WHS2011: Should I Buy It?

Now that WHS2011 is RTM, I wanted to evaluate the product to see if it is worth me upgrading.  Read on for details!

At long last, WHS2011 is released to manufacturing.  Of course, without the Drive Extender technology, there is plenty of doubt as to whether or not the platform is worth upgrading to.  A quick sample of blog articles on this point follow.

First, Alex Kuretz from MediaSmartServer.Net:

With no news about OEM solutions for data protection and the infancy of the forthcoming DE-replacement Add-Ins, I’m still in “wait and see” mode on WHS 2011. What is becoming clear is that Microsoft only intends for this product to be usable by tech enthusiasts and is no longer targeted at the average consumer who needs an easy backup and storage solution for their growing media collections.

Second, Terry Walsh from WeGotServed.Com.  If you’ve not read his article yet, please do.  He uses the analogy of a band from the UK that had a homerun debut album but screwed up the follow-on one and asserts that WHS2011 is more like the second album than the first.  It’s a creative way to make a valid point and is worth a read if you haven’t done so already.

There are more just like it, but IMHO these are the best two.  It is clear that the MVP’s associated with this product are not happy with the removal of Drive Extender and have concerns about the viability of the platform.  My question today is: apart from what these MVP’s think, does WHS2011 provide a compelling enough offer to get ME to upgrade?  Let’s take a quick look at my requirements and see.

Storage Needs

The v1 WHS platform offers a great drive pooling capability and is brain dead easy to expand.  This is the single best feature in my opinion; it just makes the product easy to use.

As my EX475 stands right now, I have 2TB on my shared folders and 733MB of backups and almost all of that is duplicated for data protection.  My Recorded TV share is at about 620GB, my Videos folder is at about 1TB, and I have about 500GB of Photos and Miscellaneous shared files.  I have about 2.1TB of free space on my server right now and I’d like to size any future solution to be able to support expansion beyond the 6.82TB of formatted space currently in my server.  Implementing WHS2011 would require me to put in drives in 2TB chunks.  I know I can use 3TB drives but due to issues with the backup tool in the software, the limit of space that can be backed up per drive letter is 2TB.  How could I use WHS2011 without any drive pooling function?

I could implement shares for Videos, Recorded TV, and Other Shared Data and assign each a drive letter and 2TB of space.  I could do that by implementing four 3TB drives and assigning the primary partition to these shares.  I’d then have four 1TB partitions and one 2TB partition that I could use for backups and other storage requirements.  Buying two 3TB external drives and recycling a 2TB external drive currently in my v1 drive pool could provide me with the means of getting data protection by leveraging the automatic backup feature built into the WHS2011 system.  However, the data pool would be fragmented and underutilized, and data protection would require external backup drives unless I could find a six or 8 bay system.  I could also implement some RAID5 or drive mirroring solution and then use external drives and something like RSYNCH to back it all up, but really, I’d prefer not to have to bother.  If I have to do that, then the platform is really aimed at technical types and not the average home user.

Data Pooling Add-Ins

Several developers are hard at work to deliver add-ins that will provide for data pooling.  I am very interested in what DataCore promises to bring to the table.  I don’t want to trust a data pooling option that is not currently in use for Server 2008 R2.  The risk of a data corruption bug is too high.  Since this solution has been in use for years and is battle tested, I am looking to see what their implementation looks like before making a decision.

However DriveBender and StableBit Drive Pooling show some promise.  I’ll need to keep an eye on the progress that these beta products make to see if they might be viable alternatives.  Of course, the testing that will be required before I let any of these options into my home network will be extensive.  As a result, these two add-in’s will take time for me to get comfortable with.

In addition, Andrew broke the news about Tranquil and their easy RAID management solution a few days ago.  It seems that Tranquil will deliver a tool to make it easier to manage a RAID solution.  I’d need to see it in action before I could trust it, but remain intrigued by their approach.