WHS 2 - Is it dead in the water already ?

gosties

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With the news that Microsoft are dropping Drive Extender and HP are ending their WHS machine line and are not supporting WHS version 2 where is does it leave this whole type of system.

I was considering building my myself a WHS 1 machine with my current amd rig but looks like I have a lot to think about.

Any thoughts.
 
There are other manufacturers making WHS hardware so I dont think HP ending their lines means it will fail. And reguarding the drive extender tech, "apparently" Steve Ballmer himself is looking into it.

Was actually looking at one of those hp servers today. I think they are a great piece of tech, its a shame they are pulling out.
 
There are other manufacturers making WHS hardware so I dont think HP ending their lines means it will fail. And reguarding the drive extender tech, "apparently" Steve Ballmer himself is looking into it.

Was actually looking at one of those hp servers today. I think they are a great piece of tech, its a shame they are pulling out.

The 490 model with a 1 Tb HDD is £399 off the UK HP Store

Then there is a £75 cash back available

Buy through Quidco and there is an 8% cashback available

So I guess HP in the UK are making a final push to clear out stocks or trying to drum up interest....

C
 
It would be a real shame if M$ dumped Vail - I got hold of the beta and must admit, it's everything I'm looking for in a home server.

If it is canned I could see myself buying WHS v1
 
The problem is, I don't want to end up waiting another x years for Vail, as if they have definately dropped DE something will have to replace it so would mean more development time. At which point they could then turn around again and say we can't replace it so Vail is dead.

And if they do replace it, it will probably have bugs just like WHS v1 RTM had with data corruption, then they could stop/limit support for it altogether, even after release. Not likely but i'm not taking chances with my irreplaceable data!

That's why i'm looking at alternatives. It would be interesting though to see what MS do; I wonder if they will port an existing system like unRAID, FlexRAID, ZFS etc.
 
My main love for WHS is the backup portion. NAS or media serving, there are lots of better options than WHS (although WHS does an OK job)

Windows also has better support for power management, if you have a 24/7 type system (compared to other DIY systems)

I still haven't found a replacement 'centralised backup system' for my Windows desktops and laptops. If anyone knows of a decent PC backup solution to NAS - let me know as it's the one reason for sticking with WHS.
FYI - I've even dropped the Media Server in WHS as I prefer 'Twonky Server' for various reasons,

Amahi doesn't have a PC backup solution as far as I can tell from the docs - seems to imply you need to use the built-in Windows backup tools - but for NAS backups - but NAS backups are only available in the Pro and Ultimate Windows versions.
 
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