Good luck, you're going to need it.  WHS 3rd party app development will fade away without the home user.

If you are not working on DE on vail, what else is there to work on? without DE Vail is totally worthless and we customers have to deal with crapware from all those OEMs implementing their own method of redundancy.

Vail is Dead on Arrival, long live Vail.

This is another non-sensical post on the DE removal.  This was a Core feature of the Windows Home Server product, and the reason that many, including myself, use it.  Remote web access?  Nice, but really, is it THAT big a deal?  No.  Dynamically adding storage, folder duplication, health monitoring, backup, and so on ... THOSE are the reasons people use WHS.  Ripping out DE is ripping out a fundamental piece of WHS.  Might as well cancel Vail as a product.  Now it's just going to be a crippled Windows Server box with a couple of minor added features and no real advantages over standard NAS boxes.

So because business users won't use DE, Home Servers get the shaft?

I have been putting off a WHS purchase in anticipation of Vail with the drive extender tech. I have several USB drives laying around and DE would have been perfect for getting to use all of these. Disappointing. ("Home User" here btw)

Michael. I don't care how committed you are to Vail. If you are not committed to Drive Extender, then I'm 0% commited to Vail. Wake up, and try listening to your customers. It's obvious ... you are being hammered all over the Internet on this.

If you dreaded it, then there could not have been any feedback from users and you made the decision on your own without any regard to the real home server users, which is why YOU have the product in the first place.

connect.microsoft.com/.../add-drive-extender-back-to-vail

Your customers do not approve. There has to be a workaround that satisfies both sides. I would rather write my own drive extender and home server solution than buy Vail without it.

Why not just admit that Microsoft is abandoning the home market? Why purchase a WHS server now vs. any number of less expensive alternatives? What is the value proposition to the home user? Ironic that Kindel's departure for the Windows Phone team seems to have taken the focus on the consumer with him. I don't know if history can teach us anything here, but Windows Phone seems to be a big hit with its focus on the consumer instead of the enterprise. I wonder if this lack of focus on the consumer market will have a proportionate effect on WHS.

I can't use (or want) an OEM's software RAID solution because I build WHS servers from scratch.  Hardware RAID doesn't offer the granularity I need.   I'm sorry, but I really don't care what other "features" are going to be added - I'm sticking with WHS1 and then moving to Drobo or a completely different platform where they offer the features DE offered.  I can install backup software, I can configure remote accessing of files by myself, I can replicate the vast majority of WHS features with barely any effort - what I can't do is what DE did.  Without DE, Vail is a no-go.  Period.  End of story.

Thanks for the comment, Michael, but I bought the WHS over a dedicated, more proven RAID NAS (I used to owe 2 Buffalo TeraStations) for the flexability and ease-of-use it brought.  I just lost those reasons.  Please tell me why I should get a WHS now?  (really, I would actually like a response on that, it's not a rhetorical question)

If I wanted a hardware RAID solution with all that such a solution entails, I'd have a full-blown Server 2008 or Linux server.  That is exactly what I did NOT want to have to deal with.  The WHS filled a niche that other products don't.  Now it doesn't.  Take that back to management and ask why you guys are making a decision that is clearly going to alienate users and put you in a position that- at best - will canabalize your higher end products and - at worst - will force you into putting out a rather crappy product that no one will buy anyway.

Let me completely confirm we are 100% not going to upgrade to Vail. So why bother. Do it right, or don't do it at all.

Extremely disappointing decisions.  You are losing many loyal customer over this.  This was a key feature of WHS.

I hope MS folks are reading the replies since, along with myself, there looks to be a lot of disent and a loss of customers with the decision to remove DE. Not sure why it seems to be the habit of MS to turn good products and overthink it into the toilet. I thought a big push from MS mgmt , esp. Barbara Gordon, was to promote "Lifetime Loyalty" from customers? THis sure isn't going to help. Looks like a lot of bad communication and lack of "knowing your customer". No wonder MSFT stock price is trading at 2002 levels.

Don't take it personally Michael.  The community sees this news as a threat to the future viability of Windows "Home" Server.  Existing WHS users were lured to WHS v1 because of Drive Extender.  If 3TB disks can be had next year for $150-200...then your teams decision might not be so wrong headed.  Sure there are folks here with 10TB storage pools but that doesn't really address the larger market.  But without a platform differentiator like Drive Extender, I'm wondering what else you are offering home users that couldn't be had on a less expensive platform.  I will wait for CES to see if you folks have something up your sleeves that changes the equation back in your favor.

I am still furious about this development, but I will wait and see what the results are.  I can only hope this new solution is comparable to the drive extender we see today.

In addition, since there is a high likelihood that a third party will be providing it, but Microsoft developed the Operating System - I hope you guys iron out the responsibilities to support this solution because I will not be happy as a customer if I called for support and get the run around caused by both parties (MS and partners) are pointing fingers at each other regarding support!

Good luck because it sounds to be a very bumpy ride

100% committed to what? No Media Center integration, now no drive extender... automated backups? Remote access? There's nothing left to call it a "home" server.

WHOA! What are you thinking?

This is an unbelievably poor decision by the development team lead. Very, very disappointed.

I cannot believe how poorly thought through this is.Only Microsoft....

The WHS team needs to outline what the storage solution for Vail is going to be in order to stem the tide of this criticism, if indeed they do have a plan for home users.  Let's call out some specific customer questions here.

- What is the recommended drive configuration for Vail?

- What is the solution for data redundancy to prevent loss in case of a drive failure?

- What is the solution for dynamically adding storage and addressing redundancy needs on the new drive(s)?

- What features of Windows Server 2008 R2 are going to address these customer needs and make DE not required anymore?

Please provide some of the details on how these items are being addressed in Vail now that DE is gone.

i'm sorry, michael. DE would have been your holy grail in the business sector (small, mid, and large, actually).

why? because it would FREE you from all those limits that raid put on you. and your customers. as well as freeing them from the cost.

you lost all (100%) of your vail customers today. and you lost most of the candidates for your sbs-vail customers.

i love the product. now i just hope it dies.

this is not Vail, this is Fail.

@ fleon <quote> "Please tell me why I should get a WHS now?  (really, I would actually like a response on that, it's not a rhetorical question)" </quote>

I have to agree with this. What is the point of WHS if it does not allow easy drive adding and folder duplication? has MS's target market changed away from the home user? or does MS honestly believe that the same crappy OEMs who load their software with bloatware and crapware to duplicate windows functionality with less success can actually provide that? I have an HP home server, It dies every 6 weeks because of their flawed design and software. WHSv1 is robust enough that I have yet to lose any data. Now you are deciding that HP and their ilk can do a better job than WHSv1?

