Windows Home Server 2011 – Third Party Drive Extender Replacements

A number of companies have now announced Drive Extender (DE) replacements for Windows Home server 2011 (Vail). This is certainly good news for WHS which, in my opinion, became a much less valuable proposition without DE. wegotserved has been covering these replacements and in this post I will briefly review the options so far.

Drive Bender is a Windows driver and service that will have a dashboard add-in for configuration. A beta is planned for February 21st. Drive Bender should be available for all (modern) versions of Windows:

• seamless expansion and shrinkage of the storage pool – add new drives or partitions
• folder level duplication
• standard NTFS filesystem structure
• 64 bit – will support x86 and x64
• self balancing when a new drive is added

StableBit DrivePool is a forthcoming add-in for WHS 2011. A Technical Preview should be available in the coming weeks:

• seamless expansion and shrinkage of the storage pool (excluding the system drive)
• folder level duplication
• anticipated cost should be around $20

Update: March 2011 – DrivePool Add-In is in Beta

DataCore are looking to pick out storage pooling and data protection features from their existing technologies and package them for WHS and Small Business Server (SBS) 2011. Their intention is to do more than simply replace DE so the least that we can expect is:

• drive pooling
• data protection

DataCore are looking at other advanced features such as block level snapshots to determine their value to the WHS / SBS user. Initial plans are to distribute through WHS OEMs potentially in Q2.

Update: DataCore intends to ship a Beta in May 2011. DataCore is leveraging an existing product that currently is in production on Server 2008 R2 (this bodes very well for their WHS 2011 Add-in). Pricing should be “reasonable” and the add-in will not be restricted to OEMs.

Certainly all of these options are contenders at this point. After the issues that WHS v1 had with data corruption it is essential that these vendors get it right. Data integrity is a paramount concern.  It will be interesting to see how much each of these solutions will cost. $20 for DrivePool sounds quite reasonable to me.

I’m looking forward to seeing what else DataCore might bring to the table, but in my opinion, they will need to look beyond solely distributing through OEMs. OEM solutions have typically not been too expansive in terms of the number of drives that they support and many WHS users and supporters (myself included) have built systems themselves that go beyond four drives. It would be unfortunate for DataCore to limit themselves to OEMs only.

I think I speak for many users when I say we want reliability and performance on standard NFTS drives without breaking the bank. Advanced format drive support should be a given I hope. Only then will an upgrade to WHS 2011 become interesting again …

Otherwise Drive Bender on my Media Center might be a great option too … we’ll have to wait and see!

Sources:

WeGotServed – Drive Bender,  StableBit DrivePool, DataCore.

 

Amahi / Greyhole – Alternatives to Windows Home Server (Vail)?

Microsoft dropped the Drive Extender (DE) functionality from Windows Home Server (Vail) this week, to the surprise and disbelief of the WHS community.

Drive Extender allowed users to dynamically shrink and grow their WHS storage pool and enable folder level duplication to protect important files. In Vail DE promised some great new features – such as real time data duplication, background storage operations, uninterrupted media steaming and more. At this juncture I have to say that I am very disappointed with DE being dropped from Vail and find it hard to see how it will gain much traction in the market without it.

I had recently been pondering what the alternatives to WHS might be and was already aware of a similar technology for Linux called Greyhole (as found in products such as Amahi) and was also looking into Nexenta – a ZFS based server platform.

My plan is to evaluate the basic workings of both in virtual machines before I make any decisions – but I did receive a timely email from the Amahi group today promoting Amahi (and Greyhole) as a WHS (Vail) alternative.

The feature set for Greyhole certainly looks to be good – though there are apparently still some “obscure” bugs to be worked out. This is probably to be expected given that Greyhole is still in Beta. I can’t say that the prospect of trusting my data to Beta software gives me much comfort – but equally WHS had some very bad issues in its early days that took a long time to be resolved. This explains why I was not an early adopter of WHS either.

One of the key tests for me will be to see if the ‘automatic free space balancing across disks’ interrupts other server operations such as streaming media or not? I certainly don’t expect it to, but I have not seen anything documenting how this feature works either.

Another feature that sways me towards Greyhole is that drives can be removed from a Greyhole storage pool and read directly by another (Linux) computer. This was certainly something that I appreciated in WHS (although this was not to be the case in Vail).

