Windows Home Server 2011 is Ready for Release

[DeaconFrost]

And one of biggest players in the market, HP with the Media Smart lineup have gotten out of the game.

They've discontinued the MediaSmart line, but they aren't out of the server "appliance" market completely. I worked with HP for over 5 years and still have plenty of former coworkers still there who have been telling me about the possibility of expanding the Data Vault line. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new product come out soon from HP with WHS 2.0 pre-installed.

 

[Gbsnplr]

I think all of you have hit it on the head. I have a WHS because I am not a network admin. For me the simplicity is great. I need to access my server when I am not at home to get files for my work, so the website functionality to access my system is my major need. I know that can be done with Server 2008 but I have tired to get it to work but had very little success and I am not interested in reading and studying for hours and days to learn how to get the server 2008 to do what my WHS does out of the box.

I guess I will just have to buy a larger 3 Tb HD if I want to upgrade my system or wait and see which 3rd party DE application works best before I make the move to the new version of WHS.

 

[DeaconFrost]

That's exactly what I plan to do. I'm going to test out the third-party apps on a test system with two drives. I'm also going to read up on the WeGotServed forums to see what others are saying about them. Based on that, and the cost, I'll decide to use one of them, or stick to my RAID controller. Either way, I'm definitely going to be running WHS 2.0.

 

[jbarr]

Sorry if I may have missed this, but will there be an upgrade path for MediaSmart owners? Is the model 470 capable of running the new version, and more importantly, will it run the new version with any decent performance?

 

[DeaconFrost]

I'm sure there will be a defined process soon. I have a 490, and I know that is capable of running 2.0. Don't hold me to this, but if it is based off Server 2008 R2, then your processor will have to be x64 capable.

http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-gb/windowshomeserver2011/system-requirements-2.aspx

 

[pparks1]

And one of biggest players in the market, HP with the Media Smart lineup have gotten out of the game.

They've discontinued the MediaSmart line, but they aren't out of the server "appliance" market completely. I worked with HP for over 5 years and still have plenty of former coworkers still there who have been telling me about the possibility of expanding the Data Vault line. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new product come out soon from HP with WHS 2.0 pre-installed.

Yes, time will tell on that one. The way I read it, HP was getting out of the Windows Home Server market...not just the Media Smart product line. A lot swirled around about the acquisition of Palm at the time and shifting focus instead to webOS.

I think any of the old 1.0 products from HP would run 2.0 without much trouble at all. Only upgrade you might need/want to make is more RAM. Up from the standard 512MB to 2GB. Should be just fine then.

 

[TanyaC]

It will be interesting to see if this barely used product grows with this release or dies with this release. Overall, I'm unsure about it's potential success without drive extender and with HP getting out the Media Smart hardware game.

Drive extended was the #1 thing that I would have used this product for. I already do image based backups, so no real gains there.

I run a machine as a server with XP. I has 6 x 2TB SATA drives, 4GB RAM.

Each night the client machines running windows 7 backup to a drive on this server.

I use the server for file storage, a IIS web server, which is used within the household only, Firebird DB for a couple of DB applications. I also have free download manager installed on it which collects download requests from client machines and downloads them during my ISPs off peak hours.

It runs my OpenDNS IP update monitor too.

The website is designed using ColdFusion MX, so the CF services are running.

Is there any andvantage to running WHS? Could it even handle all these needs?

thanks for your advice.

Tanya

 

[DeaconFrost]

The RTM version is live now on TechNet and MSDN.

Windows Home Server 2011 now available for TechNet and MSDN Subscribers to Download today!