Windows Home Server Vail Drops Drive Extender, Twitterverse Goes Mad
While this isn’t directly home theater related, I know plenty of readers today (myself included) rely on a Windows Home Server-based solution as our central storage device. While the details of what exactly this means, for now it seems Drive Extender as we know it is DEAD. While you can head over to the Windows Blog for lots of banter on how awful it is for the product, my main question is, as a company, how can Microsoft invest so much time implementing and testing a feature, to just decide in the end to scrap it–especially when this feature is one if not THE main differentiator to your competitors? These next few months will be interesting to see how this develops, clearly Microsoft can’t expect users to just map \\HOMESERVER\E\MOVIES and \\HOMESERVER\F\MUSIC once again, can they?
When weighing up the future direction of storage in the consumer and SMB market, the team felt the Drive Extender technology was not meeting our customer needs. Therefore, moving forward we have decided to remove the Drive Extender technology from Windows Home Server Code Name “Vail” (and Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials and Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials) which are currently in beta.
If you need a laugh…
Read This write-up. Had me chuckling at my cube at least
I can sympathize with users
I can sympathize with users who have a WHS v1 system and rely on drive extender technology (well the v1 version) but I also don’t disagree with the decision. Unlike in v1 the drive extender in Vail makes the drive unusable in other systems. Your backups are essentially lost. Add the performance overhead and it becomes a support nightmare. Setup a dedicated 2TB backup drive and either hardware or software RAID.
I couldn’t stand using WHS v1 for anything but backups due to the performance. It always seemed wrong to me to have the slowest network performing system be a file server.
I’m simply shocked by this
I’m simply shocked by this announcement. (I hear there are over 600 votes so far on Microsoft Connect to bring it back, BTW.) I also liked how they’re now mentioning RAID, yet, back in 2008, they posted [url=http://blogs.technet.com/b/homeserver/archive/2008/08/11/why-raid-is-not-a-consumer-technology.aspx]this[/url]. For the record, another commenter mentioned this article on the piece that Mike posted and that’s where I got it from.
Back to the news… while I do understand that there may be some valid reasons for removing it and it may not have been the best implementation, it was there, was working, and most people liked it. So, I simply can’t understand why they would remove it. My theory is that they couldn’t make it work as nicely with MC as they (or the MC team) wanted.
Mikinho, I would also suggest
Mikinho, I would also suggest that you aren’t the target user. My HP MSS EX 49x is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) storage / backup appliances in that $600.00 price range and DE makes it ridiculously simple and economic to add storage and being able to determine what needs backup / restore on a per folder basis is very important to me. I don’t need Recorded TV replicated but I sure would like it on my Ripped DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, Music, and Photo folders.
Somehow putting in a real file server and manage different storage pools to achieve the same thing seems a bit overkill for even this advanced home user.
jmallory wrote:
Mikinho, I
[quote=jmallory]
Mikinho, I would also suggest that you aren’t the target user.
[/quote]
No argument there 🙂
Well, I’m just wondering
Well, I’m just wondering what’s the point of WHS then? The biggest benefit was that I had several HDDs and WHS saw them all as a single drive. So, what’s the point of WHS now?
Anyone have any suggestions for a WHS replacement (keeping in mind drive pooling as the main benefit)?
Crim wrote:
Well, I’m just
[quote=Crim]
Well, I’m just wondering what’s the point of WHS then? The biggest benefit was that I had several HDDs and WHS saw them all as a single drive. So, what’s the point of WHS now?
[/quote]
Backups and a central roaming user profiles
Backups are a huge benefit,
Backups are a huge benefit, but DE was equally as important to many people, myself included. I may very well move to RAID in Vail or perhaps I’ll go to unRAID or something else, but as someone said about Mikinho, I’m also not the typical WHS user (see server specs in my signature). I’m really not sure what I’m going to do at this point.
There’s [url=http://community.winsupersite.com/blogs/paul/archive/2010/11/23/120150.aspx]an update[/url] on what “really” happened and here’s a snippet:
[quote]In a briefing last month, I was told that Microsoft and its partners discovered problems with Drive Extender once they began typical server loads (i.e. server applications) on the system. This came about because Drive Extender was being moved from a simple system, WHS, to a more complex, server-like OS )(SBS “Aurora”) that would in fact be used to run true server applications. And these applications were causing problems.[/quote]
Sadly, I see this as, “We wanted a single product where we could simply turn features on or off, based on what the [business] user wanted. Since DE was causing issues for our users, we decided to rip it out entirely and screw over the people Vail wasn’t being designed for this time around. Now, come here and give me a hug.”
If Drobo can figure it out I
If Drobo can figure it out I don’t see why MS can’t.
I guess I’ll run my WHS for as long as I can. Hopefully someone else picks the ball up where MS drops it.
Seeing as we probably won’t see much more advancement in the size of spindle drives, and with media file sizes increasing so fast, I can’t see why they don’t see the light and realize how important DE is. All the NAS makers are celebrating today for sure.
I’ve seen a couple links to that MS connect site but I get page not found.
Direct link to the
Direct link to the feedback: https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/feedback/details/624029/add-drive-extender-back-to-vail
You may need to visit the WHS Connect page first and add it to your directory: https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer
This really messes up my plans.
I had built a new box for testing the beta and for future install of Vail once it was released. I Just wasted alot of money. (I’ll have 2 see if my sister would like a new computer) Based on Mikinho’s tesing of the Centon tuner card I was planning on installing Vail, moving all my files over to it and then installing the Centon card so my Vail box could be my WHS and my host for a netwokr shared Centon card. Those plans are no more. I now will be building a small shuttle PC to host and share the Centon card that will have to be on at all times along with my WHSv1 box. Thanks M$ for wasting my money, AGAIN!
Terry Walsh, from
Terry Walsh, from WeGotServed, [url=http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/11/26/ballmer-set-windows-home-server-drive-extender-fiasco/]emailed Steve Ballmer[/url] about it and got a response of “Let’s look into it.” We’ll see what happens there. I get the feeling that this isn’t quite the end of the story yet.
skirge01 wrote:
Terry Walsh,
[quote=skirge01]
Terry Walsh, from WeGotServed, [url=http://www.wegotserved.com/2010/11/26/ballmer-set-windows-home-server-drive-extender-fiasco/]emailed Steve Ballmer[/url] about it and got a response of “Let’s look into it.” We’ll see what happens there. I get the feeling that this isn’t quite the end of the story yet.
[/quote]
I read that too. I’ve heard replies like that from management in my company so many times I’ve become numb to the response. I’ll believe it when I see it.