Windows 8

[Stofsk]

Considering you can get an SSD to boot your OS in seconds? Nope.

[Xon]

That's actually REALLY funny. Good, but funny. That's precisely what the FIRST version of Home Server had, and was yanked from the SECOND version of Home Server to a universal chorus of 'WTF! Give that back!'

From the documentation, it's a fairly major rework. Instead of a filter driver on a normal NTFS partition it's actually it's own volume management layer which operates on the device level. This makes it dramatically more reliable. I'm not suprised the approach used in WHSv1 was pulled.

Hence my never upgrading from WHSv1. It's a different implementation of the same effect on WS8 though. If WS8 is reasonably cheap, I may upgrade my server to use the new storage pool functionality.

I've still got a VM of WHSv1 around simply for the backup agent. Once Win8 comes out, I'll probably upgrade to WHSv2 while waiting for WHSv3 (aka based in Win8). On-disk dedupe covering all my VMs and backups? So very much want.

[White Haven]

The built in reformat system & reset OS is also very useful for a software refresh asuming the users docs are stored in the cloud and all the settings automatically sync down. And Microsoft allows your MSN account to be a valid login to Windows and probably automatically links to Microsoft's Skydrive if it's enabled.

Didn't have time to really address this earlier, but greeaat. Another example of Microsoft living in the dream-world where customers can spell 'Cloud,' in three attempts, have an MSN account, have ever heard the word 'Skydrive,' and don't take their business elsewhere when you tell them 'time to reload Windows again, sorry' whenever something goes wrong. It's not a bad feature in isolation, but I somewhat worry that it continues the trend since Vista of moving away from actual OS repair functions (My kingdom for XP's Repair Install function in 7!).

Because let's be honest. When does Startup Repair ever work?

[phongn]

That's actually REALLY funny. Good, but funny. That's precisely what the FIRST version of Home Server had, and was yanked from the SECOND version of Home Server to a universal chorus of 'WTF! Give that back!'

From the documentation, it's a fairly major rework. Instead of a filter driver on a normal NTFS partition it's actually it's own volume management layer which operates on the device level. This makes it dramatically more reliable. I'm not suprised the approach used in WHSv1 was pulled.

WHSv1's system could corrupt data, so it's no real surprise Microsoft killed it (and probably went to architect it from scratch).

I've still got a VM of WHSv1 around simply for the backup agent. Once Win8 comes out, I'll probably upgrade to WHSv2 while waiting for WHSv3 (aka based in Win8). On-disk dedupe covering all my VMs and backups? So very much want.

I thought deduplication was still going to be third-party pluggable?

[Xon]

WHSv1's system could corrupt data, so it's no real surprise Microsoft killed it (and probably went to architect it from scratch).

The WHSv1 was a horrible hack, I'm not suprised they had significant problems.

I thought deduplication was still going to be third-party pluggable?

Win8 Server will have native on-disk dedupe. Being able to dedupe VM's is something I really want since a basebones Win2k8r2 install takes up ~8-12gb per VHD and is almost completely identical.

[phongn]

I thought deduplication was still going to be third-party pluggable?

Win8 Server will have native on-disk dedupe. Being able to dedupe VM's is something I really want since a basebones Win2k8r2 install takes up ~8-12gb per VHD and is almost completely identical.

It'll be awful tempting to run Windows 8 Server as my primary operating system (though I suppose I could also do the Hyper-V thing since the client will natively support it)