I installed Vail on my MSS EX470 Thursday evening following Alex's and Nigel's guides. My MSS EX 470 was upgraded a long time ago with a dual core 3800 CPU and 2GB of RAM, so there was no problem with meeting the minimum specs for Vail. I purchased a new 160GB WD Caviar Blue HDD for the system drive and re-used 3 old 1.5TB drives for the storage pool. I pulled all of the drives from the 3.0 HP install and labled the disks for re-install, so I can switch between Vail and WHS if I want or need to. I did the install headless with only a USB keyboard attached and, of course, a USB drive with the install ISO. The install proceeded without any problems.
A big thank you to Alex and Nigel for the guides. It was quite difficult though, to figure out when the install had completed. I'm so used to relying on the lights to determine what's going on with the MSS, but that shows not happening with Vail on the MSS. The health light just blinks blue and there are no drive lights
I tried several times to RDP to the server after the light started blinking blue, only to see the MSS reboot. I'm not exactly sure just how long it actually took to install, because I finally just let it sit for a couple of hours before trying again to connect.
I did not want to install the connector immediatly on any of my PCs, so I RDP'd to the Vail server from my PC. The first thing I did was add the 3 old 1.5TB drives to the storage pool. I really like the new ability to label the drives, but I did learn that in order to identify the drives correctly, I needed to add them one at a time. I first added all three, but when it came time to label them, I got it wrong. I wanted to label them MSS 1, 2 & 3 corresponding to the drive tray in the MSS. So, I removed the drives and re-added them one at a time.
Next item was to copy a couple of blu-ray movies and several music folders to the Vail server for testing. This proved to be quite the challenge. Even though I could RDP to the Vail server from my PC, I could not copy and paste files to the Vail server's shares. I was getting a permissions error. I could not get Andromeda to see the Vail server at all. I could not add the Vail server to my existing workgoup. It appears that for now, the workgroup name in Vail is locked to Workgroup. The Vail Server was showing up in my Network places on my Windows 7 PC only, but I could not access the shares. I then added the PC and Andromeda as users to the Vail server with full access, but that didn't solve the problem either. I then set up a homegroup and added the Windows 7 PC and the Vail server. Immediately after setting up the homegroup, I had full access to the Vail server's shares. Using my Windows 7 PC's desktop, I could copy and paste files between Andromeda and the Vail server. But, I still couldn't copy and paste files directly from Andromeda to the Vail Server. I finally had to map network drives in Andromeda to the Vail server.
The next order of business was to install myiHome on the Vail server to see if I could stream blu-ray m2ts files from the Vail server to my PCH A-110. I installed the 64 bit version of myiHome on the Vail server and set up the video, music and photo directories. The Vail server myiHome option appears on the PCH, but I can't open the program. I set up an SMB share from the PCH to the Vail server and can play the files (video and music), via SMB, but no go on the myiHome http option yet. I'm wondering if the PCH A-110 is compatible with the 64 bit version of myiHome? I'm going to have to keep working on this and I'll eventually figure it out, I hope.
Last night I decided to connect my laptop to the Vail server, which again proved to be quite the challenge. The first error I got was that the XP pro OS wasn't compatible with the connector. I've never upgraded the laptop to Service Pack 3 and the Vail connector requires any XP computer to be at SP3. So I had to install SP3 on the laptop first. The reason I'd never upgraded the OS to SP3 was every time I tried to install it on the laptop, the laptop would freeze about 1/2 way through the install. I started the download and install of SP3. Four hours later, the laptop was frozen again, but this time, the install was almost complete. I had to do a hard shut down and re-start the machine. When it re-started, it indicated that SP3 was installed, but there were 44 updates that needed to be installed. I installed all the updates, then proceeded to try again to install the Vail connector. I was prompted to uninstall the WHS connector, which I did. After uninstalling the WHS connector, the Vail connector installed without any problems. I haven't re-installed the WHS connector yet.
I let the Vail server backup the laptop over night. This morning I RDP'd to the Vail server from my PC and tried to open the backup to see the files and folders. I promptly got the following error:
"The requested operation can not be performed. The operation is an administrative task that can only be run from a client computer that is joined to the network. To run this task, open the Dashboard from a client computer that is joined to the network."
This makes no sense. I should be able to open a backup and retrieve files from a RDP session from a non connected computer. If the laptop had died overnight after the backup completed, there would be no way to recover any files without first restoring the laptop. When I tried to open the files and folders from the dashboard on the laptop, it acted like and said it was copying the selected folder to the laptop. This is very odd. I cancelled the operation, because I didn't want to copy any files. I just wanted to see them to see if I could do a single file restore. Maybe I can, and I'm just not fully understanding how it works yet, but it's quite different than WHS single file restore.
That's my story for now. So far, despite the few issues I've had, and knowing that this version is an early beta, I like Vail. I'm not real concerned with the new Drive Extender and the non NTFS volume issue. The whole operation seems to be more robust than WHS v1. However, Vail still has quite a ways to go to be a finished product.