Windows Home Server 2 (Vail)

prescott28

prescott28

prescott28

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It's a while since anyone posted about this so I wondered if anyone was going to be using Vail when it comes out. The lack of Drive Extender (DE) seemed to be a major reason to look elsewhere.

I have rather given up on vail and am running Amahi on top of Fedora 14. Amahi has another version of DE, Greyhole, and so far performs very well. The only downside is that Windows 7 cannot back up to it and backups cannot be initiated from the server. That means installing another backup program on the client machines, I am, using GFI backup, but once ste up there is nothing else to do. An added benefit is that I will not have to shell out for WHSwhich I expect to cost around £100.
 
however i will only buy the release if either DE is redeveloped or a 3rd party alternative is developed.
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I know what you mean about DE. A reply I saw on the RC web page suggested Microsoft might consider it in a service pack later but that might mean the problems of another backup of the server and a re-install - yuk! My Linux version has disk pooling though not the convenient web access but I think I'll stay with it and not with WHS if, and until, it has DE.
 
Well the benefits are DE are principally the ease of use. The use of pooled drives means that there is never a need to move system folders about if they get too full. For example if my son moves a lot of music onto the server music folder, I might have to move the folder to a different drive to make space. With DE all the disks are just a pool of storage and space only runs out when all the disks are full.

The whole thing can be managed in Linux, Fedora 14, by the addition of a suite called Amahi which uses Greyhole to mimic DE. Do you know any simple way by which this can be achieved in Windows with WHS as the prime candidate? If so, how?
 
I don't know how easy this would be to do but I expect that many Windows 7 users are using the 'Home Premium' version which does not support Dynamic Disks. This is certainly how our home machines are configured.

Really, though, WHS ought to have been about simplicity - drop in disks and done, and I think the version was more of less that. Its sad that version 2 will need some knowledge to make it work well.
 
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