Keep in mind, MS posted a Technet article two years stating why RAID is not a consumer technology... yet, now it is?

blogs.technet.com/.../why-raid-is-not-a-consumer-technology.aspx

Please, please ... PLEASE! Reconsider. This is the worst desicion for the home user. I will never be able to upgrade my WHS installation, so I hope you will support it to the end of time so I can use the DE feature, which is the best feature of the product.

You're killing your home product and the good will you've created amongst consumers and enthusiasts for the sake of your business product. While I understand the simpler development path this allows you (I am a developer myself), this is exactly the same thought process that let the iPhone decimate Windows Mobile in the marketplace and mindshare.

WHS v1 was a great home product. Take it, make it better, and release v2. Focus on what we, the home customers want, not what's easier for your developers and your business server market segmentation strategy. If you have to fork the code, fork the code.

No point continuing the development to be honest and a post like this is too little too late I'm afraid.

What a sad day in the life of WHS.

Drive Extender was the hook that made me start loving WHS because it gave me a way to safely store my important files, including my CD collection and 20,000 photos I've taken and need to store safely. And it was great for backing up my other machines. It eliminated the need to buy more and more RAID NAS boxes or replace old drives with new and larger ones.

No Drive Extender means no need to upgrade my WHS.

dare I say it people... maybe Apple will pick up the gauntlet??? :-)

It does not matter what you now put into VAIL.

Without Drive Extender Ala Version 1 of WHS, VAIL becomes just Windows 2008 Server with a better backup program.

With a 3rd party providing DE equivalence, it locks us in to a vendor other than Microsoft.

If I have to do that? I will now be forced to recommend DROBO or other similar offerings to my customers.

You have not articulated your reasons good enough, you have abandoned a huge sector of my customer base.

I am sorry but Vail just does not cut it without DE.

Pingback eat.cool.net.au/.../82-death-of-a-dear-friend-why-is-microsoft-shooting-itself-in-the-foot-again.html

"Since customers looking to buy Windows Home Server solutons from OEM's will now have the ability to include larger drives, this will reduce the need for Drive Extender functionality."

WHS has been very popular with enthusiasts, as such, many of your existing and potential customers won't be interested in OEM solutions. In addition to this, there are many who have setup WHS v1 servers that won't have an option for hardware RAID providing a massive disincentive to upgrade to Vail.

This really looks like the end for WHS as without DE or it's equivalent the product is very feature poor. I can't help but think that you've been pleasantly surprised by the interest from small businesses and are now sacrificing WHS in their favour and ignoring the relationship between enthusiasts, home interest and small business take up in the process.

I am shocked by this decision, I have been holding out for Vail to be released and the main reason was for me the DE - gutted.

Why not move DEv2 up the stack into the windows core and have it be a configurable option along the lines of the windows software JBOD and RAID options.  Then provide an easy to use tool to access that in VAIL?

Time to look at one of these...

www.areca.com.tw/.../1880.htm

Only $930 with battery backup... 'sigh'. Again, this is such a poor decision!

www.provantage.com/areca-technology-arc-1880ix-12~4AREC03T.htm

www.provantage.com/areca-technology-arc-6120ba-t113~4AREC03X.htm

Windows Home Server storage system design requirements

Must be extremely simple to use.

Must not add any new concepts or terminology average consumers would not understand. Simple operations should be simple and there should not be any complex operations.

Must be infinitely & transparently extendible.

Users should be able to just plug in more hard drives and the amount of storage available should just grow accordingly. There should be no arbitrary limits to the kinds of hard drives used. Users should be able to plug in any number of drives.  Different brands, sizes, and technologies should be able to be mixed without the user having to worry about details.

All storage must be accessible using a single namespace.

In other words, no drive letters.  Drive letters are a 1970′s anachronism and must be squashed out of existence!

The storage namespace must be prescriptive.

In other words, our research told us that consumers want guidance on where to store stuff. Our storage system needs to be able to tell users where photos go. Where music goes. Etc…

Must be redundant & reliable.

There are two components in every modern computer that are guaranteed to fail: fans and hard drives. Because they have moving parts,  Windows Home Server must be resilient to the failure of one or more hard drives.

Must be compatible.

Compatible with existing software, devices, disk drives, etc…

Must have great performance.

Must be secure.

Must enable future innovation.

Both the amount of storage consumers are using, and capacity/$ are growing at Moore’s Law like rates (while nothing else really is). This creates a discontinuity in the industry and an opportunity for innovation. The storage system must operate at a higher level of abstraction to enable rich software innovation (file level vs. block level).

VAIL FAILS TO DELIVER THE ORIGINAL IDEA OF WINDOWS HOME SERVER.

THOSE WHERE YOUR GOALS.

yes, i am very dissapointed.

"Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail, and continue to work on all the core features outside of Drive Extender."

Right. And that's why the decision was made to remove the single most distinguishing feature in the product lineup. I'm surprised you could write that with a straight face. This is a perfect example of a product line being killed because it threatened sales of the more established Windows Server products and OEM profits.

As far as I'm concerned both Vail and Aurora are DOA without DE and simply do not have the feature set to justify purchasing.

Yeah, without DE, you really dont have anything exciting.  #FAIL.

I hate this post!

Drive Extender was a killer feature! VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY BAD DECISION!

VAIL WILL FAIL!

"all expected that it would have created this type of outreach from our community"

I think you meant OUTRAGE. Outreach is what should have been done prior to making this decision; if there's a good reason for it, there should have been a detailed technical article on why it was necessary to remove this feature. Without that, the decision comes across as arbitrary, and arbitrary decisions tend to provoke outrage. This disaster is entirely of your own doing.

I've been a huge promoter of the WHS product.  Built my own and have been slowly acquiring parts / upgrades so that my server would be able to run Vail when it is formally released.  I currently have over 5TB of storage on my server.  I know of others who have significantly more.

With this change, I'm sorry to say I won't be able to recommend this new version to anyone.  You've eliminated the key feature that allows me to sleep at night and keeps me from having to make a manual backup process.

What I'm reading here is that Microsoft is caving to the OEM providers like HP and others who have a pre-configured hardware solution and have invalidated those of us who choose to build vs. buy.  This is where you need to break the code into two distinct trunks and keep the business side of it separate from the home user side.  

I'm sorry to say that Microsoft has yet again ruined a perfectly good thing.

I've installed a dozen WHS V1 servers in businesses several more in homes with wild success. But they are mostly used for their Client PC backups rather than as file servers. Nevertheless, the file server and storage pool capability of WHS V1 are great features.

