While contemplating what OS/Disk arrangment I'm ultimatly going to use on my new system I had an odd thought.
If I were to build the "Beast" based on WHS as the OS, whats the likey hood of a simple upgrade.
A vision of a snowball in hell pops into mind.
How ever, if I were to use the other method of running a more powerful host and then VM WHS.
I would gain the ability to VM Vail as well and migrate the physical drives one by one without incurring additional hardware cost.
But how comfortable am I with that solution?
Lets just say I'm working on an ulcer. And Tape systems are near as expensive as building an empty new WHS and starting from scratch.

I know this thought is swerling around some other noggins, how are you thinking of doing THE EXODUS to Vail when it comes?

Does anyone think it may be possible to take a fresh OS drive install Vail on it and simply mount your 20+ drives of live data? (this works on normal servers, with DE dunno)

Whatcha think?

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

I'm just going to build a new machine that will take advantage of whatever new features and technologies are available at the time.

Seriously, you would build another machine to replace Andromeda? I would think Andromeda (and Shawshank for that matter) are already set to work with an x64 O/S such as Vail. The only thing I may do at some point is upgrade the CPU, mainly though because I want to get into home surveillance and worry about any performance hits Shawshank may take.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Dbone, what process would you use to migrate.
How would you shuffle your 15TB of treasure to vail.

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

Of course Andromeda will support Vail, but I'm basically out of PCIe slots on the mobo. So, without changing out one of the SASLP cards to a RAID card with an external SAS port and an SAS expander card, I can't add more drives to Andromeda except via external esata enclosre. And yes, I'm already planning my next WHS build. It will probably be based on a Supermicro server mobo and an Intel CPU, (unless AMD gets their act together and fixes their AHCI/Raid drivers.

I would "assume" I could just do a server recovery, I shouldn't have to shuffle anything around. I would just need to make sure I grab the x64 drivers for my Sata cards. Do you expect that it would be any different?

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Ah I gotcha, you are planning for needing more storage space. I still have two free bays and most of my current drives are 1TBs, so I figure I still have plenty of time to upgrade drives before I run out

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

Not really, but assumptions have made an A$$ of me before.

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

I hear ya, but at least in this case it will make an A$$ out of you and me

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

I'm not sure you will just be able to do a "Server Recovery", Vail looks different, and the drive shares look a little different. It is using DE, but who knows if it is %100 compatible. I haVe the leaked version running, I suppose I could try it (yikes)

MItch

Well, I have to believe that MS will have a way to "upgrade" from WHS to Vail and keep your shared drives in tact, whether it be via a "Server Recovery" or other method, otherwise it will be a major fail.

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

I could be mistaken, but I do not recall ANY Microsoft product supporting a migration path from 32bit to 64bit.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

But would a server recovery really be migration path per se? You have to load new drivers either way, so why couldn't you just do a server recover using the new x64 drivers? WHat would the alternative be?

Actually let me rephrase, how do you think MS would anticipate going from WHS to Vail without a distruption in your storage data (and I truly hope the answer is not copying your WHS data to spare drives, installing Vail, and then copying back)

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

It would really depend on the technology in Vail, what it needs to see on the disks and how it expects them to be set up.


I do not know what the final path will look like, and I have to be careful in what I say to make sure I honor my NDA with Microsoft. I'll simply refer back to my previous post that I do not recall a scenario where MS has supported a migration path from a 32-bit product to a 64-bit product. Both you and I have demonstrated in Guides written for the blog the known ways of migrating the current form of WHS - either Server Recovery or a manual movement of data.

I know many people will want to migrate their current home server to Vail, and I hope MS has a good migration path for us to do this.

_________________
Alex Kuretz
Remote Notification: Monitoring and alerting for your Home Server via email, Twitter, text message, RSS, push notifications, and on your Mac desktop
Have you tried our Add-Ins?

I guess I just want to give MS the benefit of the doubt that they thought this through....

_________________
Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin