Submitted by “Many of you may already know that Microsoft has been hard at work on the next version of Windows Home Server. We are excited to announce today that the beta of this next version (code name ‘Vail’) is now available. We invite everyone to check it out by downloading the software from the Microsoft Connect site (English language builds are available now).”
I don’t have the time or a spare computer. I wonder how it will be received and how big the usability improvements really are…
Paul Thurrott has pretty good preview of it. He is big fan of previous product so keep that in mind. I haven’t tested it myself since my WHS is in heavy use.
http://www.winsupersite.com/server/whs_vail_preview.asp
Really? You didn’t want to test beta software that would require you to completely wipe out the data stored on your machine responsible for backups?
Hmm.. You don’t seem to be very cooperative in testing non-free software without any monetary incentive. Have you been checked out by your MS compatible psychologist lately?
Sorry… I had my FOSS-zealot-ectomy last year… my rear end feels much better now.
WHS is an excellent bit of kit, it’s a shame it’s really pushed through the OEM channels as it’s a solid product (there was a couple of data destroying bugs early in it’s life). It does work really well with windows clients. The automated backup, file share etc works really well, and the windows management of disks in JBOD arrangement works well, sort of a software Drobo, not quite as advanced but works well at the simple level.
The media side of the server works really well, integrating with both Microsoft Media Centre and Xbox media streaming.
However the big drawback is that it’s really only designed for Windows, not that im bashing Microsoft for doing this. It makes sense for them to target their own platform. It’s just if they also managed to get it working in time machine for the mac or made a client application for the mac and linux im sure these things would be selling in bigger droves then they do at the moment.
I used it for half a year, it was solid, however it just didn’t fit in with my mac desktop, laptops and linux laptop so i reformatted the machine to a workstation and brought a NAS instead.
Check out HP’s MediaSmart servers.
They have added software to integrate with Time Machine, and stream to the iPhone.
http://www.hp.com/united-states/campaigns/mediasmart-server/#/EXOve…
wait….
If they got Linux or OS X integration, the boxes would fly out the doors? Really?
at any rate…. for Linux there is Amahi so I don’t see why any Linux fan would bother with WHS.