Well, the recent announcement from MS about removing the Drive Extender feature from WHSv2 (Vail) will, for many (most?) be an absolute killer blow for the product. It's a staggering decision that will have serious reprocusions for Vail uptake, as effectively they've ripped the heart out of WHS. Apparently MS want to leave it up to the OEM's to provide similar features (think basic RAID here!), but this will lead to confusion and support issues.
The DE feature alone was one of the primary reasons many went with WHS, providing totally seamless addition of any sized drive to the storage pool, native folder duplication for resilinance and dynamic data relocation. There's many on these forums who use WHS as a central repository for all their media, and feel it does what it does very well. If you overlay FlexRAID, you get a fully resiliant system with little management overhead.
As it's aimed at the home user, management was always simple, which is fine by me. MS claim that readily available multi-terrabyte drives have now removed one of the main reasons for having DE, but I disagree. Folder duplication is still essential, and as you build your online movie collection (especially with blu's), 1-2TB drives don't seem that big.
It's a shocking decision, and MS have announced the next beta of Vail due early next year will not have Drive Extender included. We should all boycott WHSv2 until MS come to their senses. I was prepared to forgive them the changes they were proposing to Vail (DE working at the block level rather then the filesystem level for one), but this is one step too far as far as I'm concerned.
The DE feature alone was one of the primary reasons many went with WHS, providing totally seamless addition of any sized drive to the storage pool, native folder duplication for resilinance and dynamic data relocation. There's many on these forums who use WHS as a central repository for all their media, and feel it does what it does very well. If you overlay FlexRAID, you get a fully resiliant system with little management overhead.
As it's aimed at the home user, management was always simple, which is fine by me. MS claim that readily available multi-terrabyte drives have now removed one of the main reasons for having DE, but I disagree. Folder duplication is still essential, and as you build your online movie collection (especially with blu's), 1-2TB drives don't seem that big.
It's a shocking decision, and MS have announced the next beta of Vail due early next year will not have Drive Extender included. We should all boycott WHSv2 until MS come to their senses. I was prepared to forgive them the changes they were proposing to Vail (DE working at the block level rather then the filesystem level for one), but this is one step too far as far as I'm concerned.