After Window 7 I had high hopes for Vail and it really is a shame that Microsoft has thrown in the towel with Drive Extender in Vail. While DE certainly was not perfect in WHS version 1 it was a big step in the right direction for the consumer market as it was a huge part of what made WHS “simple” to administer. I will wait and see what the final version of Vail looks like next year – but at this point I am hardly waiting with baited breath.

I still plan to use WHS to backup Windows machines and will probably run it as a virtual machine again in the future.

 

What’s New In Windows Home Server Vail Backup?

Bodhi Deb has posted a summary of what is new in Backups for Windows Home Server (WHS) Vail on the Microsoft Forums. I have edited the post for readability and added my own emphasis in bold along with some additional explanation where applicable.

Note: Not all features stated above have been fully developed in the product yet. For details about what is and is not available please refer to the Getting Started guide.

Backing up your server

[The] ability to backup the server and restore both data and the full system from a disaster was one of the [most requested features] from our customers. In Vail we have provided [the] ability to do automated backups of the full server to external attached storage. Features include:

• Full VSS based backup of the server to externally attached disks … [VSS stands for Volume Shadow Copy Service - it allows allow volume backups to be performed while applications on a system continue to write to the volume].
• Ability to back up to multiple targets for off-site storage. You keep one external disk onsite for your most recent backups, and the other disks offsite in case of disasters.
• You can back up the Operating System, Data, Shared Folders, and even the Client Backup Database for future recovery.
• Select what you want to protect using the server backup configuration wizard on the Computers and Backup tab.
• Schedule automatic backups multiple times a day up to half hour intervals
• Backups to external disks are incremental for storage optimization but each back up version is fully restorable.
• Restore scenarios include restoring individual Files or Folders, Full system restore through Bare Metal Restore, and Factory Reset

Backing up the client computers

Centralized backup of client computers to the Windows Home Server storage was a feature introduced in Windows Home Server V1. The basic technology and [...] features have been carried forward with some key feature updates.

Features from Windows Home Server V1

• Automatic daily backups of network joined client computers to centralized storage on Windows Home Server
• Backups are single instanced and incremental over the network. This provides storage and backup time optimizations. Only unique data and incremental changes across your home network are sent over the wire and stored only once.
• Ability to exclude files or folders from your backup
• Restore scenarios include individual Files or Folders and Full System Restore to similar hardware using Bare Metal Restore.

New Features in “Vail”

• Support for VSS writers on client computers to improve consistency of backups.
• New backup configuration wizard allows you to select volumes or folders you want to backup. Items that are not selected are excluded from the backup.
• New Files or Folders restore Wizard provides a guided wizard for the user to restore individual files or folders from a backup.
• New mini filter driver for the Files or Folders Restore wizard solves many of the problems in V1 resulting from multiple mount of backup volumes.
• Intelligent automatic scheduling allows more computers to be backed up
  • Higher priority is given to computers with the oldest backups during the time window.
  • Prioritization is calculated dynamically.
  • Computers which are chronically out of compliance (such as laptops) are automatically backed outside of the backup time window whenever they are connected to the server.
• Backups are now resumable. In WHS V1 if backups are not successful, it started from the beginning the next time backups ran. This resulted in computers with high storage in repeated failed backups. In Vail we take checkpoints along the way (this is not visible to the end user). If for any reason backup fails in the middle such as due network connection drop, backups will resume from the last checkpoint next time it runs.
• Full system restore functionality now allows automatic partition and formatting of drives during restore. In WHS V1 if volumes did not exist, users had to manually create partitions and format them before continuing with the system restore process. In Vail we do this automatically based on the configuration that existed in the source during a backup.
• System restore disk now includes both the x86 (32 bit) and x64 bit version of the restore media. This allows you to restore both x86 and x64 bit client computers without the need to download and install specific 32 bit drivers for the restore CD.
• Improved resiliency and robustness of the backup database including an improved database repair functionality.
• Backup applet on the Client Launchpad allows users to start/stop manual backups as well as set the power management settings.

The support for 64 bit restores, and the ability to back up the WHS installation are of course most welcome – and overdue in my opinion. Resumable backups and scheduled backups are also great additions to Vail …

 

What’s New In Windows Home Server Vail Drive Extender?

Mark Vayman, Program Manager for the Windows Home and Small Business Server Team, has posted a summary of the major new features in Drive Extender for Windows Home Server (WHS) Vail.

Of course not everything is new and some Drive Extender (DE) functionality is carried over from the current version:

Duplication can be turned on/off per folder.

