adding a drive. Add the Documents and Pictures and Videos folders on the new drive to the Win7 Library, and it's done.

[Nelbert]

I doubt MS could use unRaid in their products anyway. Not without opensourcing the low level code.

The unRaid disk drivers are open source and extensions of the kernel mdadm drivers, which is linux software raid. The IP LimeTech would have would be for the appliance interface, not the disk tech. It's not like there aren't other more mature NAS interfaces if that's what MS wanted. MS already have software raid done, so why would they bother with unRaid?

IMO what's needed, esp for the home market, is content based protection, not yet more disk level based raid systems. Some of my content is important, some isn't I'd like it all in the same disks. Data integrity and a backup regime only for the important stuff is needed. The rest, who cares if I lose it.

Unfortunately for LimeTech, regardless of how good the product might be, I find it difficult to take a company seriously when they talk about data protection, but can't even be bothered to put UPS support into their own product. APC ups only via a 3rd party addon is just laziness. Even more worrying when they're using software raid and have no out of the box UPS support. Power interruptions and mdadm do not play well together, regardless of what file system you put on top of it. Yes even reiserFS goes belly up and can't always recover from a power outage. It's not keen on full disk partitions either.

As LimeTech seem to view the unRaid system as an install it yourself appliance I guess keeping upto date with security fixes isn't high on the devs priority list, then again it doesn't appear to be high on the list for the Slackware guys either. In that respect unRaid is no worse than any other linux based appliance... just because their aren't updates provided doesn't mean they aren't needed.

Nobody is forcing you to apply windows patches as soon as they come out, so that's just a red herring. Linux can need patching quite regularly as well, our linux servers at work have received at least 1 kernel update a month for the 2nd half of this year.

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Add the Documents and Pictures and Videos folders on the new drive to the Win7 Library, and it's done.

And so is your data without a proper backup plan. That is why drive extender was nice to have.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by Nelbert

Unfortunately for LimeTech, regardless of how good the product might be, I find it difficult to take a company seriously when they talk about data protection, but can't even be bothered to put UPS support into their own product. APC ups only via a 3rd party addon is just laziness. Even more worrying when they're using software raid and have no out of the box UPS support. Power interruptions and mdadm do not play well together, regardless of what file system you put on top of it. Yes even reiserFS goes belly up and can't always recover from a power outage. It's not keen on full disk partitions either.

I couldn't agree more. I've pointed to the exact same thing before. I'm an unRAID user, and I like it enough that I wouldn't discourage tech-savvy people from using it, but I'm also not going to actively recommend it to anyone until LimeTech deals with that (and a few other things, like improved documentation, and better handling of technical support).

But the lack of UPS support really sticks out in my mind. As far as I know, pretty much everyone agrees UPS support is critical for a software system like unRAID. The unRAID community shrugs off the lack of official support by saying there's a plugin, but that sure sounds like an important enough feature that it should be included out-of-the-box.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

And so is your data without a proper backup plan. That is why drive extender was nice to have.

Drive extender has absolutely NOTHING to do with a proper backup plan.

[Nelbert]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

And so is your data without a proper backup plan. That is why drive extender was nice to have.

And DE isn't a backup plan either. A corrupt file mirrored is still a corrupt file. You don't need to delete things to need a backup plan.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by Nelbert

I doubt MS could use unRaid in their products anyway. Not without opensourcing the low level code.

What MS would gain from this fictional purchase, isn't using the UnRAID code directly, but using the UnRAID paradigm, and implementing that system into VDS (just as current UnRAID is implemented into MDADM). No actual UnRAID code would be used, just the patents.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by 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

How hot do the hard drives get with that chassis? I heard that you could not get a playing card between the drives because they are so tight. I've also heard some reports of drive back plane connection problems. Have you had any of those problems? Is the fan mod being done so the chassis does not sound like a 747 on take off on the runway? I haven't set up unMenu yet, I don't know if it is needed. I'm not a Linux guy either, but I suspect that the occasional lockups, endlessly spinning circles would go away if I changed from Windows XP to Linux for the SageTV computer.

