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"but $750 for the 1 TB version..."

Am I the only one who is pretty shocked at the low price for the 1 TB version? You can barely even get a quality TB NAS device for that price, much less an entire machine + OS.

Time for all the naysayers to show up on this thread proclaiming "just get a NAS device" or "my *BSD machine can do the exact same thing with only 10 hours of configuration + a degree in rocket science needed"...I personally can't wait to get one of these guys in my server closet.

Time for all the naysayers to show up on this thread proclaiming "just get a NAS device" or "my *BSD machine can do the exact same thing with only 10 hours of configuration + a degree in rocket science needed"...I personally can't wait to get one of these guys in my server closet.


Actually it's easy in linux, even a caveman can do it.

http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS9015653445.html

Edited 2007-08-23 02:24

SJVN is a pretty dumb troll.

With WHS, the server starts up ready to accept connections as soon as it's installed. You don't need to futz around with samba configs and whatnot. SJVN's solution also does not handle mirroring the most valuable data on the attached drives to reduce the effects of drive failure. Sure, you could do it fairly easily by setting up rsync or unison, but that's not easy for joe average (if he even knew that he had a need for such tools). Same with using LVM to present the disks as a single partition... not so easy to set up.

Is there yet a solution for linux that lets you add or remove disks to a storage pool, losing access only to data that's on the missing disks? Does the solution allow you to select special data that must be replicated while leaving most of your other data only on one disk? These are non-trivial features in a storage layer to implement. Linux certainly COULD do this, but I am personally unaware of projects that DO provide these features, so WHS may have some features over the Linux NAS.

http://www.freenas.org/images/screenshot/disks_graid5.png
http://www.freenas.org/images/screenshot/disks_management.png
With easy accessible web configuration and it's takes no more than 32MB of install base.

The targeted audience who would likely feel the need for an home brewn server imho have spare sparts or a box left which could host freenas.

Can you run WHS from a usb key and temporarily only when you need it turn existing PC's into a NAS?

The point is this isn't a homebrew server. This is a finished package that works out of the box. Microsoft expected market for this is everyone who owns more than one computer, or perhaps a computer and an xbox360. Plug it, in power it up, install a simple management tool and start sharing files, backing up data and streaming music and videos.

And to be perfectly honest those freenas screenshots don't look super user friendly if the user has never admined a server before and only barely knows the lower level workings of their computer.

Your are correct on two parts. First, this is a consumer grade finished product that in no way compares to a project that really is still far into it's development cycle. FreeNAS is hardly even worthy at this point of becoming consumer ready, much less enterprise ready. While it certainly does have some great qualities, it by no means is ready for public consumption

And you are correct in that while FreeNAS is extremely easy extremely easy to use for a tech minded person, it is NOT for a consumer home user who is going to have no clue on what CIFs, NFS, Rysncd, NIS, Radius, etc.. is.

Point is, there is no consumer grade equivalent out there in the market. Maybe people can whine and cry that HP should have invested their own money into developing an open source Ubuntu version, but they did not. Microsoft the evil empire did, and they got theirs to the market first. The entire point of WHS is to integrate and extend into home networks using Windows OS for non technical people. Nothing anyone has said to this point has come up a better solution for these people.

Until Ubuntu comes out with their OWN home server that will integrate with Windows machines and have the same capabilities, there really is simply no point in even bringing the subject up further. I do not understand what is so hard to figure out that this is simply not for tech geeks.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I wrote the author of the article point this out.

Linux is great, but it is possible for other people and or companies to create great things that aren't Linux based. Alot of what I'm hearing is nothing more than whining. There is a lot of great stuff in WHS, enough that even I, a Linux user, might pick one up to use at home simply because of the backup abilities it has.

Point is, there is no consumer grade equivalent out there in the market.

This is not consumer grade. Consumer grade is plugging the thing into a hole in the wall, going through a two minute guide (at most) without a complicated GUI to look at and having it work - with everything, and I don't just mean Xboxes and Windows PCs.

It is still too difficult. Just because people think Windows is easy in a business scenario, doesn't mean that it's easy at home.

The closest thing we have is a web interface based NAS at the moment, and home users are more likely to buy an external hard drive and some backup software because it's simply easier.

The entire point of WHS is to integrate and extend into home networks using Windows OS for non technical people.

What home networks do the average non-technical people have, and how did they get there?

I do not understand what is so hard to figure out that this is simply not for tech geeks.

Because it is for tech geeks. A home server is not for the average home user. You're talking about network set up and maintenance, setting up the servers and your PCs for use together and a whole load of stuff that provides little benefit to these people versus the effort they have to put in.

"The targeted audience who would likely feel the need for an home brewn server imho have spare sparts or a box left which could host freenas."

I disagree strongly with that assumption. Most folks I've talked to about WHS A) don't even know what a server is and B) are mainly excited at the prospect of having a centralized media repository, i.e. no more DVD's/CD's laying around to clutter up their house. The idea of centralized backups are nice as well, but they all had the same concern: "How much of my time is this thing going to take to administer?" When I told them you can stick it in a closet and forget about it and that it'll plug into their existing networks, they were all pretty pleased.

