Windows Home Server 2011 Finally Signed Off and Ready to Roll

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Today, after months of testing various betas and a release candidate, Microsoft have finally signed off Windows Home Server 2011. This means that we should all be able to get it in the next few weeks.

It has literally been just short of two months since the release candidate became available to download.

At the time there was still a lot of negative feelings towards WHS 2011 and Microsoft, mainly because of the decision from Microsoft to remove Drive Extender and then the news that HP had pulled out of the WHS market.

Since then a few developers have announced software that should deliver Drive Extender like functionality to those that want it. So far these have just been announcements and early betas, so it is still too early to tell how popular and useful these will end up being. Personally I won’t be using any of them on my production machines until they have been tested, tested and testing again, with more than just a few people on private betas.

Of course you could always implement RAID on your Windows Home Server, but that requires a little knowledge on your part.

Or, as a number of people have said, they will just live without Drive Extender.

After all, Windows Home Server 2011 has a number of great features and capabilities, and shouldn’t be dismissed just because DE is gone.

At the moment there is no way to upgrade your existing Windows Home Server V1 boxes to WHS 2011. You can of course copy all your data off and then do a clean install, then copy your data back, but hopefully someone will write an add-in to do that very soon.

As yet there has been no official word from any Microsoft Partner on WHS 2011 hardware, but given the wording in Microsoft’s announcement (see below) that should change fairly soon.

So what do you do think of Windows Home Server 2011? Will you be using it?

If you want to learn more about Windows Home Server 2011 and it’s features, we have a large number of videos for you to watch:

Various Windows Home Server 2011 videos and walk-throughs Windows Home Server 2011 Dashboard Safe Mode Windows Home Server 2011 Client Restore Video

The Windows Home Server team just posted this on their blog:

Windows Home Server 2011 Ready To Roll

Today, the Home Server engineering team signed off the release version of WHS 2011. An exciting milestone which now starts the process to make it available for purchase.

Affordable and easy-to-use, Windows Home Server 2011 is the ideal solution to help families keep their important digital files and data automatically backed up, organized, and accessible from virtually anywhere.

To help with questions we hear during this time of the product release cycle, I have provided further guidance below. If you have a specific question, please feel free to post in comments, on our WHS forum.

· When will OEM’s offer WHS 2011?

Many OEM’s and System Builders have already started building specific form factors and solutions based on WHS 2011. We expect to start seeing them in the market starting May.

· What languages is WHS 2011 available in?

SBS 2011 Essentials will be released in 19 languages including Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional, Taiwan), Chinese (Hong Kong), Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.

· When will the Evaluation for WHS 2011 be made available?

Evaluation for WHS 2011 will be via an online hosted experience only. Further information will be released in early April.

· When will I be able to download WHS 2011 via my TechNet or MSDN subscription?

WHS 2011 will be made available on MSDN and TechNet also in early April.

· What is the difference between V1 of WHS and WHS 2011?

You can learn more about differences in our comparison datasheet.

During this time I would also like to thank all our MVP’s, partners and customers that have helped us get to this point. I look forward to sharing more information with you over the coming weeks.

14 COMMENTS

Bob K Mar 29, 2011 At 7:14 pm

I’ll stick with v1
Andrew Edney Mar 29, 2011 At 9:01 pm

I think that is a perfectly valid option.
Chris P Mar 30, 2011 At 4:19 am

I Think I will use LINUX 😉
Simon Mar 30, 2011 At 2:44 pm

Having held out for 2011, one thing I’m having trouble finding is a hardware requirements chart for this new release.

I have a box sitting there with everything but motherboard/processor/RAM (which admittedly is most of it), and I’m itching to get the components sorted.

Aside from a 64-bit system, has anyone got a range of technical requirements for this? Maybe minimum, typical, power? Any advice gratefully appreciated.
- Andrew Edney Mar 30, 2011 At 6:35 pm
  
  Hi Simon
  
  here are the system requirements for WHS 2011:
  
  System Requirements:
  
  1.4 GHz x64 processor.
  2 GB RAM
  At least one 160 GB hard drive
  - fasthair Apr 1, 2011 At 9:58 pm
    
    I can tell you from my own experience that 1.4 isn’t really an option. I was using a 1.8 AMD single core unit that worked just fine on V1 and it was a dog with WHS11. So much so that I thought it was WHS11 that was the problem. I mean this thing was sllllooooowwww. I dug out a 3.0 dual core AMD I had laying around and it was a night an day difference. The Dashboard opens almost instantly now aa does remote desktop into the server. Backups were painfully slow and now a first time backup is done in less then 15 minutes. It made such an improvement that I’ve decided that I will keep using it and let V 1 rest in peace even without DE.
    
    Trust me you would be very sorry if you stuck to the minimum specs.
    
    fasthair
    - Andrew Edney Apr 2, 2011 At 11:56 am
      
      thanks Fasthair – yeah, you never want to just go with the minimum……
    - Simon Apr 5, 2011 At 12:00 pm
      
      Thanks for that.
      
      I managed to pick up a 3.2 quad core + 4gb ram + motherboard bundle for not too much money, so that should be plenty.
      
      Only place I slipped up was that I’ve gone for a micro ATX board without much in the way of expansion slots. I was planning on loading it with TV Tuners eventually. I could always swap the motherboard out at a later date (perhaps replace the entire bundle and use this on a much needed new desktop).
      
      Thank you.
Simon Mar 31, 2011 At 9:15 am

Hi Andrew

Thanks for that – it’s a lot less than I was expecting. I’m assuming that this is enough to get it going, and I should perhaps at least double this for decent performance.

Might keep my eye out for a motherboard/CPU/RAM bundle deal, since as long as it’s 64-bit, gigabit LAN and low power consumption I should be fine.

Thanks again.
Eric Mar 31, 2011 At 8:03 pm

Too bad they stuck with leaving out DE. Now the publicity that came with that decision and how the existing users were ignored has pretty much killed a lot of existing WHSv1 users from even thinking about updating, me included. Even though there will be 3rd party “DE” add-ons, the damage has already been done IMO.