yakuza wrote:
sxr71, have you seen
my experience as well as
Damian's experience migrating our Home Server's to new hardware? I would argue it's not as bad as your making it out to be, though Damian did have a difficult time due to what I would argue is a rather technical solution to build a massive home server.
It turned out that you were right with a few caveats. The server recovery actually does work. In fact it promises less than it delivers.
It says that you will lose your backup databases but mine were fully intact and I suspect that was due to my use of BDBB duplication. Thanks for that plug-in. If we relied on MS I would have lost important data.
The issues I had included having to create a slipstream disk to run my drives in AHCI mode but that's something we already know. It was a little of a pain but it got done and it worked.
However there were some issues regarding getting the choice of "server recovery" in the installer. I learned that you must make sure the drive you are installing WHS to is shown first in your boot sequence after the WHS USB Key/DVD, whichever you are using. I guessed at that solution with some input from google searches on the issue.
The other problem I had was some kind of error post Server 2003 install and during WHS install. I wish I could remember the error but it was related to restoring the backup database and installer closes. Now I looked around and found that my of server storage drives was not assigned a drive letter by Server 2003. So I did it in disk management manually and then rebooted to begin the install again and it worked. In this case there wasn't much info on the internet with this exact problem but I guessed at the solution and got lucky.
Now this is by no means acceptable considering the target market of the software, but for someone with some computer knowledge it is manageable if daunting.
So as it stands I'm a happy camper right now. I definitely spoke too soon, but I can't deny that some of these things are "scary" or "daunting" and it would behoove MS to make improvements in that area. We know they are capable, having seen Windows 7. Now that Windows 7 is done, it would be nice if some of that talent worked on WHS.
One thing I noticed about a DIY build is the console seems sparse without all the HP software on there. So that's one advantage of the MSS vs. having a DIY build.