All I can say to this is "bollocks", If you asked a bricklayer or Joe Average where they'd like to store all their movies / music he'd point to a shelf already filled with CDs/DVD's and say there. If you asked them if they'd like a better place to store their stuff they'd probably point to a better looking shelving unit in the latest Harvey Norman catalogue, anything more complicated than that and Joe don't wanna know.

A home media server is for the next decade at least a niche product meant for the tech savy period. Most of the tech savy crowd do have the knowledge to build their own "custom" media servers.

I think "Joe Average" at least, needs to be computer literate, meaning he can find his way around in Windows Explorer and find a file he has just saved. If he asked where did that go...he's not ready yet. Some one that has the above skills and is a fast learner should be fine.

Sorry but I can't agree with any of that.

I'm not entirely sure what Level 7 Mode is but linux doesn't crash outright. Apps fail sure but unless you've had a major hardware failure the OS won't go belly up. Hardware failure will adversely affect Windows every bit as much in terms of data loss.

Linux is not at all fragile, you can put it through hell if you choose to. Mine has recovered from a great many things. The Journaled filesystems it uses are designed to recover from serious power outage type crashes. I don't really think you can say the same of a crapped out array in Windows land and one thing is definate. If your windows box is not behaving it's "back to the drawing board", rebuild the whole thing from scratch or an image. You just can't get into it to find out what went wrong. At least with Linux you can fault find and fix.

On top of that we're talking about vanilla windows here. How exactly are you going to fix a problem with the storage on a device that for all intents and purposes is closed source? No one knows how it works and if the little UI MS give youto run the thing can't fix a problem (and I doubt MS could anticipate every possible problem), then kiss goodbye to all your data when it reverts to "Unrecoverable error, we suggest you format the entire storage device and start again".

Cheers,

Arkay.

Agree on journaling file system (work like transactional logging on Notes databases) - I have never understood on why MS could not introduce one - makes backups faster and smaller and recovery is excellent.

But please arkay don't be so black and white - you can troubleshoot and fix Windows - I was doing it for years.

I don't believe it is as easy to troubleshoot. The general method of Windows fixing that I see is "reboot it and pray", after that it gets very ugly, so much of windows is hidden and obfuscated. Good admins can certainly fix it I agree, but good admins are a rarety and in so many cases reverting to image backup seems to be the preferred fix as the time taken to troubleshoot and repair isn't worth it and you never quite feel like it's stable afterwards.

In this case however I was mostly referring to the fact that this little MS server box will be hard as it'll be proprietary in every conceivable way. If it breaks then what do you do? Take it back to the vendor and pray that they can recover your media? and how much will that cost?

What happens when the board in that server dies and you can no longer replace it? Is the HDD format tied to the controller on the board? Can you move the disks over to another box and still see them? Maybe so if it's a software based solution but there seems to be little information about how this magic is made.

I just could never bring myself to trust my media to a single MS made device. (or any other single device for that matter), but the way it seems this is being portrayed is that "Your media is backed up and safe".. Safe from what I wonder?

Hell. I'd much rather have a W2k server serving the media than a closed box.

Cheers,

Arkay.

Greetings Arkay et al...

A few semi-random points: (I really can't be bothered organuising all the quotes!)

1. Windows Home Server is the first major solution (I know of) to utilise the single instance file system storage that was introduced in Windows 2003 R2. It means that when identical files are backed up from multiple machines they will only be stored once. (Much like the single-instance message store in Exchange). The space saving is obvious. In addition, the files will be stored in a compressed state - further space saving. MS are making some VERY OUTLANDISH claims about how much space is saved (Divide those by at least 10!)
2. The more I talk about the backup solution in Home Server the more it mirrors both the capability and the functionallity of Altiris Client Recovery Solution. Interesting.
3. Forgot to signal my sarcasm when talking about the differences between media streaming and accessing content off a network share. I'm fully aware of how simple it is and how well it works.
4. You'd love a McData at home - you can't afford it, and the missus wouldn't be pleased with the noise it makes, but you still want one! (It's a seriously big Fibre-Channel switch used in large end of town SAN's for those who might be wondering)
5. There is no doubt that the disk redundancy in Home Server is excatly as wasteful as a simple Mirror set. That is, everything is stored twice. The beauty, is the ease of re-arrangement, and the total invisibility of the underlying sub-system setup.
6. The "Joe Average" users won't be any more capapble of managing Home Server from the server end than they are of managing existing PCs. For them, this will be nothing more than a NAS that also does network based backups. They probably need a turn key solution from HP!
7. Arkay raises a good point about not trusting your media to any one device - does Windows Home Server not provide a relatiovely good option to having a central copy and a backup of the decentralised copies?