I've used Vail since the first public Beta and have been cirtical of the way that DE was implemented. The non-NTFS nature of the storage and the huge overhead of the redundancy were worrying. Personally, I seldom use the folder redundancy function of WHS V1. I much prefer backups over redundancy.

The only things that WHS V2 really HAD to do were:

1) Be able to handle the new disks (4K Sectors and disks larger than 2 TB) and

2) Be able to move very large files (such as Blu-Ray) without running out of disk space on the storage drives.

While extended error correction would be nice, folks don't seem to be scurrying to implement ZFS-type error correction on storage servers.

I'm sorry that MS wasn't able to accomplish those two goals and keep the features of the first WHS.

I am going to take the opposite view -- good riddance.  I remember asking the devs about bitlocker support for WHS backups and being told that bitlocker support was off the table because it's not supported under software raid configurations (which is what drive extender really is).  Getting rid of DE is the first step of being able to secure your home backups.  Unfortunately, Veil is still a non-starter for me because it STILL doesn't have media extender support built in.  And my xbox STILL doesn't read NTFS formated external drives to compensate.

*** Go VOTE for the feature request at MS Connect:

http://bit.ly/i9dTH9

This is such a horrible decision! If you don't care about home users, don't call it Windows Home Server. It's clear that you want to target the business market with this, thus I'll ask how much longer will the REAL Windows Home Server be supported?

The analogy I'm seeing here is the quarterback of a football team throwing an interception as his team was about to score the go ahead touchdown.  Rather than a win, they end up with a devastating loss.

I'm sure in the locker room after the loss everyone says how they are 100 percent committed to the team, etc.

But it doesn't matter.  You just lost the game.

Your loyal fans, yes some will stick with you.  And there will be belief on the team that you can overcome the mistake, that basically you are on the right track.

But at the end of the day, you lost.  At a critical juncture.

There is a very short chance here to salvage a win -- making the very hard choice to admit you were wrong, and change your plans in the face of unrelenting boos.

Are you game?

I have been eagerly awaiting Vail's release, and have been planning my entire home setup around Vail for months, as well as a few friends who are (now read: were) planning to do the same.

You don't design a consumer product based on SMB or enterprise needs, and you certainly don't gut a consumer product when your misguided efforts fail.

You took a successful CONSUMER product, decided to shoehorn it into a basis for additional SMB-related products (which is a market you already have existing product lines for), and when you can't succeed in misappropriating a consumer product for an SMB purpose, you kill the original consumer product.  You have now killed off the old SMB product lines, created "new" ones with zero feature-adds over the old, and then killed the very successful consumer product because it didn't meet a need it was never designed for in the first place.  That's zero steps forward, three steps back for those keeping score.  

Saying "don't worry, I'm sure some OEM will do some half-assed implementation of DE" is a joke, and claiming this is a win for "consumer choice" is nonsense as well.

This incredibly stupid and wrong-headed decision is beyond disappointing.  It is enraging.  As one other commenter put it:  If you have to fork the code, FORK THE CODE.  I cannot even quantify how many customers you have lost with this bone-headed move - I don't know numbers that high.

I don't really care what you guys do if you seriously get rid of Drive Extension... I have two WHS at home, they'll be usless with Veil for me... I've got close to 2000 movie files in my drives, now I have to manually separate them to upgrade to Veil...

You guys are like Mehteran team in Ottoman Empire... They go forward 2 steps, then one step back... At the end, you end up making one step...

Your decision is based on your dealings with hardware producsers probably... So they can sell more high capacity hard drives to consumers like us...

People dealing with WHS are top of cream people in terms of amateur IT goes... You're killing them...

One more reason on the list, why Microsoft is always the bad boy in the neighbourhood...

Drive Extender always seemed like way too expensive and advanced a feature to be developed just for the limited WHS market.  It's unfortunate you couldn't integrate it into mainstream Windows, obviously popping a new drive into a video workstation or Exchange server and having it "just work" would be pretty awesome.

Really not sure what's the point of continuing with this product - remote web access and cloud access are all available with Windows Live Sync, what does a separate box for them offer again?  The one thing it could offer is a central Media Center server, but you guys decided not to do that.... (Which I'll never understand.  You basically just need to copy the executable over from Windows client.  What, pray tell, was the point of that complex and cool Media Center Extender technology if you won't build it into your Home Server?)

The one thing it does offer is a decent backup solution, but again a separate server for this is unnecessary.  Hopefully the WHS backup engine is making its way into Windows 8.  If the next version of Windows ships with the current hopeless mishmash of inadequate backup technologies, years after Apple showed how it can be done properly with Time Machine, that'll be seriously embarrassing.

Can some technical wizard at Microsoft explain WHY you can't just make a Vail version of DE v1?  

Set it on top of the NTFS like in WHS1.  Us home users don't need mega-performance from a server product.  We just need easy-to-use and easy to expand.  Let SBS 2011 Essitant and WSS 2008 R2 get the high end solution from MS and 3rd parties.

I think grune23 is right this is just another step in MS leaving the home market, it wouldn't surprise me if Vail would never have existed if it wasn't for the promise of a business version (or two) to the powers that be.

What TPTB need to remember is it's the home users learning skills on their home MS PCs that drives the usage in the work place, if everyone uses a Mac at home, they'll be happy to have a Mac in the work place.

Michael, if you've dreaded the day you must know it's not the right decision, if you honestly believed it was right you'd have made a convincing argument that getting rid of DE was good, instead all we get is a hope that OEM developers can make something to fill the void, why should they be finishing your products?!

There's a complete lack of direction at MS in general at the moment, it reflects in a lot of the products being released.

Quote: "However, as our development for these [three] products is very closely tied"

THEY SHOULD NOT BE!  You have a great, high-flying product in WHS, and then wonder why it plummets to the ground when you anchor it to SMB needs it wasn't designed for!  So, instead of taking a step back and untying the products, you make all of them suffer??!!

FORK THE CODE and work on meeting each user groups' needs specifically and stop treating consumer and SMB demographics as the same!  There is no point in keeping it as a single code base for a line of products that no one buys and doesn't properly meet anyone's needs!!!

I will be going backup so WHS v1. Vail without DE offers nothing more than Windows 7 x64.

Really good PR speak...this is such BS. Look at the reaction this has caused, going third party will only cause huge problems and disparity. As an early adopter of WHS and evangelist for the product I am sad to see to a product that I genuinely was excited to be a part become another ill fated technology. I hope these posts serve as a reminder to why "VAIL WILL FAIL" and show what happens when you turn your back on a community that helped make a product what it is.

