Drive Extender discontinued on Vail

[benogil]

In a surprise move, MS will not have DE on WHS V2. Since DE was a foundation of WHS, there is much discussion as to what Vail will do. Probably back to raid.
The reason given was it was not reliable. Vail did have a new File system, built on server 2K8 core, with a new DE. May have just been too much, or the cost of development may have been too extreme. MS does state the RTM release date will be maintained. Not surprisingly, the WHS community is upset.

 

[claykin]

Yup. Seems that Microsoft feels a WHS volume doesn't need to be any larger than a single disk can hold. I believe they specifically mentioned that large disks available now somewhat trump the need for a feature such as DE. They will leave it up to OEM's to offer RAID options for users.

IMO, this makes a conventional Linux based NAS much more appetizing.

 

[thiggins]

The reasoning sounds fishy. Chances are something else is causing the move.

It's too bad. One of WHS key advantages vs. conventional NASes was its ability for users to easily expand storage. Now that will be gone.

 

[claykin]

The reasoning sounds fishy. Chances are something else is causing the move.

It's too bad. One of WHS key advantages vs. conventional NASes was its ability for users to easily expand storage. Now that will be gone.

I bet Netgear, Synology, Qnap, etc. are jumping for joy.

 

[benogil]

Fishy is about right, rumors of complaints from HP supporting DE, and rumors the MPAA did not like a streaming server.

 

[Bart]

By now we know a bit more about the real reason why they dropped DE (they weren't able to make it 'play nice' with the new SBS - but who cares about that anyway? It's a HOME server!)...

I've been looking at a viable alternative since I've heard the news. And I've now stumbled onto Amahi. Which is VERY interesting since it supports the new Linux drive pool technology Greyhole.

My question to you Tim is ... would you please have a look at Amahi, maybe even review it? If it's as good as WHS was, then I'll switch for sure. But I can't really find a good review of it online... so would you? Pretty please?

 

[benogil]

An article on all of the alternatives -

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/36458/9-alternatives-for-windows-home-servers-drive-extender/

There are build examples on Hard forum showing 100 TB media servers using flexraid and XP.

 

[Bart]

Those are all alternatives yes... but not 100% equal to what Drive Extender did. UnRAID probably comes the closest, but from what I've read adding disks isn't as painless or at least as fast as with Drive Extender. (it takes several hours - as does rebuilding a damaged array)

That's the reason why I like the looks of Amahi with Greyhole technology that much. Greyhole at least does sound like a technology which does the same thing as DE...

 

[ldcarson]

I am playing with UNRaid now...it does seem to me to be faster on the rebuild then Ahmahi and greyhole. The thing I like about UNRaid is the like the WHS DE, I can add drives without having to rebuild Raid. I am thinking I may purchase the plus version and actually try this out wth a larger array.

I was disapointed in WHS vail/fail getting rid of te DE. It (for me ) defeated the reason to convert to Vail. I guess now I will keep WHS V1 and see what happens over the next few years...It will be interesting to see if freeNAS and coreNAS merge with some form of a expandable raid setup. That would be the icing on the cake ;-)

 

[Bart]

It will be interesting to see if freeNAS and coreNAS merge with some form of a expandable raid setup. That would be the icing on the cake ;-)

FreeNAS and CoreNAS merging? Is that wishful thinking on your part or an actual fact? Why would they merge? FreeNAS has just been completely rewritten by a new developer so I'm not sure if this is going to happen. Another reason this probably isn't going to happen is because CoreNAS is based on Debian (Linux) and FreeNAS on FreeBSD. Since ZFS isn't possible on Linux because of licencing issues, this means that if CoreNAS and FreeNAS merge, ZFS would no longer be possible. This would be a BIG step back and I doubt it will be taken.

 

[ldcarson]

FreeNAS and CoreNAS merging? Is that wishful thinking on your part or an actual fact? Why would they merge? FreeNAS has just been completely rewritten by a new developer so I'm not sure if this is going to happen. Another reason this probably isn't going to happen is because CoreNAS is based on Debian (Linux) and FreeNAS on FreeBSD. Since ZFS isn't possible on Linux because of licencing issues, this means that if CoreNAS and FreeNAS merge, ZFS would no longer be possible. This would be a BIG step back and I doubt it will be taken.

Some wishful thinking, some discussions that others are having (probably wishful thinking on their part). But I can refer you to Volkers statement on freeNas and on the CoreNAS forum. There is deffinately going to be some form of migration/integration/using of the better pieces if you will. What I take from most of the discussions is that Core will remain Linux and FreeNAS will move to FBSD 8.0 with some Linux added etc...I think the FreeNAS developers are looking to enhance it which is currently hard to do given the constraints of FBSD6 or even 8. Suffice to say it will be interesting to watch this develop.

http://www.corenas.org/2009/11/27/freenas-08-situation-update/#more-17

 

[Bart]

Yeah, I've read that statement. The thing I remember the best is the fast that he admits that changing to Linux will be a problem for ZFS. He claims a different filesystem will take its place (BTRFS no doubt), but btrfs is still experimental and buggy compared to ZFS which has been running is enterprise environments for years now. BTRFS also lacks a few nice features that ZFS does have.

I wonder why it's apparently so impossible to have ZFS's licence changed so that it does allow integration in Linux. IMO, the ZFS developers were short sighted by choosing this particular licence, because it will probably be the cause of the demise of ZFS. (which would be a damn shame since it's a very sweet filesystem!)