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    I have seen this asked before many months ago but just wanted to check in again to see if there is any additional info.  Can you upgrade from this latest release of Vail to the final product without having to do a clean install?
    Wednesday, October 13, 2010 4:48 PM

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    I have seen this asked before many months ago but just wanted to check in again to see if there is any additional info.  Can you upgrade from this latest release of Vail to the final product without having to do a clean install?

    Unknown. There is no "final product" to test with, and Microsoft has already said they're considering forcing users to completely flatten their beta servers to avoid subtle compatibility issues.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Wednesday, October 13, 2010 5:04 PM
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    I have seen this asked before many months ago but just wanted to check in again to see if there is any additional info.  Can you upgrade from this latest release of Vail to the final product without having to do a clean install?

    Unknown. There is no "final product" to test with, and Microsoft has already said they're considering forcing users to completely flatten their beta servers to avoid subtle compatibility issues.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Wednesday, October 13, 2010 5:04 PM
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    Hi Ken,

    so in the mean-time, installing beta is limited to just poking around. No real deployments should be done with this version of the server.

    is there any estimate when the RTM version might pop around? I am wondering whether I should just go ahead with the older version (seems to work fine for my use case) or just wait for Vail to come into a stable release version

    Thanks

    Marek

    Monday, November 8, 2010 3:28 PM
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    Hi Marek,

    there is still some way to go, and deploying a beta release as production instance has never be supported besides a very few programs with special customers for the larger server environments. (Definitively not WHS.) It's not only a potential troublesome migration, it can be also the real risk of data loss resulting in the use of a beta version.

    Using the current or waiting for the next generation WHS is always at your own decision and depends from your current needs. Waiting can still take a while (I think we all can see, that the opportunity of seeing the product in the stores for Christmas business is gone), migrating data later from old to new OS can as well be somewhat time consuming if you decide to go that step.

    Best greetings from Germany
    Olaf

    Monday, November 8, 2010 4:10 PM
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    so in the mean-time, installing beta is limited to just poking around. No real deployments should be done with this version of the server.

    Look at it this way: would you deploy a beta operating system in a mission-critical application? Basic storage is "mission critical" in the home. I've done so, but I have enough IT experience to identify and mitigate my risks, and enough money to be able to afford the mitigation. (12 TB of storage for under 2 TB of data. :P) I recommend in the strongest possible terms (seriously; terms like "idiot", "fool", etc. spring to mind) that you not imitate me unless you have similar expertise. And really, not even then.

    The announcement at the top of this forum is there for a reason: Vail could conceivably have bugs in the storage architecture which are subtly and slowly corrupting all the data on your server. It's extremely unlikely, to be honest, but it's not completely impossible, and if it does happen, I can guarantee you won't enjoy the conversation that results when your wife finds out that little Muffy's first birthday party video is gone with no chance of retrieval. No matter how surly a teenager little Muffy is today. :)

    is there any estimate when the RTM version might pop around? I am wondering whether I should just go ahead with the older version (seems to work fine for my use case) or just wait for Vail to come into a stable release version
    Heh. Microsoft undoubtedly has a timeline in mind. They haven't chosen to share that with the public, however. 6 months ago, I predicted the end of this year. Today, I don't know; we don't even have a release candidate yet. There's some indications that the preview refresh was supposed to be RC0, but Microsoft hasn't referred to it that way publicly. I would have to say that it will be no less than 3 months, and probably longer... :(
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Monday, November 8, 2010 4:44 PM
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    Hi Olaf,

    thanks for a quick reply.

    I do understand that the decision is always mine, though without a clear migration path from previous version to the new upcoming release, it is always hard to know what to expect. When W7 was coming out, already at beta stage it was quite clear what needed to be done to migrate from XP to W7 and how data can be transferred. I have about 17 TB of data stored in 3 different machines, and I was looking for a solution to move to a single storage point using Windows Home Server solution.

    If there is a way to migrate data from current version of home server into Vail once it is released, that would save my problems. Do you know anything about the migration path ??

    Regards

    Marek

    Monday, November 8, 2010 4:59 PM
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    If there is a way to migrate data from current version of home server into Vail once it is released, that would save my problems. Do you know anything about the migration path ??
    Copy and paste, or some variation on that. There will be no "upgrade in place", as Microsoft doesn't support an upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit for any of their operating systems. And there will likely be no transfer wizard; presumably you will want to transfer everything in your shares, which is easy enough to do by hand.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Monday, November 8, 2010 6:40 PM
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    Ken,

    in this case, I need to have extra storage space to move the data from the old system to a new system. Correct Just to make sure I understand the associated costs

    Marek

    Monday, November 8, 2010 7:16 PM
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    You will need one or two additional large drives, yes. As you transfer data from your old server to your new server you can remove drives from the old server and add them to the new server.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Monday, November 8, 2010 7:20 PM
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    Thanks Ken,

    One last question (perhaps it is lame but found no answer anywhere). Can I retrieve data from the discs after connecting them to a system that is not Home Server e.g. Windows 7? Otherwise, I would need two machines to make sure I can retrieve data

    Marek

    Monday, November 8, 2010 7:25 PM
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    One last question (perhaps it is lame but found no answer anywhere). Can I
    retrieve data from the discs after connecting them to a system that is not
    Home Server e.g. Windows 7? Otherwise, I would need two machines to make
    sure I can retrieve data
     
    ----
    Marek, I just had that experience. I took a 200 GB hard drive out of a Vail
    machine in order to repurpose it to something else, but Win7 could only see
    60 GB of it. This was where Vail was installed. I tried to see what was on
    the drive, but there was no way I could see more than the 60 GB. Vail had
    created a second partition, but I couldn't get to it from Windows.
     
    I did finally succeed through Disk Management (Thanks, Ko!) to delete both
    partitions and format the drive. I wish I'd investigated further, but it's a
    bit late now.
     
    Nancy Ward
    Windows 8 Beta Ferret
     
     
    Nancy Ward
    Tuesday, November 9, 2010 2:04 AM
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    Thanks Nancy,

    that means to me that in order to migrate from existing version to the future version of Vail, I would have to have two machines to do the migration correctly or duplicate the disk space and format the machine in between. 

    Gosh

    Marek

     

    Tuesday, November 9, 2010 2:10 AM
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    It appears to me that VAIL  does the 60gb partition to every drive that enters the mixture. When I look at the system drive, it did the same thing. When I add drives to the party, it indicates there is the full drive size but the folders are shy 60gb. I recommend a significant NAS to backup the pure data. I would like to use the full up VAIL for the remote access (wonderful video!!!) but the BETA is not as promised (no remote media library and no internet media streaming).

     

     

    Tuesday, November 9, 2010 10:50 PM