{"id":1216,"date":"2010-08-18T22:38:21","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T12:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/?p=1216"},"modified":"2012-02-05T19:46:13","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T08:46:13","slug":"windows-home-server-v2-beta-available","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/windows-home-server-v2-beta-available\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows Home Server V2 Beta Available"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just a quick one this evening.<\/p>\n<p>For those of you who are interested, Windows Home Server &#8220;Vail&#8221; (for home or home office use) and &#8220;Aurora&#8221; (for small business use) have been released on <a title=\"Microsoft Connect\" href=\"http:\/\/connect.microsoft.com\" target=\"_blank\">Microsoft Connect<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What has really got me excited are some of the new features, specifically:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the ability to natively backup MacOS X computers through the use of Time Machine (previously you had to fudge things with a sparse file and obtain\u00a0Ethernet\u00a0MAC addresses to make it work),<\/li>\n<li>a new Windows Home Server connector for MacOS X computers (so you can manage your Windows Home Server from a Mac),<\/li>\n<li>the ability to restore your computer using a USB flash drive (I hated having to burn discs on the odd\u00a0occasion\u00a0I would need them as I kept losing them).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Other features which have become a staple of the original Windows Home Server operating systems are still intact such as the add-ins functionality, single instancing backup and the storage pooling technology.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this software comes with warnings plastered all over it (which should be taken seriously) with regards to discouraging use in a production environment as there is a possibility for data loss under certain conditions. For instance, using the &#8220;Storage Check and Repair&#8221; tool can ironically chew up your data in certain scenarios.<\/p>\n<p>One thing that is disappointing is that the upgrade path still seems to be impossible. Putting aside the fact that upgrading from a 32-bit operating system to a 64-bit operating system \u00a0just won&#8217;t happen (as WHS v2 is 64-bit) there has been no mention of a data migration tool or anything to make the process easier. What this means is that if you do want to upgrade you&#8217;ll need to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>pull the drives out of your existing Windows Home Server,<\/li>\n<li>whack in some newer drives (hopefully larger ones and fewer of them),<\/li>\n<li>install WHS v2,<\/li>\n<li>reconnect each disconnected drive but not allocate it to the storage pool and manually copy everything over.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Depending on how much data you have, this could take a while so a few movies, popcorn and coffee may be in order.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve not yet tried it myself but may give it a go in a virtual machine when I get some time.\u00a0I&#8217;m not going to do anything more than have a play with it and use a copy of my data to prevent any problems from cropping up. I dare say that the timing is good though as I have had hard drives spinning 24\/7 in my current Windows Home Server for the last few years and may decommission them in favour of some brand new drives.<\/p>\n<p>Keep your eyes peeled though, I think Microsoft was on a winner with the original and the sequel is shaping up to be a worthwhile update.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just a quick one this evening. For those of you who are interested, Windows Home Server &#8220;Vail&#8221; (for home or home office use) and &#8220;Aurora&#8221; (for small business use) have been released on Microsoft Connect. What has really got me excited are some of the new features, specifically: the ability to natively backup MacOS X &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/windows-home-server-v2-beta-available\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,196,93,180,422,348,152,151,92,18,184,211],"tags":[401,400,849,215,2261,1595,421,2246,490,171,484,2291],"class_list":["post-1216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apple-technology","category-flash","category-hard-drive","category-interfaces","category-macintosh-apple-technology-technology","category-macos","category-microsoft-operating-systems-technology","category-operating-systems","category-storage","category-technology","category-usb-interfaces-technology","category-windows-home-server","tag-32-bit","tag-64-bit","tag-aurora","tag-backup","tag-hard-drive","tag-mac-os-x","tag-macintosh","tag-microsoft","tag-time-machine","tag-usb","tag-vail","tag-windows-home-server","item-wrap"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mingersoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}