I've seen so much interest in it that I'm thinking of doing some moonlighting with WHS...installing some high end media PC networks for some folks.

SJVN is a pretty dumb troll.

And this is where the logic falls apart, because people assume that you can simply run a Windows Server in the home and it will be OK. Windows is just not easy.

With WHS, the server starts up ready to accept connections as soon as it's installed.

Well, whatever you do some network configuration and maintenance is required. That strikes out the vast majority of home users in the first round, regardless of whether you use WHS or something else, and WHS does nothing to help here.

SJVN's solution also does not handle mirroring the most valuable data on the attached drives to reduce the effects of drive failure.

WHS does a combination of what would be LVM and mirroring - and you have to tell WHS what folders you want mirrored. WHS's RAID and LVM subsystem is non-existant, because Microsoft have came up with their own ideas on proven concepts that are twenty or thirty years old, and quite frankly, it's rather amateurish considering this stuff has been around for that length of time.

Sure, you could do it fairly easily by setting up rsync or unison, but that's not easy for joe average

Errrrr, you set up a RAID 1 mirror, or better yet, you buy a pre-built RAID box and don't worry about having to tell it what to mirror and what not to mirror. It tells you a hard drive needs replaced, and you carry on working.

Oh shit, I didn't tell it to mirror this. Where's it gone?

Same with using LVM to present the disks as a single partition... not so easy to set up.

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here, because WHS presumably will already be set up, as will any RAID storage box you buy.

Is there yet a solution for linux that lets you add or remove disks to a storage pool,

I suggest you do some reading around mate, because you're making a bit of a fool out of yourself ;-).

losing access only to data that's on the missing disks?

Please tell me you're f****** joking. I don't want access to any data lost, and neither does a zero maintenance home user.

Does the solution allow you to select special data that must be replicated while leaving most of your other data only on one disk?

Sorry, but this so-called feature of WHS is useless. You either mirror and have RAID redundancy or you don't, and you choose not to trade off disk space if you don't. There are no half measures. No one, particularly something for a home user, should be making them select what to mirror because it should all just happen automatically. Home user = zero maintenance.

Hey Microsoft, welcome to 1987 when the term 'RAID' was first used!

I am personally unaware of projects that DO provide these features, so WHS may have some features over the Linux NAS.

You can quite easily do that, but it's simply the wrong way to go about doing things. People have been doing storage for a good twenty or thirty years now.

I'm sorry, but I'm finding it quite difficult not to laugh at people who think that WHS is some sort of storage king, and is better than using a RAID box using RAID, LVM or even Sun's ZFS.

I don't want access to any data lost, and neither does a zero maintenance home user.

Hmmm. That should read 'I don't want any data to be lost should I replace a disk'.

"Is there yet a solution for linux that lets you add or remove disks to a storage pool, losing access only to data that's on the missing disks?"

Yes. It is called RAID. It's only been around for 20 years.

"Does the solution allow you to select special data that must be replicated while leaving most of your other data only on one disk?"

Why would you want/need to? For home users (the target market) this should just work and everything should be mirrored unless explicitly excluded.

"These are non-trivial features in a storage layer to implement. Linux certainly COULD do this,"

Welcme to 2007, most OS's today support RAID. Windows has supported it since at least NT 3.51, probably earlier.
The thing with WHS is not what it does but how (presumably) easy it does it.

WHS does not use RAID. As far as I can tell it's more similar to zpool than to RAID in that the volume management and the file services are tightly coupled.

Can you explain to me how you'd use RAID to provide both a single pool and selective mirroring? How can you make it look like one large volume while still being able to select subsets of your data that are mirrored?

I don't know why it's so fashionable to bash Microsoft's competence. They are a big company with a lot of bright people. Check out Channel9 sometime... the people who work on deep pieces of technology (like the kernel, the CLR, and the compilers) really know what they are doing and can usually explain things well. The lack of respect that you and Segedunum and many other people in the OSS commentators community (for some reason I doubt you guys are devs) is really not going to improve your OS of choice. You must respect your opponents, especially if they are powerful, otherwise you will lose and you'll never know why.

"I don't know why it's so fashionable to bash Microsoft's competence"

- Because they think it's cool. This is what they feel they have to do in order to fit in and be a true tech-geek. Hence the rise of Ubuntu, allowing these people to have the Linux tag slapped on them, and now they think they are hardcore techies. Problem is, they still remain as ignorant to the world around them as ever before...if not more.

Put them out in the real world for 10 years and then ask them to come back and comment. I remember back over 10-12 years ago how much hatred I had towards Microsoft and Windows. But, I was young, and as I have grown up, been in the workforce for a while, it simply just gets idiotic to bash a business like this. I do not like IBM servers at all, hence I simply just do not use them. But I do not spend my life making idiot claims about IBM. Nor would I immediately become biased against any new product by IBM that would prevent me from future use.

What these people want is monopoly in reverse. They want all Microsoft products to be ignored simply because they are from Microsoft in favor of their Linux solution. Kind of sounds like the same tactic they accuse their enemy of doing doesn't it.