Normal human reaction to someone telling them that they are despised is for the person to snap back a nasty response.  I am not going to do that, I am going to invoke the Golden Rule and do unto you as I would have you do unto me.

You have managed to do something that I have never seen before and that is to get 100% agreement on a topic.  Not 90%, not 99%, but 100% agreement.  I have never seen this happen before.  You are going down into the history books my son.

You might want to send your resume to some politicians.  They would absolutely fawn all over someone that has accomplished what you have done.  Getting 100% agreement from constituents is a pipe dream that would be irresistible to any politician.

On a different note though, I also agree with the rest of the posters, no DE, no Vail.

Michael, I do not intend to offend you.  So please do not take what I say personally.  Here is what I want to say:

I am concerned that by mixing Vail (which should address the "home" server market) and the business environment servers has caused MS to loose the focus that Charlie Kindel brought to the home server market when he introduced WHS to the world in 2007.  Please ask your management team and superiors to consider bringing Charlie back and separating Vail development from your business customers needs.  You will be abandoning a big part of the home market by removing DE from WHS.   WHS v1 is a product that non-technical people can use without having to spend the time a "department of people" choose to spend in the business environment.  It's simple and it just works.

Charlie Kindel can bring the focus back to where it needs to be for the home.  You should remove the word "home" from Vail without DE...Period. I feel that strongly about it.

so you say you are an avid vail user...what is your new configuration going to be? what will it look like?

WHS without DE is pointless, imho, unless you can show me another solution that would be as elegant.

Your decision may have been incredibly hard, mine will be relatively easy.  DE was to me the killer feature of WHS.  Without it Vail simply is not an option any more.

Michael, it's clear that the WHS community wants your team and management to reconsider your decision.  We want you to consider separating WHS from the rest of the products being developed even if this means delays in WHS releases.  We understand that WHS is built on other products and WHS needs the changes to other products to become reality in order for WHS to get new features.  So be it, but after waiting for these prducts to be finished we want WHS to retain ITS' fundamental characteristics, DE being one of them.  WHS customers care not at all about SBS 2011 and WSS 2008 R2...not at all!  We didn't even know that you considered them in the same breath.  We thought that you were only thinking about helping the WHS community evolve a better mousetrap. Installers of these other products can easily support a somewhat different WHS with their eyes closed.  It's not a problem out in the trenches.  Decapitating WHS IS a VERY SERIOUS problem.  Here's a place where Microsfot actually has a better product than the remainder of the entire industry, a 'unique selling proposition' as we sales types would say, and now you developers want to abandon that feature.  You DID NOT consult with field personal as you presumably say.  You only consulted with technical types.  (Whom I normally admire, don't get me wrong.)  They are probably correct in their assessment, but it is not the entire picture.  We do not want to let you abandon our unique selling proposition, we do not want to let you abandon one of Microsoft's few truly imaginative solutions.   PLEASE TALK TO YOUR MANAGEMENT AND GIVE US BACK DRIVE EXTENDER.  

With no disrespect intended, I hereby request an open forum audience with your responsible management.

Michael,

Thank you for the explanation.  Providing us an explanation is certainly appreciated, but it is not going to change our firm belief that you're making a huge mistake with regards to WHS.

Windows Home Server Vail is, by definition, a HOME user product.  Its very name clearly calls it out.  Windows HOME Server.  By contrast, Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials is a BUSINESS product.  Like Windows Home Server, this one calls out its market:  SMALL BUSINESS.

The home user market and the business user market are two completely different markets.  While they share some similarities in software components such as productivity (Office), they're also very different.  You're probably not going to find very many SharePoint Server 2010 installations in people's homes, but small businesses (and large ones too) would certainly find a lot of value in SharePoint.

You said "...our development for these [three] products is very closely tied, a decision like this affects all three."  You're dead on.  That begs the question, why are you coupling these three products so tightly when one of them was cut from a different cloth?  Vail is a home user product; SBS 2011 Essentials and Storage Server 2008 R2 are business products.  Home users and business users have different needs, and the products should reflect this.  There is likely a lot of functionality in SBS/Storage Server that home users will have zero interest in.

Financially, coupling products makes sense.  Microsoft has done it for years.  Windows XP and Server 2003 share a lot of common code.  Windows Vista and Server 2008 share a ton of code.  And the same holds true for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.  Many of the components are identical between the two platforms.  It just makes practical sense.

At the same time, you can't promote a Windows 7 machine to an Active Directory DC.  BitLocker Drive Encryption is missing from all editions of Windows 7 except Enterprise and Ultimate.

You've obviously developed all these products and shared a LOT of code between them.  But at some point the similarities stop.  Windows 7 gets more and more features the higher you move up the edition chain; Windows Server 2008 Enterprise supports a much larger array of processors and memory than Standard, and Datacenter even more than Enterprise.

The point here is this.  To say the products are too "closely tied" is a cop-out, even a canned answer.  You guys have been doing this for years, dating back to at least Windows NT 4, if not earlier.

WHS is a HOME product.  SBS/Storage Server are BUSINESS products.  They cater to different markets, which means they may share a common path for awhile, but at some point those paths diverge.  You have just reached that point.

If Microsoft truly cares about their customers, ALL of their customers--and that means us home users too--then it is time to uncouple WHS from SBS/Storage Server.  Share and reuse what Server 2008 R2 code you can between them (that only makes sense), but then allow WHS to be the unique product that it is, with Drive Extender.

The home users want Drive Extender.  It sounds like the business users would rather have a hardware solution (i.e. RAID).  So give the users what they want.  Keep Drive Extender in WHS, take it out of SBS/Storage Server.  Or, as I proposed in other forums earlier today, make Drive Extender a Role or Feature, installable via the Server Manager MMC console.  If that's too much trouble, make Drive Extender an install-time decision, and allow users to choose whether they want it when they install the OS.

Best regards,

Matt

Why is this so hard to understand by the users that were testing Vail? We´ve being seeing changes in focus from the early rumors to the latest betas. Home features (and focus) constantly reducing.

Add to this, the fact that Microsoft probably realized the mess they made on Vails Driver Extender technology that led to the fact that users with large files would be hammering them once they started to loose files. With lower budget and unwilling to change the release date, there was no way for them to fix DE in time and still release the product. If RAID fails, specially if provided by third party, they are not the one to blame.

The fact that DE on Vail was a fail is easy to read between the lines when Micheal says "DE was not meeting customer expectations". It really wasnt, in DE duplication was flawed by design.

They know missing DE is HUGE, theres just no way to fix it before release. No time and no money.

