Anyone got Windows Home Server 2011 yet? Under £40!

[PAH]

Looks like M$ are stuggling to sell it. Price down to £31.45 + vat (£37.74 inc vat if you're not vat registered).

Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 - CCQ-00128 - CCL Computers

Not sure if it's much of a worthwhile upgrade if you already have the previous version (with drive extender), but it does look like a very cheap way of getting a legit copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation, which is what WHS 2011 is built upon. So it's 64 bit with restrictions of max 8gb ram and 1 cpu (though can be multicore).

Done a bit of reading up on initial reviews and so far the main issue seems to be the backup facility for backing up the WHS itself has a max 2TB limit.

Workarounds involve using the W2008 backup software instead, which kind of defeats the purpose of WHS but at least the underlying functionality of Windows Server is still available and usable.

Was thinking of using it on my cheap HP Microserver (a bargain at ~£100+vat after rebait for what is in effect a 4 bay NAS, see link below) but WHS 2011 has a minimum ram requirement of 2gb and it's a faff to upgrade the ram apparently.

HP ProLiant MicroServer Athlon II Neo N36L 1.3GHz 1GB.. | Ebuyer.com

[PAH]

That's just the sort of response in demand M$ seem to be getting for their latest home server product.

Maybe they should relabel the stock 'Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation' and charge double.

[redgiant]

There seems to be a mixed response to WHS 2011 mainly due to drive extender being dropped in favour of software RAID solutions - not such a big deal really IMHO. I also read that MSE isn't supported which seems stupid ... there are other anti-virus solutions I know but it seems short sighted not to support their own home server OS.

Looking at the little HP server i'm tempted to use one as a HTPC / File Server seeing how small it is. How noisy have you found it? Cheers.

[b0redom]

What are you talking about? It's a piece of piss to upgrade the RAM. If you flash the BIOS, you can even use the optical bay for another HDD.

I use FreeNAS and ZFS on mine, total cost £0 inc VAT.

[VectraMan]

What does it do that a plain old NAS doesn't do? I've never quite understood the point.

[eek]

What does it do that a plain old NAS doesn't do? I've never quite understood the point.

Have windows underneath it. Unless you want to run a sql server instance I can't see the point. I'm an unraid fan myself but any of the linux NAS systems will do what most people want.

[eek]

Workarounds involve using the W2008 backup software instead, which kind of defeats the purpose of WHS but at least the underlying functionality of Windows Server is still available and usable.

Was thinking of using it on my cheap HP Microserver (a bargain at ~£100+vat after rebait for what is in effect a 4 bay NAS, see link below) but WHS 2011 has a minimum ram requirement of 2gb and it's a faff to upgrade the ram apparently.

HP ProLiant MicroServer Athlon II Neo N36L 1.3GHz 1GB.. | Ebuyer.com

Cheaper HP ProLiant N36L 1P 1GBU Int SATA Cold Plug SATA 250GB 200W PS MicroServer ProLiant MicroServer series 1300 MHz 1 pcs AMD Athlon II Model NEO N36L 2 core 130 GHz 1MB L2 15W 2 MB L2 4 LFF SATA nonhot plug 1024 MB

[PAH]

Looking at the little HP server i'm tempted to use one as a HTPC / File Server seeing how small it is. How noisy have you found it? Cheers.

It's very well built, certainly for the price, and noise isn't too bad. Not as noisy as a typical server.

I have mine tucked away in a cupboard on the end of an ethernet cable, using remote desktop to administer it, so any noise is irrelevant.

The main benefit is that it has 4 easy access drive bays so comparable to more established 4 bay NASes by QNAP etc, but at less than half the price.

[PAH]

What are you talking about? It's a piece of piss to upgrade the RAM. If you flash the BIOS, you can even use the optical bay for another HDD.

I use FreeNAS and ZFS on mine, total cost £0 inc VAT.

I've only seen one article on upgrading the ram and I'm sure it looked like you had to dismantle most of it to get access to the motherboard to slot in more ram. So depending on what you define piece of piss, it may well be! My definition is being able to take off a case panel and slot in the ram.

I prefer a windows based OS as that is what I'm familiar with, and I like the flexibility if I want to use the server for other non-NAS tasks that may not be available on free NAS solutions.

[PAH]

What does it do that a plain old NAS doesn't do? I've never quite understood the point.

Windows flexibility is the main one. The WHS software is just a nice user friendly app sat on top of Windows Server.

I had WHS v1 but the drive extender side of things pissed me off with it disk thrashing when I was trying to stream movies. In typical M$ fashion they didn't offer a user friendly way of telling it to only migrate files when idle, so some people resorted to DIY scripts to turn off/on the service.

Other benefits were easy central backup of any PCs laptops running Windows, with easy restore of backup to said PCs.

I can live without the WHS software but am interested in getting a legit copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 Foundation for just over 30 quid (can reclaim the VAT ) for playing around with in virtual machines.