By Philip Churchill on February 11th, 2008
HP EX470 Review
UK Mag Computeract!ve reviews the HP MediaSmart Server EX470 and gives it 4 out of 5 stars. Here’s an excerpt:
Power consumption was higher than other network hard disks – we estimate annual energy bills of £39 for the Mediasmart EX470. These niggles, and the £400 price tag, mean it’s only suited to those who enjoy tinkering with add-ins and need top performance from a backup device. More Home Server devices are on the way from other manufacturers but this sets the bar high.
Read the full review.
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Why cannot I stream Xvid, FLV, Dvix and 1080p HD videos using my WHS? Is WHS only supporting MS-proprietary format
protocols and solutions?
Why doesn’t my HP (HP EX475) using WHS provide support for HDMI or even just DVI (Dual or Single Link)?
What is my WHS pixel resolution? Maybe that’s why 1080p isn’t supported, despite no HDMI ports?
Come to think of it, there’s no component and Toslink for Audio too! Since, no one agreed on DRM and you can’t move media from product to product, I guess WHS isn’t going to be able to share as much as I had original thought…
I was shocked to discover that my HP EX475 has NO WHS support for WiFi connections to home routers – it’s just Ethernet only!
But wait, you would think, that at this date and time, surely WHS would support a built-in solution for Wake Over LAN/Internet so I could Remote Desktop from my Client PC. Nope!
And NO drive functions should be initiated while large transfers are in progress, as it completely kills the network speed (WHS throughput bandwidth).
WHS has a performance balancing problem which needs to get fixed. Start a backup and try to access the remote website at the same time, it isn’t pretty.
WHS is rubbish at handling more than one activity/connection at a time – try copying a large file or collection of files to it from one PC on a network, and then connecting to the console from another and see how long you have to wait… I dread to think what a WHS network is like if you actually have ten active clients interacting.
Part of the reason for this conversation and topic is to get this stuff out there and talked about, right? I’m not bashing MS, as some might think, I am just using WHS, anf finding these things out myself!
The biggest challenge facing “Home Server” is reliability. Like a server in any business, a “Home Server” (WHS) needs to be 99.999% reliable, if it is going to be the focal point/server for multiple functions / workstations. This is especially true if the server is an integral part of a home automation and/or security system.
Windows Home Server’s Drive Extender technology causes data corruption. SEE KB 946676 article: http://www.support.microsoft.com/kb/946676
What happens to the people who have saved data onto the WHS and don’t look at it for a year only to find data corruption in their photos, videos and backup images!
Microsoft products have been plagued with a consistent stream of bugs and instabilities. I think people are starting to watch marketing and beginning to understand that when something is so heavily hyped and marketed anymore, odds are it is not expected to live up to it’s marketing claims.
For Microsoft users wouldn’t Media Center Edition be a more logical place to centralize storage, backups etc.?
Currently, you can’t save your backups to an external drive in WHS v1. WHS PP1 is suppose to add this ability, right?
You can add to the WHS list, None of the “Home” products sold by MS have the services or protocols for domain credentials or logons.
That means, unless MS updates the XP Home and Vista Home versions with a new set of protocols and services for interfacing to this “WHS” box, there is no room for server side management on those system’s data and credentials.
That’s the reasoning behind WHS connector CD that creates a pseudo domain…
This is another example of MS throwing garbage at a wall and seeing if anything sticks.
Will WHS v1 be upgradeable to WHS v2… or is this going to be yet another new operating system migration, which isn’t going to be fully supported by the current WHS adapters?
Crossing my fingers!
How to add an external HDD to WHS without formatting it because of the WHS Drive Extender technology, so as to share your data and stream content without having the additional need of first transferring it from your PC to WHS and then back again to a PC?
Oh God, I just realized WHS v2 will only be 64bit, so my WHS v1 which is 32bit cannot upgrade!!! 🙁
I sure hope WHS v2 will offer 32bit! I can just see it now, not just an upgrade, but actually a replacement of my WHS v1 product!
Tell me it isn’t so…
Is it really necessary to run WHS 24/7?
The Excito Bubba Miniserver uses only 9W at maximum load… so I guess the WHS project still has some way to go before they can call themselves eco-friendly.
The HP data sheet does not show WHS power consumption!
I wondered why HP wasn’t mentioning how much power it uses. Now I know. Think I’ll wait for the next rev.
Windows Home Server testing uncovers nearly 2,400 bugs!
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9014183&intsrc=hm_list
Still think WHS is RTM?
Chris Sullivan said that the group has received nearly 2,400 bug reports so far from beta testers, and still had 495, or about 21% of the total, classified as “active.”
Of the bugs that have been addressed, Sullivan said that only 15% have actually been fixed. The remainder are issues that are in the server by design (13%), not reproducible (21%), will be postponed to later versions (11%) or likely won’t be fixed (7%).
Did everyone get that?
WHS history speaks for itself. It’s doubtful when or even if KB 946676 regarding data corruption will be fixed in WHS v1.
It’s also interesting to note, Microsoft reported the original publication date of April 3, 2007, but in February of 2008 had changed this to December 20, 2007 without stating why!
I guess Microsoft had it’s own reasons, but this change didn’t even state why the KB article was revised. No accountability, just facts altered by their own reporting.
“It’s only suited to those who enjoy tinkering with add-ins” claims the WHS review article.
I couldn’t agree more.
And yet, the data corruption issue remains, unresolved even still. How about posting some progress about what is being done to resolve this issue? 🙂
Windows Home Server Team Blog reported 3377 bugs in WHS!