Anyway, my attention span is failing...
Thanks for the mental stimulation.

Last thought, I think I'll at least be building one just to check it out a bit more thoroughly, but in the meantime I'm giving the latest versions of FreeNAS, SMEServer, and ClarkConnect another look.

This OT but what the hell is level 7 mode?

E.E.

Well have read just about everybody's comment here and I have to admit some of it goes straight over my head.

Needless to say, what MS is bringing out here sounds exactly what I want for my small basic home system. It sounds like something that will give me piece of mind for data management with three computers and Xbox 360 that I have at home.

I am not computer literate enough to setup autoback up systems for the three computers at home so I manually back up everything (via Allway sync program) which is pretty good anyway, doesn't take very long really. But this system sounds like an easy complete data management system. I also like the idea of family members from overseas being able to access it (with the right setup).

So for me, I will probably buy it not long after it is released. Spend a little time setting up and preseto, think I have a system that is where I want it to be. It really is about the only major thing left to do on my system.

So for me Thumbs UP.

Then again, I would like a remote controlled house, Cbus or something???. Guess that will be the next thing MS will adapt the Home Server to do :-)

What a load of...

Unix eh? Thought we were actually discussing Linux around this thread, but if you want to bring in another player...

I have seen MS servers with up time of 200+ days without reboot - what makes a system stable is the choice in quality hardware, and well behaved software.

I am not suggesting the use of Linux over MS for a home media server - I dont care either way... MS may be more familiar with the home user and therefore a better choice, the computer geek can use Linux whatever the individual is comfortable with. My concerns are more about the proprietry attituded in how these systems are implemented.

To suggest that using Linux is a bad choice because when it crashes badly you will loose all your data, and as suggested in this thread by others that this would not occur with MS. Well I have seen too many MS servers crash and the data is lost on the drives - it happens, it happens to all systems and all operating systems - and Microsoft is no angel in this arena....

It's the point at which your physical being is completely composed of Thetans.

i.

But wasn't the general feeling nearly 2 years ago somewhat critical of M$ that instead of MCE being available to Average Jo on a PC, and therefore open to his normal misues & abuse - why the hell didn't MS license it as a closed CE device just like the Foxtel IQ box?

Now they plan on doing something approaching that, Linux guru/server admin types are giving it to them again for not releasing it as an "open" box.

"Damned if they do and damned if they don't" is a phrase that springs to mind

It's a great discussion 'cos in this instance - everybody is right - and even though it's definitely a "horses for courses" concept - because all bases will be covered for all manner of media consumers, in the end we can all have a home server.

At the end of day for the unit to succeed in the mom and pop home setup the unit is going to have to deliver all that it promises, be extremely simple to use (read transparent with no user intervention and automatic) and sell for under $500 fully populated with at least enough realistic storage for 2 -3 "client" machines. Notice I said realistic, as the figures MS give for their "compression" / storage paradigm are definately NOT realistic.

Unless MS are prepared to take a bath on the hardware ( a la xbox) and recoup the money by limiting the interoperability to Vista and at the same time making that particular "update" chargeable, I don't see the product taking off all that much for its intended market.

After seeing the post about Vista & DRM (amazing race), it makes you wonder if there will be any DRM control on this box, seeing it is linked to media and it is new.

If this is the case...I'm going from very tempted to not interested!!

Lester

Even if it doesn't it still of limited use to people like us. Just look at transcode360. If the server is closed but is able to serve to the 360 as an extender then there is no way to install transcode on it in order to watch that media on the 360.

Cheers,

Arkay.

Its either Level 7 or 4, i cant remember all the way back at UNI. Its the mode at which u interact with the Unix Environment. Upon a "safe" shutdown of a unix Server, it will bring it self down to level 1, which have closed the filesystem and it is safe to reboot or close.

I only brought up Unix, because I have worked with it, I admit that I have no knowledge of Linux.

Arkay you are right about the OS used on the Home Server thingy though, if something does stuff up, you have no way to troubleshoot it as it is closed code... No applying patches or fixes or reinstalling the OS on it if its all a web interface...

But hey its all friendly conversation, if someone is wrong, so be it, no ones perfect.

regards,
Stefano