Migrating from Win7 to WHS

[bastage]

So my SageTV server is multipurpose & given the amount of data it contains I want some redundancy so I have WHS on the way (as well as a new mobo for it).

Question is whats the best way to transitioning from the regular windows install to the whs install. I have no plugins & very few recorded shows that I am worried about. But I have an Upgraded version of SageTV7 from an older version. Will I simply be allowed to install the MSI files & use the sagetv7 key.. Or will I have to install the older version 1st.

& Then after this gets down is when the real fun starts. I don't even have comskip setup & I Will need to setup playon for netflix too, I have been putting them both off knowing that I was going to move to WHS. But the nVidia chipset in my current board didn't play nice with WHS. Not to mention see about sharing the server optical drive.

System Specs: (what they will be when I install again next week)
Mobo: ASUS M2A74-AM 740g
CPU: Phenom 9150e (65w 1.8Ghz quad core)
Ram: 4gb (2x2gb) Corsair XMS DDR2 800
HDD: 1x 1tb Samsung EcoSmart & 2x 1.5tb Samsung EcoSmart drives

Server also does several other functions & I know its not suggested to mix the sage server with everything else, but I am not willing to have a 2nd 24/7 on machine so this little Phenom gets its little ass worked off.

Any help on the easiest/best way of doing this migration would be appreciated.

[gplasky]

Here's my recommendation.

Set up your WHS server and make sure to update to all the latest patches and Power Packs. Your can install the Sage add-in clean and you'll need to provide th key to the previous version as well as the SageTV 7 key. Get your tuners installed and set up and verify they work with setting them all to record something at the same time. Stress test it to make sure everything works how you want.

Now you still have the old Sage with all of your media files but you're not running Sage on it. On your WHS set up the SageTV service to log in as a network user with Administrator permissions on your WHS and make sure the ID has a password. That same user ID with the same password should also exist on your old PC. Since you have Windows 7 make sure it is configured for a home network. (Not public) Make sure you have set Win 7 up to discover other PCs by going into "Change Advanced Sharing settings" and "Turn on Network Discovery". Verify you can see your WHS in the Network. Reboot both clean to make sure it is there.

By default WHS will set up your recording directory and you import paths as a UNC path like \\localsystem\SageTV, \\localsystem\videos, \\localsystem\music, \\localsystem\photos. Go ahead and delete those and set the up with the name of your WHS server. Example \\MyWHSserver\videos, \\MyWHSserver\photos, \\MyWHSserver\Recorded TV, etc.

Now you also want to set the paths to your old Sage machine that has recordings, videos, etc. So add these paths to your new install. \\OldSage\videos, \\OldSage\photos, \\OldSage\SageTV, etc. Do this so the the new Sage can see the old files and the new files.

Now stop the Sage service on WHS and copy over your old wiz.bin file from the old server to the new server. (Deleting the existing wiz.bin and wiz.bak) Fire up your Sage service on your WHS server and let it bake. It should have all your favorites and all your old recordings, videos, music, photos, etc.

Depending on number of files this could take a while. Go to your old Sage server can install the WHS connector software. You'll get an icon on your desktop called "Shared Folders on Server". ALWAYS use this to copy files to your WHS. You can now begin cutting and pasting (moving) files from the old to the new. Sage will recognize them and correct the paths stored for the files to the new path. While the file copying is going on do not try playing recordings or doing actual recordings. The disk activity is huge and you'll end up possibly with bad recordings and jerky playback. I usually did this during the late evening hours when nothing was happening. Now you can do this at your convenience.

As far as comskip and playon I run mine on a separate PC to just let WHS do Sage and nothing else. If you put it on WHS you'll want a quad processor. And make sure you point any temp files to your D drive of WHS. The C drive of WHS is only 20 GB and can tend to fill up with if you're not careful. Always use UNC paths when you can but if the program doesn't like it use the D:\somedirectory path.

Hope this helps.

Gerry

[bastage]

@gplasky
Thank you for the response as that tells me how to install, But this is the same computer, just a new mobo & OS. So I cant Have old & new running simultaneous. Most of that though wasn't a big deal though since I Think we have like 7 shows set to record & No nothing else. Most of our media is a separate folder of DVD Rips. & For tuners I use a dual tuner HDHR so I dont anticipate any problems there.

