SageTV on WHS 2k11....

[Beefcake550]

Has anyone tried this yet? I see that WHS 2k11 is now on MSDN and yet no one mentioned it yet. I plan on getting it this week and I'd like to know if I need to get a newer build of Sage for WHS 2k11 or will the existing build work well. Perhaps I should use the Win7 version?

Also, what drivers for tuners does one use? I am thinking the Win7 version of drivers will work well.

I plan on taking the plunge on a separate system first just to give it a try before I do it on the production machine. I hope my wife is fully converted over to her laptop since I plan on taking her desktop to try it out on, lol.

[gplasky]

Win 7 drivers should work. WHS 2011 is based on Windows 2008 R2 which is the same base code as Win 7. The Sage add-in won't work until it is rewritten for the new console. You should be able to install the regular flavor of Sage and run it as a service.

Gerry

[Beefcake550]

Has anyone tried it yet? If so, what build did you try?

* merged with your existing topic *

[Beefcake550]

sorry about the dupe...I couldn't find my original post...oops

[DMT]

I am trying WHS 2001 now on a test server. My Movies just came out with a release so that is good.

The biggest gain is the ability to automatically back up and re image the OS if necessary. The loss is firewire channel changing and the storage pool.

The ease of adding and removing drives from the pool in WHS v1 (I have hot swap bays) is nice however the demigrator is not ideal and occasionally interferes with smooth blu-ray rip playback. Everything else is flawless and I guess I could fix the demigrator with a scheduled task.

Storage in WHS 2011 is another matter so I am going to experiment with an inexpensive raid card and set up a raid 5 array for redundant storage. My storage requirement will never be that extreme so this should be fine.

OS backup aside, I'm not yet sold on the advantages of WHS 2011 but there is still much testing and playing to do...

Then there is Linux.

[gplasky]

For a storage pool look at the Drive Bender beta for Windows Home Server 2011.

Gerry

[Sanguine]

How do you run it as a service on WHS 2011? rktools is 32 bit only so it cant be installed on the 64 bit OS. Thanks

Sanguine

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Sanguine

How do you run it as a service on WHS 2011? rktools is 32 bit only so it cant be installed on the 64 bit OS. Thanks

Sanguine

I know people who have used this:

Always Up (not for free-30 day free trial avail.)

I'l be testing it soon.

Gerry

[lpitman]

Originally Posted by gplasky

For a storage pool look at the Drive Bender beta for Windows Home Server 2011.

Gerry

StableBit also looks really good...I Have tried both and StableBit seems a lot more simple and integrated.

Both made drive pools and folder duplication that resembles the WHSv1.

[lpitman]

WHS 2011 is almost here, when will SageTV be ready as an add-on?

[briands]

Originally Posted by lpitman

StableBit also looks really good...I Have tried both and StableBit seems a lot more simple and integrated.

Both made drive pools and folder duplication that resembles the WHSv1.

Any chance that either will have a migration path from WHS V1?

[lpitman]

While both have a disclaimer about upgrading from 32 bit to 64 bit OS's...the real problem the way I see it is that you must remove any duplication of the folders then physically disconnect the pooled drives, and perform a new clean install and enable (connect) each drive under WHS 2011 (they are after all NTFS), you could then merge each drive into a pooled environment using StableBit or Drive Bender. Both claim to merge existing data into a pool. I have yet to test this with previous WHSv1 drives, but I have merged NTFS drive with existing data into a drive pool using Drive Bender. The beautiful thing is that the drive pooling methods including Microsofts, use default NTFS partitions and can be read by most Microsoft operating systems. In my case, I plan on keeping my 5-Terabytes on WHSv1, while building a new 2011 server on newer hardware including a Norco 20-drive chassi and a few new 2-Tb harddisks, after all data is copied over, then I will re-task original server to some other toy. I will turn duplication on for large movie directory to provide some redundancy, and the pictures, music, misc data directories will get backed up to a removable drives or another server.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by briands

Any chance that either will have a migration path from WHS V1?

No chance. You can't migrate from a 32 bit OS to a 64 bit OS. It needs a new install. This makes it difficult to re-provision the same machine if your WHS v1 machine has the specs to run WHS 2011. (Not impossible-just difficult.)

As far as data migration you would need to copy the data somewhere. Either to the new machine or an external drive. The nice thing with the WHS v1 data disks is you can just plug them into any other Windows PC and copy the data from there to the new or re-provisioned PC. The most time consuming part is copying the terabytes of data most people have on their WHS v1.

Gerry

[lpitman]

As I said before...NTFS is NTFS. Yes the OS is a fresh install on SYSTEM volume, but both WHSv1 and WHSv2 use NTFS partitions (recognizable by any recent version of Windows) for the data partitions...just disconnect data disks after removing any duplication...then create a new system disk with WHS 2011 up and running, and add your data disks back in, they are just NTFS disks and your data is still there. They will not be pooled disks yet, until a pooled plug-in adds them or merges them into a pool.

[gplasky]

Right. But none of the pooled plugins recognize any duplication you already have from drive extender. And after plugging in the disks you'll have clean up of unused folders left over from the drive extender technology. And if and until you get that drive pooling going you'll need to create all new import directories because now each drive is a separate drive letter. And any organization of files you had before doesn't exist because there is no telling where the actual files will end up. You make it sound like it is plug in and go and it really isn't.

Gerry

[lpitman]

In my case, all the files were still in there original folder structures, they just weren't windows shares, and yes WHS 2011 assigns each a drive letter. You are correct there are some extra folders and files that needed to be deleted, and yes this process is not automatic or handled by setup, so one must manually setup and configure shares and such, but the point I was trying to make is that, all is not lost and there is a method that could be used to get into a WHS 2011 server environment, and still have pooled storage without starting all over again ripping terabytes of DVD's.

In all fairness I was only willing so far, to experiment with a single terabyte drive out of a total 8 terabyte drives that I have connected to my old WHSv1 box, but based on what I have learned, I am gaining confidence that I will not have to re-create or spend days copying from one machine to the next. That being said, remember that the pooling plug-ins are all BETA and subject to bugs and changes that could affect the testing I performed, and could possibly change the conversion in future releases. Before I commit my entire library, I am going to wait for a official release.

[gplasky]

I'm with you there. Once these pooling plugins are out of beta we may have an easier way to move to WHS 2011. For me I'm taking the opportunity to build a whole new WHS box.

Gerry

[Beefcake550]

So I think I'm headed back to WHS v1 or Win7.

While I've been generally trouble free for about a week or so, I had an HD-PVR disappear from sage yesterday and while the sagetv service manager said sage was running, it wasn't.

Granted all I had to do was reboot the machine, but I've never had those problems with the WHS machine (same hardware)

So, moving to Win7 is much less painful and quick, but I'm wondering if it will be any better than WHS 2011 in terms of Sage. I know I will be losing out on the "HS" in WHS, but that's not too big of a deal for me.

[big poppa pump]

I would recommend Windows 7. I had sagetv installed on WHS for quite some time and moved to Windows 7 about a couple of months back. I had all sorts of problems with demigrator.exe in WHS. I have had absolutely zero problems since the move.