Carlos told me that working closely with Microsoft has opened doors to between 8 and 10 OEM vendors, and interest from those OEM’s has been favorable. I expect more than one OEM to launch with DataCore product as an option for WHS2011 and beyond. Carlos could not confirm who, but that should be apparent pretty soon.
In addition to the above-mentioned features, DataCore wants to evaluate bringing other features in their current product into the WHS version, such as snapshot and continuous data protection, and sees this public beta as the first step in an ongoing dialogue with the WHS community.
Pricing is TBD. Carlos told me that DataCore intends to price fairly for a mission-critical WHS solution aimed at home users, with the intent to establish a market presence and gain market penetration. While he could not share exact pricing with me, he assured me that DataCore wants to establish a market presence so they intend to price in a reasonable manner to allow that to happen.
We hope to have some UI screen shots available to share with you in the next week or so, please stay tuned for that.
Opinion Time
Of the DE replacement options, this is the one that I have the most interest in. DataCore is leveraging an existing product that currently is in production in Server 2008 R2 installations across the world. They are playing to their organization’s strengths in delivering virtualized storage inside Microsoft server technologies. I fully respect the work that the other add-in vendors are doing in this space, but have to say that a mature solution that currently is in use in datacenters across the world looks more attractive than a new solution that has yet to be fully vetted.
I was happy to hear of the high interest level from OEM’s. Adoption by several OEM’s could go a long way to avoiding product fragmentation that we’ve all been concerned with since Microsoft announced the removal of DE.
So what do you think? Will you register for the public beta and give it a spin in May when it is released? I plan on giving it a whirl myself on my test WHS2011 machine.
DataCore Corporate Highlights DataCore and WHS Our DataCore Interview
As a WHS-MVP, I look forward to beta testing this addin and look forward to reading UWHS’s 2 WHS-MVP’s Andrew & Tim’s findings.
I agree that DataCore’s reputation will help consumers decide on drive pooling and data protection for WHS2011.
I heard about this some time ago from a partner, and to be honest, it was the first time I thought to myself that there might be hope.
The argument heard many times in the discussions of third party drive extenders, “If Microsoft could not, why can others?” for me only have some truth to it, because it was clear that Microsoft’s focus and resources shifted during the development of WHS 2011, and I believe they simply did not want to spend the resources needed to make the solution stable.
That being said, I do believe that the risc of leaving all my data to small companies with no experience in the field was not something I was too happy with.
In comes DataCore with promise of a solution based on many years of experience, and existing products that focuses on server environments, that is known to be a lot more demanding in stability than the average household solution.
From the look of the company, this was in my head the kind of company Microsoft could have turned to for help in developing a stable solution with WHS 2011, and it therefore also is the solution that would allow me to sleep well at night.
This very likely may not be fair to the other companies supplying drive extender solutions, but fact is that they company forward in a field where you just cannot risc to fail.
The main difference I see is that if one of the other companies fail with their solutions, they are back to where they started, as the main products here are only consumer products – however with DataCore, it is a different story. If DataCore fails here, and words gets around on the internet that a DataCore solution failed, and a high number of users looses data with their solution, this will damage not only their drive extender solution, but will destroy trust in the company on their server based business products as well.
I my mind, this is the kind of company that can’t afford to fail, and for that reason, they have only two options – deliver a product that really works, or deliver nothing at all.
The only two things I can think of that would be better:
1) If Microsoft adopted the solution they could put trust in, and put it back into the WHS 2011 product in a service pack,
2) If a hardware based solution came forward that companies could put into their WHS 2011 products when shipping, instead of a software based solution.
(I do not have any relation to DataCore or any of the other companies producing Drive Extender replacements, and do not at this point know if any of My Movies’ partners will deliever solutions based on any of these. This should be seen entirely as my personal view on it).
thanks Brian – I couldn’t agree with you more!
This sounds quite promising! Roll on the Beta …