[gplasky]

Sorry I misunderstood. So some of that can still apply and could be useful for womwonw else. That's what I get for posting before my morning coffee.

Gerry

[davephan]

Are you sure you want to migrate from Windows 7 to WHS? You will gain you redundancy, but you'll also loose recoverability. With Windows 7, you can easily and quickly recover with an image. With WHS, your stuck with a painful and time consuming scratch rebuild since imaging does not work with WHS. Not only would you have to re-install the operating and SageTV, but there are many accessory programs and hundreds of configuration parameters for everything. That translates to many hours to days to rebuild the system completely verses a 30 minute recovery time with imaging.

You can gain redundancy with RAID on the Windows 7 system. The downside with RAID is all the drives have to be the same size in each array. You could also setup an unRAID system for redundancy if you can run two systems. UnRAID allows you to use a variety of drive sizes and types as long as your parity drive is equal to or larger than the data drive. UnRAID storage available is simply the sum of all the data drives, very efficient. The storage efficiency is also drastically better with RAID 5 or unRAID. RAID 6 is another option, which functions with two lost hard drives, however controllers that have RAID 6 are usually more expensive. WHS is very inefficient, yielding only 50% of your raw disk space for storage, the same as a RAID 1 mirrorred drive set.

Dave

[Mike]

This thread is about a similar move. I just upgraded to a Windows 7 machine. Your move as far as Sage is concerned will be a bit simpler because you aren't upgrading that at the same time too. You'll just need both keys to do your install.

I'm kinda with davephan on the Windows 7 vs Home Server but everyone has their own preferences and priorities.

Good Luck,
Mike

[stevech]

Isn't WHS a "discontinued" product, in practicality?

[bastage]

the move to WHS isnt just because this is a sagetv server.. For all of the tasks that I have my server do (and there are numerous) whs is the cheapest option to do without having to be specific with hardware.. I Dont need a fancy controller or matches drives & I have several functions that require a windows environment to do.. I actually was running WHS previously on my server (a couple motherboard/CPU combo's ago) & am very happy with it. I moved away from it because of sagetv (I was running a dual core atom, but was told here I needed more power so I upgraded, but ended up with a motherboard that has an nvidia chipset that I could not find drivers for at all (damn abit) and now have a better board on the way to run with the now quad core CPU).

Plus not all of my media needs redundancy, & some I will go as far as triple redundancy. To my knowledge the only other way of being able to pick & choose is with greypool & its not very mature yet (at least not for someone with a limited linux background)

And no WHS is not discontinued, the Drive Extender portion is not to be included in the next version. But as with most servers there is no reason to upgrade if it just plain works now.

[stevech]

I elected to use Win XP and not WHS. I simply use a pair of mirrored drives via the motherboard BIOS, for video files that are too big to dupe daily. And SecondCopy to also due essential files. That XP machine runs Sage, HomeSeer (home automation) and it's web server, and has a lotta GB of disk for home LAN file servers. SecondCopy automates backup of key files. Acronis (automated) does a full disk image every week or so.

Been running 24/7 like this for years. XP reboots every couple of months on my command, due to fiddling. The key is that this PC is never used for ad-hoc web browsing nor email. Never, never uses IE. And windows automatic updates are off; rarely, I elect some updates. Thus, it's doggone stable.

[davephan]

There's another file synchronization application called SyncBack. There are three versions of SyncBack, Freeware, SE, and Pro. The freeware version is probably all you need. The SE and Pro versions are fairly cheap if you need extra features. The home licensing policy allows to install it on up to five home computers. We've been using it for years at work to synchronize large storage devices.

http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

Dave

[bsquarewi]

Originally Posted by bastage

System Specs: (what they will be when I install again next week)
Mobo: ASUS M2A74-AM 740g
CPU: Phenom 9150e (65w 1.8Ghz quad core)
Ram: 4gb (2x2gb) Corsair XMS DDR2 800
HDD: 1x 1tb Samsung EcoSmart & 2x 1.5tb Samsung EcoSmart drives

You didn't list which tuner's you will be using. Just an FYI from experience, the Hauppauge HVR-2250 seems to have problems with more than 3GB RAM in WHS. I was getting BSOD's regularly on my WHS with 4GB ram and ended up pulling 2GB out and have been rock solid for over a year since. The only problem with that approach is that now running Sage version 7 and two Extenders (HD200 and HD300) seems to push the server memory usage higher than I'd like. Still not maxed, but I like ample breathing room which 2GB doesn't really give.

