WHS 2011 is bad bad bad...

[pcgeek11]

I downloaded WHS 2011 from Technet and decided to give it a run to see how it was ( even without DE ). Well my verdict is in, this thing just sucks...

Slow as hell. It takes minutes for the Dashboard to come up, even right on the server.
No DE. Which we already knew.
Will not run worth crap on any low powered system.
Requires 2 GB of RAM.

Just not worth the time or effort. I sure am glad I didn't pay for it. I'll stick with WHS V1.

Does anyone like it?

 

[Bish]

I've been running it for a week. Dashboard is slow. Didn't really have any issue with adding a 10Tb Raid5 array on an LSI controller. Have not converted clients to new server yet as I am still running a V1 server that is used for media storage. Have not yet put mymovies on it or done any backups yet. I also never used DE on V1 (Raid controller instead) so no DE was no big deal to me.

I plan on transferring everything over in a few weeks once I get everything setup properly. I will also be keeping my V1 setup as a backup until I am confident V2 works well. I also did new server class hardware so the old hardware complaint does not really apply for me.

Overall, too soon to give my total impression. I had very little trouble with V1 and I am hoping for the same on V2. Nice to have Server 2008 R2 underneath IMO.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I never even got my V1 server up and running yet. And now they come out with V2. I like the concept of the DE, shame that it got axed. Are MS's programmer's that inept, or did MS just not feel like funding the development of a real storage solution? If V1's DE was mostly user-mode code, I cannot see why they couldn't just port it to V2.

The hardware I am planning on using for WHS, is a Q6600/P35 mobo/4-8GB of DDR2 memory, so I could easily fit V2 on there, with hardware to spare.

 

[BTA]

I installed WHS 2011 on a spare machine (E2150 w/6gigs DDR2, a 500gb system drive and 1.5tb storage drive).

I've been playing around with trying to get the DE replacement addins to function along with the new MyMovies plugin.

So far it's a big hassle and only kinda works after a bunch of screwing around. I really don't care for the dashboard either, and for some reason my network transfer speeds are awful. This was my old WHS v1 hardware so I know it can do better. My current WHS v1 system destroys it.

So far I'm not impressed, even with the standard features. But I plan to keep playing with it and see how the DE replacement apps mature.

If anyone cares, Drivebender has so far worked the best...but that isn't saying much.

 

[Dahak]

Are MS's programmer's that inept, or did MS just not feel like funding the development of a real storage solution? If V1's DE was mostly user-mode code, I cannot see why they couldn't just port it to V2.

It was not really that either, iirc they where trying to get it a little lower level than user mode but the biggest issue was because its the same base as the entry small business servers and the sbs versions where having issues with business applications and the DE and the way it shows off the shares.

I too wish they could have still worked on it and left it off/disabled for the sbs products and left it on/enabled for the whs

 

[Emulex]

how hard to add the whs features to windows 2008 R2? that seems easier if you are msdn/technet user for testing/devel of course.