As for me, when the original DE for Vail was revealed and the MCE features failed to appear, Vail was already out of my upgrade path. I do hope at some point they step back, think and start doing something good. But from the recent signs of Microsoft, I will not hold my breath.

For every post I see here, there will be at least a thousand Home Users and Small Business Users of WHS that will now see that WHS is dead and with no future replacement from MS.

As Dave Perman detailed, MS has lost the true sight of its original goals for WHS.

My clients and friends that followed me into WHS over the last three years will now have no reason to continue with WHS.

My creditability with them will now be in serious trouble.  Twenty-seven installs.

Future SIMPLE backup, media center integration and storage needs for them have just died.

Win XP continued to live on well, even after MS pushed Vista.  Only Win 7 saved MS.

There will now be a WHSv1 effort to live on, just like Win XP.

However, other alternatives for MS WHS will now start to grow and propser.

By MS merging SMB with WHS products, MS will now loose in both arenas.

Others will develop products to meet the TRUE Home Server and Small Business needs of end users, not OEMs.

Having served in the military and seen real combat, I am now watching MS commit another slow product death.

Doug

WOW! So when is Vail's Funeral?

I must say, removal of DE dumbest thing i ever seen. Why not just add original DE to it and improve it, works fine as it is-- just needs a little tweaking.  W/out DE no way i'll buy or recommend  Vail to anyone. I even get for free, still won't install it. Honestly, not even worth the bandwidth to download it.

You may as well can the whole project then, because without DE, you're basically giving us SBS.

Take another 2 years, but put DE back in WHS.

Lame, lame, lame. OEM solutions? Get a grip! No DE, no WHS. I am disgusted!

This is absolutely ludicrous! Why can't you just leave the feature in as-is and provide adequate help/documentation/warnings to discourage/prevent its use when compatibility issues can occur? This feature is invaluable to -- clearly -- a LOT of your users.

I had to join in the unanimous, truly unanimous, chorus of WHS users who believe this to be a fatally flawed decision.  As the computer guy everybody goes to for solutions, fixes, and set-ups, I've built four WHS servers for myself, friends, and family.  The reason?  Drive Extender kicks ass.  Period.  And now you want to remove this core functionality, the special sparkle WHS emits?  I'm shocked.

In addition, I can't help but believe there are nefarious reasons for this decision.  When I continually see "OEM" on these posts, it makes me wonder if the motivation behind this decision is purely for the bottom line of your partnered OEMs.  Are some backs being scratched?  Unless this is the case, then your high-level decision making process sucks.  There's no reason whatsoever to buy WHS if this feature is missing.  I'd rather set up a NAS for my "clientele" than a worthless piece of software for which I'm going to have to buy additional RAID and other hardware for, anyway.

As a dedicated, enthusiastic user of WHS, I couldn't be more upset or bewildered by this incredibly short-sighted mistake that is disillusioning every single user in your base.

Michael, I don't think you or anyone on your team understands something very fundamental here. For all intents and purposes, Home Server = Drive Extender. Sure, the sharing is nice, but *the* reason anyone buys a WHS is because of the incredible ease of use that Drive Extender brought, because no other NAS provider offered you the ability to use arbitrarily-sized disks. If you don't provide Drive Extender, you're just another undifferentiated (and possibly less secure) OS than the embedded Linuxes that come from the likes of Buffalo, Synology, and others.

If you're not interested in providing DE, <b>CANCEL VAIL DEVELOPMENT NOW<b>. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I'd rather you abort development on a product that serves no niche and will likely not sell well and spend the money on keeping a team providing maintainance and support to Quattro and extending the lifespan of that product. Stop wasting the money on further Vail developments that absolutely no one cares for.

OR - rethink this. There's no shame in admitting you were wrong and going back to DEv1; it works fantastically, and the relatively few problems it had could be solved with limited middleware.

Hmm...

Windows Home Server v2  now is the same as any other computer out there. What distinguishes it from windows 7?

Dont say...

        Dashboard....

        File Sharing....

        OR whatever else WHS has...

If you expect some simple user to figure out RAID...

                                                      and PLAN for RAID....

you must expect them to avoid the dashboard....

                         and setup their own filesharing....

or whatever else WHS was used for.

Seems like WHS team is essentially the left over runts that could not make it anywhere else at MS. (At least the leadership)

If you are on the WHS team... find another position... FAST.

Drive Extender was my easy solution, leaving behind RAID hardware and driver issues.  I had used a W2k server with RAID and found gracefule expansion a task to be avoided.  Home users need simple solutions, I do not see RAID support and expansion simple.  WHS without Drive Extenter means I'm back to Window Server hardware issues and more effort.  Please make RAID or DE an install option.

I am sorry Michael, but there is something clearly wrong with the decision making in the home-targeting group(s) at MSFT.  Media Center is a shell fo what it could be (3 screens and a cloud, but MCE still has a pre-XAML design surface and no deep Silverlight integration.  Oops.)  Windows Phone 7 released without built-in support from MSFT for accessing WHS content such as photos, etc.  Facebook is there, but WHS Content is a 2nd class citizen, relagated to hopeful wishes fro someone to put an app in the Marketplace.  Now this.  

What are the "big sells" for WHS now?  Machine backup?  Take the WHS team on a field trip to Best Buy or Fry's and go to the External HDD aisle.  Try to find one without preinstalled backup software.  Remote access?  Has the team seen the latest Live Essentials "To the Cloud" ad campaigns?  You can access all of your home content when you're stuck at a an airport - without WHS.  This decision neuters the product.  

Congatulations on the upcoming release of the 2 anciliary enterprise/small business products, but it is probably a  lot more than just a tough day for Vail - it is likely a fatal day for Vail.  My condolences on what certainly is a tough day for the team - I'm sure there are many team members with deep and passionate attachments to the product...it is a shame that their passion is going to lose out to this decision.

Classic Innovator's Dilemma decision. You are chasing the bigger individual sales and consciously ignoring the smaller but more numerous sales. I'm the latter. You just lost another customer. Learn from Apple. Learn from Xbox. Learn from Zune. Learn from Windows Phone. Consumers matter now.

I have joined to post. I am a long time WHS1 user. It has been great. I have been testing VAIL. So far I like it also. Based on the removal of DE, I have formated my drive and I now will not waste my time with VAIL. With out this feature the other core features are not worth the investment. There are too many other cost effective options for the remaining features.  I hope you will remove Home from any future names for this product.

A version of Vail absent DE just makes no sense either for someone with WHS V1 (e.g., myself) as an upgrade or for someone without a NAS or backup device.  

I've recommended WHS to many people as a valuable device to corral and protect important digital media. There no longer remains a compelling case to justify WHS's increased cost and complexity over the alternatives (e.g., NAS).

Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail, and continue to work on all the core features outside of Drive Extender. We fully expect to be able to show some of our new and partnered OEM solutions at CES.

digg.com/.../the_north_face_outlet_with_high_quality_north_face_factory_northface_factory_outlet_north_face_outlets_hoodie_north_face_outlet_jackets

I am sorry, but if you read both posts it is hard to believe you are 100% committed to Vail, maybe 50% at best. As much as I like WHS you are having a well deserved bad day.

What would Charlie Kindel do?

So it basically comes down to this. We've tied the development of these three servers together. One of these servers (vail) has this drive extender tech which is the core of the product and now it's axed, because it doesnt fit the other two. The remaining vail tech is a thin shell of functionallity which could exist as a downloadable add-on to any server. So since Vail has lost is key appeal to home users and everything else is achieveable via download, Vail has no reason to exist as a server product.

Ummm... bugger.  That's not good - I must add to the discontent already displayed by other commenter's.

This indeed is not good news as we've all become reliant on the automagic management of files and duplication... indeed software raid is a viable option but it's really hard for the average-Joe to administer (assuming that S/RAID is the alternative).

Sure, MS will be pushing significant work to the service resellers, but alas this is a naive assumption... average-Joe will seek out simplicity and very low cost... most WHS users I know (and have installed) use a redundant and/or lesser configuration PC.  MS seem to have lost sight of the fact that the basic presumption of a successful product lies in it's USP... removing some of the key "install and forget" features of WHS simply means that the consumer now places it on par with OpenFiler, FreeNas etc.  Only thing is that total cost of install will prevail... and don't counter with the TCO argument... average-Joe is not an enterprise... he looks at his wallet at the time he makes the decision.

im out!!!!!         no DE no way i will upgrade ... unless MS is going to up the anti with something better

I was just thinking back to this feature that's so unimportant and when I used it last on my HP MediaSmart 475. Oh, that was *today* as I added a 2GB drive to replace an old 500 MB drive. It was effortless. I guess I'll have to look for something else if all v2 servers are going to have plain old RAID. You're going to rely on solutions provided by the OEM? Good luck with that.

I usually find the best way to deliver a compelling user experience is to just start removing features and don't stop until the product sells.

Michael, the truth of the matter is that if you take out of the picture DE, then there is nothing left in WHS to speak of, nothing to be committed in and nothing differentiate Vail from a NAS, RAID-based solution. That decision is wrong and you should listen to your customers and take it back. If you cannot deliver due to engineering problems, then just come out and say so. However to insist, giving vague, incomprehensible excuses, especially when the market gives you such a clear signal, goes opposite to all that Microsoft has been trying to do the last thirty years.

Be brave and take it back. Give us what we ask for (and please stop this supposedly technical blah-blah)

Well, this was a rather lame attempt at damage control from your first post on this subject...  Pathetic, in fact.  The only way out of this mess is to quickly announce that you have heard your customers, you made a mistake, and put DE back into Vail.  Then get on with fixing the implementation of DE in Vail.  If you don't, then WHS is dead.  Period.

This is simply not acceptable. You've betrayed the original intent of the product. None of your existing users will accept this change. So I'm not sure who the target audience is for this new version of "WHS".

So incredibly disappointed by this decision.  It removes the killer feature of WHS.  I've been using WHS since the betas, and am a hardcore WHS evangelist - I can't shut up about the amazing MS product that "just worked."  DE was always the one feature that made people's eyes light up and say "Wow, that's really cool!" when I explained how easy and effortless it was to add more storage to your pool.  Backup, remote access, those are all well and good, but DE was the "One more thing...." feature of WHS.  Unless you have something completely mind-blowing waiting in the wings to replace it, I beg of you to reconsider this decision.  I will not upgrade any of my WHS boxes to Vail nor encourage people to buy a WHS solution without DE.

Sad to hear.

I'm using WHS specifically because of the DE functionality.

Today I talked to a co-worker who asked me about the server I was using at home. I promoted WHS, and the functionality that he liked was the absence of RAID. He's had problems with RAID systems in the past. I will now have to go tell him that MS is removing the feature that sold a product today, and I'll have to go in and tell him about this tomorrow.

I second every comment on here. I was toiling what to do with my new build. I had to join this "blog" just to post and tell you guys that this is a big deal. MS is on blast right now over this. If there has ever been a consumer outcry like this before I haven;t seen it regarding MS since Vista. Why would I even use WHS now? Seriously? Remote streaming? Trans coding that lacks as I can see and can be done by a number of free 3rd party apps. This seriously ruined my day. I find it very hard to believe customers influenced this decision and nothing but $OEM$ OEM OEM. FAIL

Instead of a Twitter fail whale we have a #failvail. Good luck with the product. Sorry you pissed off so many of your customers. It's a difficult decision because it's the WRONG decision.

you might be 100% committed to vail, but you're ZERO committed to WINDOWS HOME SERVER, which is, what vail is ment to be.

Created an account just to say how pathetic this damage control post is. I wouldn't accept Vail as a free upgrade for my current WHS.

I would never even begin to consider using DE technology from the likes of HP, Acer, ASUS or any of the other OEMs that produce WHS products.

I'd just as soon throw all of my hard drives in a bucket of water and fling them into space. Who needs local storage anyway? We've got the cloud!

Oh wait! My upload speed is 512kb/s!

I guess the cloud isn't the answer to everything (yet). Too bad for me.

I have a suggestion,  The OEMs focused on SBS and Storage Server got to pick a feature to pull from all three products.  It's only fair that the consumer market gets to take a turn at last-minute product planning and pull a random feature out of the business products.  Any suggestions out there? I'm thinking home users have no use for Active Directory, how about we request that be pulled?

Storage needs grow over time.  I started with 3 x 500 GB drives thinking it was going to be plenty of space.  Next thing I knew, I was upgrading those 500 GB drives to 1TB drives and eventually 2TB drives.  Just because 3TB drives are on the market now and someone in the product management space doesn't see a need for more storage in the home doesn't mean that the need won't arise.  I seem to recall somebody stating we wouldn't ever need more than 640k of memory and look where that's gotten us.

Do us a favor and add some flavor of Drive Extender in as a Feature or Role.  It can be off by default.  Heck, you could make it an optional "Power Pack".  Pulling it completely seems downright silly.  Or is this like Perfmon and the one guy who knew how it worked decided to take a job elsewhere?

Mr. Leworthy, you are disingenuousness personified. Yesterday you were telling us that we, the customers of WHS, weren't bothered about DE, and now today, you have the gall to tell us that you were dreading the day when you would have to announce the dropping of DE. I suspect the outcry that has greeted the announcement has really not come as any surprise. Just don't try and tell us that the decision was made following customer feedback, because it ever so clearly was not.