Also, be sure that once you install the add-in to WHS, do all your configuration from either a Placeshifter on a PC or via an Extender. Do not try to run sage interface on the WHS.


Side note: It really is a shame with what MS is doing with WHS right now. It is probably the only MS product that I have ever sung the praises of. It is drop dead simple and works very well. The drive extender and duplication was a welcome treat after trying to balance and swap out disks on a WinXP "server" for years. Now, when space is getting tight, I just swap out an older disk for a 2TB drive and move on. Currently running a mix of older 750gb's, 1TB 1.5TB and 2TB's. I hope the continue to work on Vail and don't totally can it. Although without the Drive Extender functionality, I don't see moving off WHS V1 for a long time.

[bastage]

Originally Posted by bsquarewi

You didn't list which tuner's you will be using. Just an FYI from experience, the Hauppauge HVR-2250 seems to have problems with more than 3GB RAM in WHS. I was getting BSOD's regularly on my WHS with 4GB ram and ended up pulling 2GB out and have been rock solid for over a year since. The only problem with that approach is that now running Sage version 7 and two Extenders (HD200 and HD300) seems to push the server memory usage higher than I'd like. Still not maxed, but I like ample breathing room which 2GB doesn't really give.

The answer is in post 3.. I only us a HDHR..

As for the rest the question is about "migrating from Win 7 to WHS".. Not "why does everyone think WHS is a bad ideal"..

I am migrating & there is no convincing me otherwise at this point. There is simply no other solution that is as user friendly & functional for the purposes I need..

[Mike]

I think the big part of people not wanting to use WHS is the difficulty in restoring, the positive is being able to swap disks and grow the storage. Everybody gets to choose what's most important to them.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by Mike

I think the big part of people not wanting to use WHS is the difficulty in restoring, the positive is being able to swap disks and grow the storage. Everybody gets to choose what's most important to them.

That's true. If you have WHS and anything causes it to fail, such as an upgrade or anything else, then you're in a world of pain. You will have days or weeks of downtime. You'll have to manually rebuild everything. Not just SageTV but all the accessory plug-ins and programs. There could be hundreds of configuration parameters. It would be easier if you document everything. You might end up with a 'recovery book' several hundred pages long documenting every configuration step.

The unRAID solution gives you the same flexibility to add different drive sizes. unRAID is also much more efficient. The disk space available is the sum of your data drives, plus one parity drive. The WHS disk space available is one half the sum of the data drives. So, you have to pay approximately double for your hard drives with WHS for the same space as unRAID. With unRAID, you need an extra computer, so that costs more both to buy the hardware and the electricity to run it.

With all that said, WHS will still work out for you. WHS is too risky for me. But you ask yourself a question. Like the Clint Eastwood movie. Do you feel lucky? If you never have any problems where you will need to recover, then WHS would have been a good move for you.

Dave

[jptheripper]

Originally Posted by Mike

I think the big part of people not wanting to use WHS is the difficulty in restoring, the positive is being able to swap disks and grow the storage. Everybody gets to choose what's most important to them.

I have been using WHS (not running sage on it though) since it went final. I love it, and you can pry it from my cold dead hands.

I lost my primary drive once and it was a pain, so lessons learned:

1. Configure your primary OS drive as a parity RAID. Basically now you never have to restore again. I have never had an update kill my server, only hardware failures.
2. As you add each data drive, format to 64k if you want
3. Clean enough storage to keep data off your primary drive.
4. sit back and love your WHS

[cord]

I'm currently moving the other direction. WHS almost screwed me royally, so I'm ditching it for Win7+FreeNAS.

I had a drive failure on my WHS media storage volume. It shouldn't have been a problem, since I had it set up to duplicate everything. It was a problem. First of all, WHS didn't notify me. It notified me that my backup database was corrupt, but I don't do backups to WHS, so what do I care? It didn't tell me that a drive died until I gave in and ran the backup database repair wizard. At that point, it moronically told me to reconnect the missing drive and all would be well. Missing drive? What missing drive? Then I noticed a drive marked as disconnected. I started poking around in SageTV, and found a lot of files that were unplayable. Apparently WHS isn't too bright about which copy of a duplicated file it uses, when one of the copies is on a dead drive.

