WHS Version 2 – Between June and December 2008
Many thanks to whsuser who left a comment yesterday (07 Feb 08) highlighting the blog entry by Neil Hutson on the MSDN blog entitled
Neil Hutson – Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 for developers.
On this post Neil states that he has had a number of customers and partners asking what “Microsoft” products will be supported at the Windows Server 2008 at launch and beyond? And as whsuser states in a category Neil calls “What are we planning to support in the second half of 2008?” is listed:
Windows Home Server vNext
Now to me this sounds like news that version 2 of WHS shall be available this year sometime between June and December. I wonder?
UPDATE: The entry now seems to have disappeared. The plot thickens!
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Is it just me… or has Windows Home Server vNext gone MIA from that list?
This makes alot of sense from a product management standpoint. WHS based on Server 2008 Core will help align WHS with current/future offerings & streamline support. Now is the time to do that before the install base gets too big and complicate things. It also better positions them to offer Media Center capabilities/extensions to WHS. Thats inevitable if you ask me. The question is, will current WHS OEM customers be able to upgrade? Lets hope they treat early adopters kindly.
In following what JohnCz said, what about the earlier adopters? I LOVE my WHS, and happily got my copy after my RC expired. Do you think there would be any type of upgrade process for users like myself?
Early adapters were mostly beta testers, as the WHS product still remains with many issues, all based upon Windows Server 2003 with the additional lame WHS management console and suspected WHS Drive Extender code causing data corruption.
http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/946676
Hopefully Microsoft will get WHS v2 working without data corruption! But as for upgrades from WHS RTM, I wouldn’t hold your breathe, as just like Vista RTM, the kernel was replaced, not upgraded. To qualify as an upgrade you would still have to be using the same Vista kernel with improvements, NOT a different kernel which Microsoft has done using Windows Server 2008.
Evidently, Windows Server 2008 is where Microsoft is keeping all it’s eggs in a basket, so it had better work, or you can image, NOT only WHS v2, but Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will all be experiencing a devastating blow…
I predict WHS v2 will be a completely different experience, with different functions and capabilities.
MSWHS should dedicate a web page about all the ideas us customers want to see in WHS v2. You can bet better streaming media, wireless connectivity, print server support will be wanted. How about you?
I wouldn’t hold your breath about seeing v2 this year. MSFT are hardly likely to switch to the Server 2008 kernel before it has been thoroughly “bashed”. Logically v2 will be 64 bit and based on Server 2008 but what features to add has to be a challenge. There has been such a large number of wide ranging suggestions. Further they will want to “harden” v1 to remove any lingering concerns, file corruption for example. MSFT have taken it very seriously and like everyone I hope a solution will be forthcoming soon. It has not affected me (it really is very low risk) but it is holding back acceptance for some people and therefore people deriving the great benefits of WHS in general. Besides they haven’t even actually released Power Pack 1 yet.
Yes, I would love to see some new features laster this year….and moving to 2008 core sooner rather than later would be great. I agree it would be godd to make the move before the installed base gets too big.
But..they have to fix this data corruption bug soon. I read the description of the error and thought it would not impact me much as my server is not under a heavy load. I put one of my onenote shared notebooks on the server and it corrupted very quickly. I am growing concerned that it is taking so long to fix such a major bug.
I just received an email message from HP, as I bought their HP EX475 model using WHS. It states the following…
You should not directly open and/or edit files that are stored on the MediaSmart Server while doing any other activity such as large data transfers or media streaming. If you are doing a large data transfer or streaming and need to edit a file on the server, you should first copy the file over to a PC and then open it for editing.
There are a few key applications that Microsoft has identified that can cause this issue when files are opened and edited directly from the server. However to be safe, HP recommends that you not open/edit files directly from the server until this fix is delivered.
So you see the data corruption issues is actually worse than MS points out, as every file is indicated NOT to be open/edit directly from WHS!
What good is WHS is your data gets corrupted? This defeats the whole purpose of using WHS, for both backup protection and for file sharing…
Everyone needs to keep in mind that Server 2008 is 64bit only.
I have it on pretty good advice that the product team is still investigating whether to go with Windows 2008 or Windows 7 (which will delay it until 2009).
There is some issue with the considerable amount of work required to support all the mulimedia integration if they go with 2008. This would be much easier with Windows 7 apparently.
I thought I read somewhere a “significant” update would come in the second half of the year, not necessarily a new version. I interpreted the vNext as a “AppleTV Take Two” type thing.
That was my interpretation… I could be completely wrong though.
Hi James C,
PowerPack1 (a bit like a service pack but with extra features too) for WHS will be available later this year and Version 2 of WHS sometime before 2009.
I just brought my WHS, so if they do release version 2, better hope its a free upgrade like MS did with Vista. I’m Not planning on buying another WHS for a while.
I say – keep working on v1 for the time being – get it right, and provide continued updates/new functions.
Will the fatal flaw in WHS be fixed in release 2?
WHS can backup other computers, but cannot backup itself! It is not possible to take an image of the WHS operating system and recover the WHS with a painful scratch rebuild. This is a major flaw with Windows Home Server, and should be addresses.