I was excited about Vail until I read about the extinction of DE.  I was waiting out to upgrade to Vail, but now seems like there is no reason to.  I've recommended WHS to many family members who would have never gotten WHS had they been met with complexity of creating a RAID array.  Which should they use? RAID 1, 0, 5, 10?  Microsoft is leaving the home user in the dust by removing this ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY feature.  I hope partners like HP and Acer step up here because they'll be losing out too.  I know I'll be recommending DROBO or other simple to use products that understand that home users need less complex products.  Just look at Apple products, most hardcore people will say Apple products are simple and locked, but to the NORMAL user, it just works and that's what's so appealing to people.

VAIL will FAIL for home users! And I wont be making recommendations to my friends or family to hold out for it.

I fail to see the point of WHS if it does not have Drive Extender. Without DE what does it do that every other NAS device does not?

DE is the main reason I went with, and recommend  WHS.  I will not be recommending it anymore.  I hope there is still time to reconsider this decision.

I have been using whs since beta. The only reason I chose whs over other technology was the DE feature. I could have used windows server 2003\8 with raid and the built in backup on client computers to backup to a share on the server. I chose whs because of DE and the simplicity of backing up client comptuers. I don't care so much about the remote web access, with sites like flicker and sky drive, remote access is really useless. Especially with live mesh for remote access to home computers. What purpose does the WHS team have now. I have been swearing by WHS to all my friends and collegues. Defending against those who said why not use windows server with raid or a NAS instead, now I feel silly. If enthusiasts won't buy the product now, who do you think will? I would have more respect for Microsoft if you just came out cancelled WHS server altogether.

Microsoft may be 100% committed to Vail but it's user community just checked out.   These are the requirements you should be fulfilling (published by the WHS team)!  http://bit.ly/dLR5oC

This move by MS just doesn't make any sense?  Drive Extender is one of the main reasons I own a Windows Home Server.  I could just buy a RAID NAS or JBOD and dump files to it.  Weird Move.

I will NOT be upgrading!!!

NOT happy about this..... the biggest feature WHS offered was drive extender.  With my acer h340 I started out with 500 gig and 250 gig drives and have slowly migrated to 1.0 tb drives over the past few years (and planned to start adding 2 tb drives).  I was able to wait until the larger drives dropped in price to a point where they became affordable and because it was easy to extend my storage pool.  This pretty much guarantees I will not be getting a new WHS but instead exploring other options such as drobo.

Folks, don't hate on me, but this may not be necessarily a bad thing.  I think the issue of larger drives is a valid one.  I also think some of the underlaying server technology within the baseline, with some tweaking, may be worthy of being native within Windows Home Server.  It certainly would be easier to keep up to date if Vail and Aurora were both

closer to the baseline.  Keep in mind also, the opinions of OEMs carry heavier weight than our opinions within this forum.  I suggest rather than roundly condemning the removal of DE v2 by the WHS development team, let's keep an open mind and see what alternatives will be available with the next release or even upon release next year.  I suspect third party development will continue and Vail will evolve so much more.

I am not a "shill" for Microsoft and I didn't drink the "Kool Aide", but  I refuse to flush this idea at this point simply because it removes a key feature, a feature whose advantages admittedly may have been surpassed by the march of technology.

I created an account just to post on this.  I have to disagree with most users.  WHS DE is next to useless in its current form.  You have no idea what files are on what drive.  If one drive were to fail, you would have to go hunting to find out what was lost if you don't turn on duplication on everything.  If the OS drive fails, recovery will be a long process.  If your drives are near full, you will need to go buy new drives just to move files to it temporary while you add your old drives to the pool and move files back.

On Vail, it is even worst since the Vail data drive can not be read by other OS.  What's the point of that?  This is meant for non-techie users, but the recovery process is even more complex.  

I went back to Server 2003 just so I don't have to deal with that.  I use windows software raid 1 on a couple of drives so I know those important files are duplicated.  The rest of my media files is setup using Flexraid for some kind of fault tolerant.  But I know what files are on each drive in case one is to fail.  

The only marginal useful thing is the ability to backup other computers on my home network.  Even that is of little use since I setup all my other machine to save data files directly to the server anyway.  My Windows machine require a new fresh install once every couple of years anyway just to clear some of the issue.

I created an account *just* to post a comment.  I can't think of a worse thing to do with the new version of WHS.  One of the things that is great about WHS is the fact that I can click one link and it takes me to all files on my WHS.  Now what am I going to have to do?  Have multiple shortcuts on my desktop to multiple drives?  Am I going to have to map to multiple drives?  I hate desktop clutter and without more detail it seems that this is going to multiply that clutter on all my home computers.

And what about folder duplication?  Is that going away as well?  As an end-user, am I going to have to configure RAID sets and set BIOS settings and rebuild these RAID partitions myself?  The best part of WHS was the ability to just slap another drive in there.  It didn't matter what brand, or size, or speed it was; the experience for the customer was seamless and simple.  You pick a folder, and click 'duplication' and you're done with it.  So do I get to choose RAID5 for three 3 TB drives?  What's going to be the partition limit here?

While larger drives are becoming more common, so are the needs for these larger drives.  Cameras are increasing in megapixels every day.  HD video cameras are more and more the norm.  Folks want to have this information online and BACKED UP, so if one drive fails you won't lose anything.  I have 3 TB in my home server and duplication is turned on for EVERYTHING.  Why would I voluntarily choose to lose something?

Without this technology I won't be purchasing another server.  I'll just get a NAS.  In one fell swoop you've lost the niche that this product applied to.  I see the mention of DROBO on a lot of comments.  I'll have to check that out.  I liked the fact that EVERYTHING IS IN ONE PLACE, and now it seems that's going away.

I can't possibly recommend WHS to anybody anymore knowing that DE will not be in Vail. It was the key technology that differentiated itself from any other technology on the market. All other features of WHS can be accomplished with third party tools, but DE tied it all together with automated, flexible storage management.

100% committed? I beg to differ.

Micheal, have you ever though that customers with WHS are probably Microsofts biggest fans. They have multipule Windows PC's, Xbox's, windows phone etc. just like myself.

You have now gone and shafted them all. Judging by a lot of these comments you are going to lose customers, not just from WHS but other microsoft products too. Way to go !

This is ridiculous, I JUST bought my first WHS and this will be last when it comes time for me to upgrade past my 2TB HDD's. You just lost a loyal customer.