I pulled the drive out of the WHS server and attached it to a Win7 box. After some not so gentle tapping on the drive, it spun up long enough for me to recover the terabyte of files on it.

I was lucky in that I was already building a FreeNAS box, so after about 20 hours of saturating my network with file copies, I've switched to storing files on FreeNAS and running sagetv on a small system with a big CPU (for comskip, extenders, etc).

I have a couple of friends who work with very high end storage systems. One of them works on filesystems directly. Neither of them would touch WHS' filesystem, and the second dude has very specific reasons for it, not just a general distrust of microsoft.

WHS is dead to me.

[cord]

Oh, and another point: copying files to FreeNAS from a bare drive mounted on my Win7 machine, I get speeds of 800-900Mbps. From WHS to FreeNAS, my absolute peak performance is 300mbps. WHS is dead slow, even on reads.

[jptheripper]

You shouldnt have had to recover files if you had duplication on. All you had to do was (follow instructions) remove the "missing" drive from the pool, which would have cleaned up all the tombstones and "re-duplicated" all the files. I have lost numerous drives with WHS and have not lost files.

And of course it notifed you that you had a drive missing, it does so in the alerts. Thats what the little red icon is.

Im sorry you had a bad experience, yours is atypical. I would not touch a striped raid with a ten foot pole. Try pulling on of those drives and putting it in another computer and recovering files. Not gonna happen.

BTW, WHS file system is NTFS. we use it every day. It works.

Originally Posted by cord

I'm currently moving the other direction. WHS almost screwed me royally, so I'm ditching it for Win7+FreeNAS.

I had a drive failure on my WHS media storage volume. It shouldn't have been a problem, since I had it set up to duplicate everything. It was a problem. First of all, WHS didn't notify me. It notified me that my backup database was corrupt, but I don't do backups to WHS, so what do I care? It didn't tell me that a drive died until I gave in and ran the backup database repair wizard. At that point, it moronically told me to reconnect the missing drive and all would be well. Missing drive? What missing drive? Then I noticed a drive marked as disconnected. I started poking around in SageTV, and found a lot of files that were unplayable. Apparently WHS isn't too bright about which copy of a duplicated file it uses, when one of the copies is on a dead drive.

I pulled the drive out of the WHS server and attached it to a Win7 box. After some not so gentle tapping on the drive, it spun up long enough for me to recover the terabyte of files on it.

I was lucky in that I was already building a FreeNAS box, so after about 20 hours of saturating my network with file copies, I've switched to storing files on FreeNAS and running sagetv on a small system with a big CPU (for comskip, extenders, etc).

I have a couple of friends who work with very high end storage systems. One of them works on filesystems directly. Neither of them would touch WHS' filesystem, and the second dude has very specific reasons for it, not just a general distrust of microsoft.

WHS is dead to me.

[cord]

First, file duplication should let me continue using the file even when a drive is degraded. It should nag me until it's fixed, but leaving the file unavailable when there's a perfectly good copy sitting there is just wrong.

Second, it didn't notify me. The backup database corruption alert is in the same place the drive failure alert should have appeared. If I saw one, I should've seen the other. There was only a single alert. More importantly, there should be a native way to get an email, text, page, tweet, or whatever. As far as I know, there isn't. Regardless, I know how WHS alerts show up, and it wasn't there.

I use NTFS every day too. I also use several petabytes of raid4 and raid5 at work. Pulling a disk should never be necessary with a proper filesystem. I'm using ZFS raid5 with double parity disks, so I can withstand two drive failures before any data is lost. Even with two failed drives, everything would remain available and usable.

I'm sharing my experiences. I'm not asking for corrections or flames. As soon as I've tested Win7+FreeNAS long enough to build confidence, WHS is getting wiped off the old server and the install disk tossed in the trash. If you've had better experiences with WHS, more power to you. Feel free to share them with the original poster.

[jptheripper]

Didnt to flame. I am more shocked at your experience. But you are right and each user's experience is valuable to making a decision.