WHS 2011

Modred189

Modred189

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So I currently have a WHS box, and it's pretty much a collection of drives from various other systems, cobbled together. While I don't necessarily have an issue with that, I was debating whether to upgrade to WHS 2011, and know that I will have to buy some new drives.

However, I cannot seem to find any listings anywhere that clearly delineate the differences/upgrades between WHS and WHS 2011. Is there so little functional difference between the two?
 
64bit only and no DE pretty much killed it for me.

Sorry IDK of any page showing other differences.
 
DE for 2011 will be third party , look for it this Summer. The quality of the DE offerings remains to be seen. The forums contain enough problems, some minor, some not, with 2011 to be cautious advising just go and get it. Folks do like it's responsiveness compared to V1.
 
Interesting link Aposium. And enlightening to an extent. My issue is that I have AT&T Uverse, so remote access is a no-go, and not an issue. I just use teamviewer if I need to tap in remotely.

However, all of my systems are 64bit Win7 machines, and that seems like a big reason to switch.
But the migration process will clearly be a bear.

Argh! Good info, but does not make the choice any easier. lol.
 
There are advantages and disadvantages to WHS 2011 over WHS v1.

2011 Pros:
-File system performance is better.
-Remote Access web page is much nicer
-Media Streaming abilities are much better
-PC backups are much easier to manage and move around

Cons.
-64 bit only, so older hardware need not apply
-No Drive Extender, so you can't easily mix and match hard drives.

On the bright side, there are 3rd party plug-ins that bring back Extender like functionality.

Btw, Is remote access a problem because AT&T blocks port 80? When I used Comcast, they did the same, but I was still able to use the remote access stuff since WHS primarily uses https for remote access.
 
AT&T access is an issue because their gateways are locked down to an extreme. Fron what I understand there is a UPnP setting that it lacks that WHS requires.

And I'm not worried about hardware. I'm running my existing WHS on a E4400 and 2gb of ram.
 
Last edited:
Question for you...
Why do you think you need v2
what is lacking in v1???

We have three 64bit win7 machines in the house with no problems with whs v1
 
I have read quite a bit, and I finally decided to stay with v1.

Main reason, v1 does everything I need and has been tested to work over time.

Once v2 is more of a proven platform I will consider it again, or if there is something I need that v1 does not offer.

Unlike my desktop where I love to have the latest shinny new toy, the server is used by everyone in the house, and I would be killed if it stopped working.
 
SpeedyVV said:
the server is used by everyone in the house, and I would be killed if it stopped working.
Click to expand...

i know the feeling

i am permitted to "tinker" with the server on the understanding (threat) that I don't break it :D
 
Asposium said:
Question for you...
Why do you think you need v2
what is lacking in v1???

We have three 64bit win7 machines in the house with no problems with whs v1
Click to expand...

I have technet, so I can. lol.

From what I understand, and correct me if I am wrong, v1 has limitations regarding recoveries and re-installing 64bit drivers...
 
I'm evaluating 2011 with my Technet too. Compared to v1, it was a lot easier to install. It's like the difference between XP and Win 7. Of course, not an issue if you already have v1 running already. I found that v1 would never awaken my older Dell laptop (with Win 7) to do the nightly backup. 2011 hasn't failed doing it yet. I'm using drive mirroring for internal data duplication. Easy to do, and somewhat flexible as I can add a 2TB drive in the future to mirror both 1TB drives (that currently mirror each other). With mirroring, I don't personally see losing DE to be a big deal. I have an external drive backing up the shares (which are mirrored). I was disappointed with v1 when I tried to restore client backups when I upgraded the hardware (in anticipation of 64 bit 2011) more than a year ago. I couldn't get it to restore even following step by step documentation. I don't know if 2011 is any better, but using tried and true NTFS instead of DE tricks makes me think it's probably better. I don't know if it's worth spending a lot of money to upgrade, but I personally like it better.
 
I've got 2011 running in a VM right now before I install it on my server, but so far it seems like a pretty solid upgrade from v1. I'm currently using 2008 r2 and 2011 isn't really any different other than lacking some of the roles (full blown ADS). So far I've been able to set up SABnzbd and Sickbeard (using Python and git), both seem to function fine. Personally I have two RAID 5 arrays so I'm not concerned about DE not being available anymore. Then again, not sinking the money into RAID was the appeal of DE :)
 
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