Migrating from WHS 1.0

IDisposable · May 2011

Just now getting around to building a new WHS machine to run with WHS 2011 and want to keep my duplication ability. Looking at the alternatives, DrivePool is clearly the tool to use. I want to figure out the best approach for guaranteeing that I don't lose anything and stay safe.

My current WHS v1 box is pretty small Dell PowerEdge 1750 137GB RAID for the C (20GB) / D (117GB), and one 500GB drive and one 750GB drive. Those latter two drives are in a dual-bay USB-to-SATA box. I'm basically "all full up" on that machine.

I purchased a Jetway 525 to be the new box stuffed it with 8GB of RAM and a 320GB C/D drive. That's got WHS 2011 installed and "all patched up". I purchased a couple 2TB SATA drives for the new box. Now for the migration. I attached one of the new 2TB drives [call him George] to the old WHS v1 machine and duplicated all the files from the

\shares directories over to the new drive using a temporary USB-to-SATA.

So, now what? I _think_ it sounds like should:

1) Attach the OTHER (blank) 2TB SATA [call him Ringo] drive to the new WHS2011 box.

2) Install the DrivePool M2 beta.

3) Tell the DrivePool that this 2TB [Ringo] is part of a new pool.

4) Attach the first 2TB [George] and copy the contents to the new pool

5) Tell DrivePool that [George] is part of the same pool.

6) Wait for DrivePool to ensure everything is duplicated properly

7) Profit.

Is this basically correct?

Also, I OBVIOUSLY eventually want my old folder contents to be the same-named shared folders on the WHS2011 as they were on the WHS v1. Any guesses if I could cruft that together NOW with judicious reparse-points or anything?

Lastly, I disabled the 8dot3Name creation on the new 2TB volume before copying all the files over (I never need that MFT clutter), is this going to cause me any issues on the new WHS or with DrivePool?

Alex · May 2011

Keep in mind that DrivePool does not balance storage in the background. Duplicated files are written in parallel to 2 physical storage units (hard drives) in real-time. So you will need at least 2 drives on the pool when copying files to duplicated folders.

DrivePool M2 should have no problems with the missing 8.3 names.

IDisposable · May 2011

THANKS! I guess I missed the part about no post-fact balancing. Isn't that something that would happen when you replace/repair a drive?

So my plan was to "reuse" the extra space on George by creating a pool with him and Ringo, then simply doing a move of folders from the root of the George drive to the pool folder. Will that work (assuming I manage space-available correctly)?

Still wondering about using reparse-points or symlinks from the existing WHS 2011 folders to the pooled folders... will that work?

erail · May 2011

I just put the WHS 2011 on the network, create the shares and then use synctoy 2.1 to migrate all the data. It's not labor intensive and I have done this more times than I can count with nary an issue to report.

Alex · May 2011

Still wondering about using reparse-points or symlinks from the existing WHS 2011 folders to the pooled folders... will that work?

Setting up reparse points from an NTFS file system to DrivePool should work. However, reparse points from DrivePool to NTFS will not. DrivePool does not process reparse point commands.

If you want to somehow re-point the standard WHS 2011 folders to DrivePool folders, well... I don't know how WHS will react to a reparse point as a standard folder. You're venturing into uncharted waters if you do that.

IDisposable · May 2011

Okay, so the migration is complete and working fine (except one issue non-DP issue).

What I did was create clone folders of each of the built-in shares on the pool. I named each one like "PoolXXX" so I had a PoolMusic, PoolDocuments, PoolVideos, PoolPictures, etc. For each share, you delete the old directory and create a junction to replace it. If you RD the shared directories, the Server Sharing and/or Media Streaming services have them open, so you can't replace them with junctions unless you stop those while doing the creation.

Then I RDPed into the server and opened an elevated command prompt (right-click on the Command Prompt and select Run as Administrator, The do this...

In Services manager, stop Windows Server Storage and Windows Media Streaming

CD to

\ServerFolders

RD Music

JUNCTION Music C:\ServerPool\ServerFolders\PoolMusic.2

(repeat for other folders)

Shane · May 2011

Warning! The above will return the following on a clean WHS 2011 RC install:

C:\Users\Administrator>JUNCTION Music C:\ServerPool\ServerFolders\PoolMusic.2
'JUNCTION' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

The script also erases the folder - I would recommend renaming it instead, in case something goes wrong (like the above). If you do erase the folder, be sure that you are not losing anything important.

Could someone please confirm if the junction command is available - and functions as indicated - in the WHS 2011 RTM version?

Danee · June 2011

Junction is no a standard available Windows command, you can find it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768

I will now test this and see if it works.

Cheers.

Danee

Danee · June 2011

Ok, it works, but..

The replaced folders cannot be managed from the WHS Dashboard. I had to manually share them and set permissions. After that they showed up in the dashboard but you can not set permissions for example, that has to be done in explorer itself.

I placed some albums in the replaced music folder and logged on to the Remote Access website and was able to play the albums, so that part seems to work. I could also access the folder when using UNC path browsing, no problems there.

Cheers,

Danee

Shane · June 2011

Thanks Danee!

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