Duplicated folders can survive a single hard drive failure.

Storage pool can be easily expanded using different drive types and various sizes.

The new and improved features are listed below (I have added my own emphasis):

For duplicated folders, data is duplicated in real time to two separate drives – there is no hourly migration pass.

File system level encryption (EFS) and compression are now supported for Drive Extender folders.

File conflicts are gone, duplication works as intended for files in use as it is performed at the block level now.

The remaining amount of data to synchronize/duplicate is reported per storage pool.

All storage operations are executed in the background without blocking other server operations. Specifically, drive removal can be issued without impacting the online state of shares.

Drives in a storage pool can be named with a custom description to enable physical identification of the drive in the server.

Drive serial number and exact connection type is reported for each drive.

Drives which are bigger than 2TB can be added to a storage pool.

iSCSI storage devices can be added to the a storage pool.

The system drive can be excluded from the storage pool.

A new low-level storage check and repair diagnostic operation was added.

All storage operations are performed with very low I/O priority to ensure they don’t interfere with media streaming.A new “folder repair” operation is available which runs chkdsk on the folder’s volume.

To protect against silent storage errors (bit flips, misdirected writes, torn writes), additional information is appended to each 512-byte sector stored on drive. In particular, each sector is protected by a CRC checksum, which enables Drive Extender to detect data read errors, perform realtime error correction and self-healing (up to 2 bit errors per sector if duplication is disabled, and any number of bit errors if duplication is enabled) and report the errors back to the user and application. The overhead for this additional data is roughly 12% of drive space.

Data drives in storage pools can be migrated between servers, and appear as a non-default pool. A non-default pool can be promoted to a default pool if no default pool exists.

Some features though have been lost, the most significant of which (in my opinion) is that a “data drive from a storage pool cannot be read on machine not running the ‘Vail’ server software“. This is explained elsewhere in another thread by Bulat Shelepov, Test Lead (Drive Extender), Windows Home and Small Business Server Team:

Drive Extender v2 is a volume driver that sits under the file system … [and] presents its data as regular NTFS volumes (each share, e.g. Music, Videos, etc. is a separate volume with its own drive letter) …  Internally, these NTFS volumes are sliced [...] into 1 GB chunks, which are distributed (in multiple copies if duplication is enabled) across multiple physical disks [...] DEVolume.sys [currently a Vail only driver] is the only driver [...] that can parse this layout and present the aforementioned NTFS volumes to applications. Consequently, any system not running DEVolume.sys is currently unable to retrieve the data from directly connected DEv2 disks – that includes all client Windows OS.

I certainly hope that DEVolume.sys can be packaged for other Windows operating systems (at least for Windows 7 which is a close enough relative to Windows Server 2008 R2).

Beyond this it is also interesting to note the following point:

Internally, the “Vail” software has been tested with up to 16 hard drives and with up to 16 TB of total storage capacity. We’re aware of a number of bugs that occur beyond these limits, so please keep your beta installations under 16 drives and 16 TB total drive space.

This goes someway towards explaining the ten hard drive limit for the Vail Beta, and again this is something that Microsoft are working on, though it appears that the number of disks is less important than the total size of the storage pool. Again, hopefully this issue will be addressed prior to the release of Vail.

 

Potential Windows Home Server (Vail) build

Mainstream PC power consumption just got a whole lot better with this 25w at idle build:

• Core i5-661 – 32nm dual core CPU ¹ ²
• MSI H57M-EG65 – micro ATX motherboard
• Toshiba MK6465GSX, 640GB, 2.5,” 5,400 RPM, SATA 3 Gb/s, 8MB Cache
• Fortron FSP220-60LE 220W PSU

The PSU is matched to the predicted consumption of the build – so any old PSU will not do for this build.

At first glance this looks like an ideal build for the up-coming Windows Home Server (Vail) based on Server 2008. The idle power consumption is great for a machine that will be running 24/7 but there are some gotchas too:

• Core i5 is currently an expensive CPU (approx $200) compared to current AMD offerings.
• only 1 DIMM is populated (for maximum power conservation).
• notebook hard drives are used for maximum power conservation – WHS will require multiple drives.

¹ 900 mhz IGP  instead of the 733 MHz found on all other Core i5 and Core i3 models. The result is a TDP of 87W, rather than 73W.
² CPU is undervolted by 0.5 volts.

Source: Tomshardware.