Why not just use what ever is the best available? If Microsoft does come out with a good product, why not use it. If we applied the same logic and view of these people, then Linux would never have gotten anywhere. We could simply ignore Linux because it is Linux. Doesn't that sound ignorant? Then why do it in reverse.

"You can barely even get a quality TB NAS device for that price, much less an entire machine + OS."

Maybe that says something about the quality of Windows Home Server?
Or you could call it price dumping.
Or it's just a good deal.

Remember, it's leaked information. We don't know what anything actually is.

Edited 2007-08-23 03:37

Am I the only one who is pretty shocked at the low price for the 1 TB version? You can barely even get a quality TB NAS device for that price, much less an entire machine + OS.

Not really. You can build a proper 1 terabyte RAID array pretty cheaply these days, and there are no onerous hardware requirements.

I personally can't wait to get one of these guys in my server closet.

Well, home users do not have servers closets, and if you're expecting to use it for a business then just wait until all the restrictions stop you, because Microsoft will not threaten SBS or Windows Server proper.

It's a very select band of people who run home servers, and those who want to do it are pretty much already doing it. Those who really want and feel the need to run Windows Server in their home are probably already doing it through a pirated version as well - and they're probably a select band again.

I just cannot see the use case or market for these things the more I look.

Edited 2007-08-23 11:06

"Well, home users do not have servers closets, and if you're expecting to use it for a business then just wait until all the restrictions stop you, because Microsoft will not threaten SBS or Windows Server proper."

By server closet, I meant any closet/basement/attic/somewhere out of the way. This is a box you can hook into a network, and then forget that the physical box even exists, which is how most folks will want it installed as it's fairly large, and pretty ugly IMO. I have no interest in using this for business use...businesses can afford enterprise level software.

Stop reading everything so literally.

"Stop reading everything so literally."

Guess you're kinda new around here, so welcome to OSnews...

"Guess you're kinda new around here, so welcome to OSnews..."

Nah, I find myself harping on sedegunum quite a bit around here. In reality we play golf together every other weekend and have a timeshare in the Caribbean, this whole OSNews feuding thing is just for show.

Btw, have a look at my user id #...I've been here for quite a while.

This is a box you can hook into a network...

What network?

You can barely even get a quality TB NAS device for that price, much less an entire machine + OS.

Whoa, hold up. What is a NAS device if not an entire machine with an OS? What makes WHS different from the other NAS solutions on the market, besides the fact that this one runs Windows?

Look at the picture. It's a NAS device. I'm more interested in it for the form factor than the software. I might even buy one if it uses standard PC hardware. Does the OS image live on disk, or is there Flash?

I was looking into a Norco DS-500e ($349 without disks), which is a 5-bay eSATA enclosure (SAN) about the same size and shape as this NAS. This probably performs considerably better as a storage device for a media center computer and eliminates an OS image. 500GB disks are $100, so the price is $150-200 cheaper if you already have an always-on media PC.

my *BSD machine can do the exact same thing with only 10 hours of configuration + a degree in rocket science needed

This has to be a matter of people convincing themselves that setting up file sharing is too difficult. Just right click on a folder in your file manager, click Properties, and there's a tab for sharing the folder via SMB, NFS, or HTTP. I don't know how it could be made any simpler.

If the only difference between the two is the hard drive capacity, I would say a difference of $150 for 500GB is sort of par for the course. The 130 vs 140 difference is of course much more sillier. I feel they put the 130 buck thing purely to make you feel you are getting deal on the 140 one - or (less cynically) maybe the manufacturing costs are really very similar for a 160 gb and 320 gb hard drive. Who knows!

That price includes the hardware. You'd pay a similar price for equivalent barebones parts.

Well seeing as a celeron D or a sempron can be had for around 40 dollars and 512mb or ddr2 costs about 10 bucks if you look, this machine could actually be built for next to nothing with a little patience and knowhow. I just built myself a linux home server which has 300 gb of hard drive space and a 3.33 ghz celeron for around $150.

And you'd learn SO MUCH MORE.


I say if you're at all interested, at all technically inclined, your best bet is to build your own from some older parts, install BSD/Linux/Solaris, do some homework, set it up.

Not that I said IF you're at all interested. I don't see many people who aren't interested in such things doing this. Ah well. It'll eventually catch on riding the wave of MS marketing, magazine "reviews", etc.

Still, it's better to understand how something works, why it works, etc than just to have it work a single way when it wants to and not understand why...

Maybe there's a lot of demand for simple NAS. I honestly have no idea. I wanna go build one now...

"With all these so-called leaks on Microsoft gear, it's becoming all too suspicious.. one might think it's deliberate."

Yet another idea they copied from Apple?

^
|

Sarcasm folks...embrace it.

Maybe they're taking a page out of Apple's gorilla marketing book.

Here's what you can find on HP's website if you search for it by name. Though not too much more info. You actually find more info on google. But anyway -

http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/447351-0-0-225-121.html?jumpid=...

Seriously, stop spamming your link. If you're wondering why every comment of yours is modded down, you need to wake up.

A major advantage of WHS which most people don't know is automated backups. You install the client component to your pc the system automatically does backups of everything to the server and syncs this information to your other pcs too.