Dave

[madpoet]

I have the new fan board which supports 120mm fans, and I replaced every fan in the system with good quality low noise fans. It's a lot quieter than my tower-based unRaid was frankly I use primarily green drives and they stay really cool, no complaints yet. The 4224 is laid out a little differently than then 4220, and seems to be easier to work with at least as far as I am concerned.

If you have unRaid and haven't added the unMenu stuff you should!

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Drive extender has absolutely NOTHING to do with a proper backup plan.

Sorry but for example, One of my drives in my WHS failed last month and in a matter of 8 hours I had that drive removed and a new one in its place with no data lost. Remove drive extender from WHS and this is not possible. And my WHS backs up my other computers in my house and when they crash I can restore from the WHS backup. This really sounds like a backup plan to me.

[Nelbert]

Originally Posted by lotusvball

Sorry but for example, One of my drives in my WHS failed last month and in a matter of 8 hours I had that drive removed and a new one in its place with no data lost. Remove drive extender from WHS and this is not possible. And my WHS backs up my other computers in my house and when they crash I can restore from the WHS backup. This really sounds like a backup plan to me.

DE like Raid is about data availability, that is not the same as a backup plan for your WHS.

While WHS can be used to store the backups of your pc's, which gives you a backup plan for your pcs, what happens when your WHS goes belly up? What happens when it goes belly up and then one of the pc's needs restoring? MS advertise it as backup for your PCs and files, they gloss over ie IGNORE protecting the server itself.

DE won't help with server data corruption, major hardware failure, theft and the list goes on. You'll need to restore from a backup for that as you no longer have a server with clean data. A backup plan isn't just about protecting from 1 hard drive failing.

I use WHS at home but I also understand it's limitations and risks of expecting DE or a raid system to protect my data.

[lotusvball]

Originally Posted by Nelbert

DE like Raid is about data availability, that is not the same as a backup plan for your WHS.

While WHS can be used to store the backups of your pc's, which gives you a backup plan for your pcs, what happens when your WHS goes belly up? What happens when it goes belly up and then one of the pc's needs restoring? MS advertise it as backup for your PCs and files, they gloss over ie IGNORE protecting the server itself.

DE won't help with server data corruption, major hardware failure, theft and the list goes on. You'll need to restore from a backup for that as you no longer have a server with clean data. A backup plan isn't just about protecting from 1 hard drive failing.

I use WHS at home but I also understand it's limitations and risks of expecting DE or a raid system to protect my data.

That was the whole reason we were waiting for vail. It was supposed to give us DE and the ability to backup the system drive. Right now you have 2 options with whs v1. Do a regular backup of the system drive or if the system drive or hardware fail use the clone method to restore your whs. You can still use whs as a backup plan. You just need to backup your backup. I have had a system crash and the clone method works fine. Didn't lose any data. 5 years ago I had a pc go down and I lost everything. I still have the harddrive in the freezer hoping to someday have the time to try and retrieve data off of it. I digress. Vail was supposed to fix things and now that they are dropping DE it actually makes it useless as a whs.

[Nelbert]

The big problem with DE in vail was you were expected, but not required due to V1, to use duplication on all shares to protect from a single drive failure. With storage slices on the drive being 1Gb, any file > 1Gb was getting striped across multiple drives. It wasn't keeping files on the same disk, it was striping them across disks raid 0 style. I tried putting some files, small files and 5-7Gb isos on my Vail install (4 disks) and pulled a disk. Without duplication anything over 1Gb was lost. Anything under 1Gb was only lost if it was on the drive that was pulled. That was enough to stop me using it.
With the 12% space loss DE imposed and the need to duplicate all data, that's a significant amount of disk space to lose just for the ability to add drives of different sizes to the system.
I'm guessing the performance issues with SBS were down to enabling duplication of all data for apps like Exchange and SQL so that losing a single disk didn't wipe out the exchange store or database.

Does that make Vail useless as a home server? For typical end users I suspect not. They get a simple to manage server, which probably has raid enabled. It'll centralise the storage of all their data, backup their pc's, and make file sharing simple.

Will a typical user bother backing up the server? There's more chance of Apple adding flash support.