15 replies to this topic

[britishbob]

Six in the morning here and I was loading my pod casts for the working day.

Windows Weekly is coming down with the title W.H.S. R.I.P.

Should be wonderful listening!!

Seems like W.H.S. support is disappearing faster than an ice cube in the Gobi desert......

Beginning already to feel like an endangered species.

I am getting the same feeling I had with the ZX 81 - B.B.C. Model B and the Amiga

Haven't listened yet but guessing I am in for a gloomy morning

[dvn]

They talk about HP pulling out of the home server market, casting a huge shadow over the future of WHS.

[britishbob]

Yeah, I think I could have guessed that even before I listened.

What was of more concern was the line taken by the show.

Seems now that even one of W.H.S. most public proponents is losing hope.

It is one thing when Home Server Show discusses but Windows Weekly reaches a larger and more diverse audience. Once shows like this sound the dirge to a wider and larger audience then it won't take long to reach death by "critical mass."

[dvn]

Yes. So far, what I've taken from WW is that HP was probably planning to get out since the beginning of the year. Remember Paul saying that they didn't have the HP MediaSmart advisory meeting this year? So the time line is something like this:

-HP decides early in 2010 to get out of the WHS market - Who knows the exact reason? Maybe MS had relayed concerns about DE and other things that might be brewing. Maybe it was a simple matter of low ROI.

-MS works on DE Vail up until a couple months ago when they see what they interpret as the writing on the wall.

-Some person at MS signs the order to kill DE in Vail.

-A month ago, MVP's are notified.

-10 days ago, we get the news.

-9 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes ago, Connect hosts a petition by Citezein to bring back DE. As of 6:52 EST, 12/03/10, the up vote stands at 4655.

-A day or so later, Terry Walsh emails Steve Balmer.

-The day after that, Steve responds with, "Let's look into it."

-Yesterday, Windows Weekly confirms that HP is out.

-Today...?

[britishbob]

I think today many people are reluctantly looking into alternatives like Amahi.

The fact that they are looking at all is a problem.

How long before MS looks at it's shrinking market and says it's not worth it.

Perhaps they already have and by pulling D.E. they provide their own excuse?

As I said in my first post here I have seen the premature demise of many computers (and some resurrections like Apple.) I have had in my hands some stillborn such as the Elan Enterprise. The only one I still regret to this day was the (like P.T.) Amiga. There is only ever two factors in the demise of anything whether it be computers or cars or.....etc.

1/Is there a viable alternative?

2/ What is the public (or enthusiast) perception?

In the case of W.H.S. M.S. have handled this "train wreck" very poorly, undermining confidence in their own product.

They should have had a possible remedy when they made the announcement. Instead they said D.E. is dead........Crickets chirp!

Now the vacuum is filled by speculation which is getting louder (such as Windows Weekly) and forcing a change in perception of the product even to the casual, half attentive listener.

As a side effect people (even us) are looking at alternatives (such as Amahi or Drobo or Nas.) Old Chinese proverb....if you look hard enough for something....You will eventually find it!

And that's what I meant by achieving critical mass!

Edited by britishbob, 03 December 2010 - 06:32 PM.

[dvn]

That up vote number I reported may be inaccurate. I was able to increment the total by an additional 3 votes simply by up-voting the duplicate posts.

[britishbob]

4658 - 49 is the score:)

[geek-accountant]

I am now running Amahi on one of my Xenservers. It uses something called "greyhole" which is similiar to DE. Not only can you duplicate files, but you can tell the system how many different drives you want the file to reside, including all of them. While I like the idea of duplicating a file to protect it, it is a huge waste of space. I plan to keep testing it, but without duplication since the VM drives are all hosted on my unRaid server. Of course, unRaid is not perfect either and their are some issues with it I need to get my head around before moving all my storage over to it.

As for WHS/Vail, at this point, I don't much care anymore. As long as I have something to auto backup all the PC's in the house (Aurora can do that), I will find a solution for everything else. At this point, IMO, Vail making it to retail release is a 50/50 possibility.

Of course this is the HOME SERVER SHOW web site, so hopefully the rise or fall of Vail is just a bump in the road. Vail or no Vail, there is a place in many people's home for a HOME SERVER. Who knows, maybe this opens the door to a wider discussion of home servers and the show/forums explode to an much larger audience.

[dvn]

@geek-accountant - Which version of unRAID are you using?

[geek-accountant]

Version 4.5.4

Nothing exciting in 4.5.5 through 4.6(latest release) making me hurry to update. At this point, I will just wait for a stable version 5 before upgrading.

[dvn]

Free or paid?

[geek-accountant]

I paid for the Pro version since I plan to go beyond 6 drives. I ran with the free version for a while during testing, but then went straight to Pro thinking 6 doesn't give me enough room to grow.

I already have 4 drives in the system and may move a couple out of my WHS box this weekend and put them into the unRAID box. My WHS has a total of 12tb with 3.5tb of that free. There is another 2.5tb being used just for duplication so I will gain that back too if all the storage is consolidated into the unRAID box. But I am not ready to make that leap just yet.

[dvn]

And this runs off of a USB flash drive? Wouldn't that kill a USB flash drive, running it as a system drive?

[usacomp2k3]

You just use that to install the OS, IIRC.

[geek-accountant]

It does run off a USB drive but, the only time the USB drive is written to is when you boot the system, start or stop the array, or make a configuration change. Therefore, the USB drive should last for a good while.

[Andne]

I'm liking your idea of running an Aurora box (like having the domain policies for managing multiple computers). I don't use the media streaming (don't have the upload bandwidth for it), so I'm thinking that Aurora + Media Center is a good solution for me. The one thing that I realized recently about this is that if I have a domain that my computers are joined to, I'll lose the ability to use homegroups. I like the simplicity that homegroups provide for getting to files on another computer, but I suppose I could just store more of my shared files on the server and not rely so much on peer-peer access to files.

I'm not so sure about using VM's much - I have an HP microserver that isn't well suited as a VM host, but makes a good home server or domain controller/file server. I just got done building a media center PC (i3-540, gigabyte H55M-UD2H, still needs an SSD and Blu-ray), so am thinking that it can host my movies and such - the main place I will watch them is my TV anyways, so why force the data to run over the network? I suppose I could basically run two environments on the same network - one for entertainment that relies on homegroups, and one for more productive use that relies on a domain, file server, and offline folders.