“Here on the Windows Home Server team we have a mild case of Entomophobia. We have a bit of an infestation when it comes to bugs, 3377 of them have been submitted by beta participants to date. Can someone please pass the can of insect spray?”
Source: http://www.blogs.technet.com/homeserver/archive/2007/03/22/entomophobia.aspx
That’s certainly a “WoW” experience if I ever heard one…
All of this just shows just how much Microsoft software products are really poorly built. This should come to anyone as a surprise, being how monthly updates are necessary over the many years.
You would think that data corruption in a server would be resolved without delay, not downplayed, put off and still unresolved despite being reported almost a year ago during the beta stage.
The problem with WHS is that it still has bugs which we pay to license a copy for personal usage. Why pay for bugs? And as we see, WHS certainly got a few of them!
That’s why open source code, such as Linux is better, in my opinion, as first it’s FREE, and everyone gets to publicly review the source code to contribute in making it better for everyone else. A win, win solution for everyone involved.
Can you image buying an automobile with 3377 bugs? California has a lemon law, which just states,
If your vehicle is covered by a three-year warranty and you discover a defect after two years, the manufacturer will have to replace the vehicle or reimburse you and if the manufacturer or its representative is unable to conform the vehicle to the express warranty after a reasonable number of attempts to do so.
Of course, what is considered a reasonable number of repair attempts will depend on the circumstances including the seriousness of the defect.
You would think data corruption should be considered serious. Why should selling buggy software with known issues in the Beta version be considered acceptable as retail versions for the public to suffer and cope, as in data corruption?
I shudder to think about all these bugs, knowing all it takes is just one flaw to allow someone else to gain complete control over the WHS server to do whatever they want 24/7/365.
If Windows Server 2003 was so secure, when why the need for Windows Server 2008 which is claimed to be more secure? How is WHS going to protect our data?
It’s ironic, when I say protect, as although WHS claims to be sold for backup protection, it’s also with data corruption and obviously to some degree lacking in security as compared to Windows Server 2008, being how WHS is based upon older Windows Server 2003.
It always amazes me how easy it is for folks to comment on a very complex subject like software development (especially at the OS level) while having little or no experience in the field itself. The comments are rarely informed or correct. I have been in software development for 20+ years, so I think I can speak with some reasonable authority and correctness. Let’s get some facts straight.
First, please take a look at the date of the article in question concerning the bug count: “March 23, 2007”. What is today (my post date): “February 12, 2008”. So, instead of basing your discussion on accurate and time relevent data, you base it on information that is almost a year old. Come on folks, let’s get real shall we?. The actual bug count that WHS went out with (that is the REAL FACTUAL count) is not relevent. What is relevent is how many severe bugs went out.
Severe = loss of data, etc.
Note to Linux folks: Please do not respond to my post saying how bug-free Linux is. This is not the case. Just like any underused system, Linux (not battle-tested commercial systems like Sun UNIX) has yet to have it’s “baptism by fire”, so to speak. Wait till you have 100’s of millions of people banging at your systems all at the same time – that’s when you will see a lot of crap shake lose.
Note #2 to Linux folks: Rule #7 in software development: “Developers make lousy testers”.
So many people here seem to choke at the bug count. Do you have any idea how complex an OS is? It is JUST a bit more complex than building that family photo web site. This is a business – not Joey’s Programmer’s Clubhouse. Zero-defect software is a financial issue, not a religious one. It comes down to the concept of diminishing returns. You first eliminate the bugs you can’t reproduce or plan to address in a later version because they are tied to enhancements you plan on doing anyway. Then with what you have left you prioritize based on severity and probability of occurance. In other circles, this is also known as Risk Prioritization and Management. Then you tie those to the cost of fixing them and how much time you have to fix them and how many resources you can throw at the problem. After balancing all of those factors, you come up with a list of MUST FIX bugs and a list of bugs that can wait.
That is how it works in the real world. Welcome to it.
Hi Eric,
Integrating WHS with MCE would be nice, but for the average user it would cause LOTS of support issues due to the complexity of both products being combined.
Hi Ron,
You can currently store your backups on an external USB2 or Firewire drive.
PP1 will also add the feature to enable the user to backup user-specified shared folders and the home computer backup database to an external hard drive as well.
Hi Baltar and Luthor,
Its not certain yet if V2 of WHS will be based on Server 2003 Server 2008 or something totally different. But I am certain that since true 64bit computing is not in the main stream yet that WHS will continue to support 32bit for the foreseeable future.
Hi Larry H,
It is advisable to run WHS 24/7 as then features like the web interface will be available as and when you require it.
Trent Says:
February 12, 2008 at 10:27 pm
Trent, you make many good points but Microsoft has a flawed business model far beyond the programming concepts you mentioned. They’ve allowed Apple, Google and a bunch of little names to take market share away from them. Why, because their so concerned about making everything backward compatible and they are building upon what was originally a POC. Sometimes you just need a fresh outlook and start over. There programmers are disconnected from the bigger picture and management does a poor job pulling everything together. They have their hands in so many products that it affects their ability to push quality products. XBOX 360 is a really good example of something that on an OS level was really good, but this project wasn’t run like their traditional products. They had the freedom to start over and make something from scratch. It’s unfortunate they skimped on the hardware, but again, that’s a management decision.
As for the NAS, I’ve made my decision and that’s not to by HP’s box. Search around the internet, there are several companies pushing products with a much better reliability. Thank god Microsoft doesn’t make heart monitors and pace makers.