Digital Home Thoughts: Windows Home Server 2011: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?

"This leaves Windows Home Server 2011 sorely lacking when it comes to fitting the needs of the average home consumer, the target market that was envisioned for the original Windows Home Server. While WHS 2011 is a polished improvement of Windows Home Server, storage management has become more complicated, storage growth is more complicated, and storage protection will either depend on what is likely to be complicated RAID from the OEMs or else Server Backup with its limitations."

Image via Engadget

Whoa boy. This has sure turned into an ugly situation! If I'm understanding what I'm reading correctly, when you add a hard drive to Windows Home Server 2011, it shows up as a distinct drive rather than a pool of storage - this is what the loss of the Drive Extender technology means. Further, libraries are locked to a single drive without any duplication of folders like we had before. Any duplication of the data will come via whatever hardware-based RAID solution an OEM wants to integrate into their product. This also means that the only way to back up the server itself is to an external hard drive.

I don't know about you, but I'm seeing a whole lot of ugliness here. I'll be keeping my current WHS running as long as I can, thank you very much.