WHS without DE is a useless product.  That was THE feature.  Everything else that WHS does is simply icing on the cake that is DE.

Very sad :-( I bought my WHS soon 2 years ago, and I have almost a perfect home network setup. I even started developing powershell scripts to manage and monitor my WHS. The main reason i chose was because of DE. Now when it is soon time for upgrade, I will look elsewhere. There is no reason to stick with WHS anymore since it doesn't offer that extra. I am already considering Linux based setup with ZFS. Good luck windows team.

Been a Home Server user since day one - love HS - it serves all 9 of my PCs every day at my house...  However, we use drive extension today for many reasons.   Frankly speaking - don't ship until you have drive extender in it.  You don't have the luxury of making your users not happy - your installed base is small, very few OEMs are even behind HS and thus - do the right thing.   Don't ship until it is there.    Make us happy, not disappointed.

I just signed up to post my comments. the only reason I bought whs based solution over raid based solution is DE. So I could throw in whatever HDD I have and do not need worry about size, brand... I also could replace them later if I want to expand the storage.  remote desktop? i could do it through my router. automatic computer backup? I never used it.  media sharing, never existing on WHS.

Remove a consumer oriented feature because you have some trouble to use it in business environment? what a joke!

And how about media sharing? oh, it is not needed on SBS 2011 and storage server essential, let's kill it as well.

Keep DEv1 from WHSv1 and ther will be no problem. Wouldn't the outcry from users of WHS be enough to prove the point that it indeed is an improtant feature to many.

I am calmly and sincerely asking you to reconsider this move. If this announcement was a trial balloon floating the idea of removing DE then consider it popped.

DE is the main reason I have a WHS machine as opposed to some other solution. Please, I want to purchase a Vail based machine in the future. I won't be able to do this without DE..

Dude! Branch the damn products stop trying to lump business and home customers together! are you saying that WHS doesn't generate enough revenue to justify the branching of the products? WHS having separate development  isn't profitable?

I agree with the other posters.  No DE, no Vail.  I have been enjoying my home-built WHSv1 box for the last 9 months.  The drives: 500GB, 2x 1.5TB (with different actual byte counts), and a 250GB drive.  DE was a main selling point to me as well as being able to use my own hardware.  I am not interested in buying HP or Acer's hardware and then crossing my fingers that they cobble together some DE replacement.  

So with 100% negative feedback, is anyone listening?

Look at this post, its from Microsoft and it is as clear as glass why RAID is not suitable for Consumers.

blogs.technet.com/.../why-raid-is-not-a-consumer-technology.aspx

Can you be so dumb as to not realize it. The policy makers have no idea what the consumers want.

We don't want RAID or other solutions from your partners, coz they suck big time. The only activity that they are good at is to load the machines with crapware/bloatware. By turning over the responsibility over to your Partners, you are effectively distancing yourself from being responsible for the users data!! what sane person would make such a decision?

Bring back DE V1, else kill the entire Vail product, coz it is totally useless as of now.

Since I got my WHS I tell all my friends how great it is. And guess, what am I highlighting all the time? Remote web access? The cool third party plugins? No - it's the Drive Extender stuff!

What would the reason be to buy Vail without Drive Extender and Media Center Integration? Every NAS I had before I bought my WHS could do the same stuff as what I'm expecting from Vail now...

Have a walk over to the Microsoft Developer Division and take a look how Scott Gu and his team handle feedback from their customers/users. - And then do it the same way! Listen to them!

I just bought an HP EX490 one week ago instead of buying a NAS and there were 2 reasons I did this:

  1) the bare metal restore capability with WHS

  2) The drive extender feature

Are you going to tell me (and all of the other HP smart server users) that we are going to get shafted because our boxes don't support RAID?

For the last few weeks I have been reading about WHS and what great product it is, and how Microsoft had really done it right, so I decided to get on the WHS bandwagon.

Now I'm thinking I made the wrong decision.

Bad move guys...................................

Well you might as well as consider this product dead.  Drive extender was one of the top selling points for me and was what I used when recommending this product to other friends.  I was anxiously waiting for the vail release and now I have no reason to even consider this product.   Since the release of this product, your forums on "social" touted the benefits of drive extender and how much better it was than "RAID" and now you are telling us it's going away??   Maybe you should share some of that corporate juice with your customers and they will understand why you removed it.

I've been using WHS for years, I love that I don't have to worry about my data, it's always replicated in the other drives, automatically and transperently.

Removing this feature is a huge mistake.

Microsoft, you have made a huge mistake!

First, thanks for sharing upcoming plans.  In the face of this unpopular decision it was a brave tactical move, and one Microsoft is to be commended.  The message is clear-  the decision to remove DE benefits Microsoft 's cost structure more than it benefits the consumer install base.  I will begin to re-assess alternative solutions, halt current expansion, question implementing future MS centric solutions, and I predict MS will lose revenue upgrade.

Mainstream support for WHS ends Jan 8 2013, which gives customers two years evaluate.

"Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail, and continue to work on all the core features outside of Drive Extender"

that made me laugh. what is left of it? you had one main feature to work on and you have failed. so that leaves what the logo and the marketing?

as sad as this is. its starting to make sense when people say apple understands users and Microsoft doesn't.

What dribble. Worst decision ever and I will not be utilizing Vail for anything. When I find a good alternative I will be switching my current WHS. Good job on killing a great product.

I signed up to simply say this:

Anyone involved in making this mind-numbingly ignorant decision should be blacklisted and prevented from ever working in the IT industry again.

Mr. Michael Leworthless.  That's right, I'm looking at you, and I'm also looking at whatever bonehead boss of yours signed off on such stupidity.

There is absolutely no reason to ever buy any future version of WHS that does not include DE functionality -- nada, zip, zilch, NONE.  

Without DE, the entire WHS product line is just like you and everyone on your team: Le' Worthless.

Codename "Fail", indeed...

> Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail, and continue to work on all the core features outside of Drive Extender.

The ones that no home user cares about. You honestly might as well have just cancelled the project.

To say that I'm disappointed in this news is a major understatement.  I was (and still am) looking for a centralized storage solution (my current solution is a laptop running XP Home with 1 USB 1.0 port).  I was about to pull the trigger earlier in the year and buy a HP MediaSmart Server (I need to be able to back up two iMacs as well).  Then I read about the "Vail" leak early in the year and decided to wait for the newest release before purchasing a WHS.  Yesterday's news really bummed me out, I am going to have to start researching a new solution, as Drive Extender was one of the major reasons I wanted a WHS (I have several External USB HD's).  

I think if Microsoft has learned any lesson in the last few years, it should be that consumers love simplicity (iPhone vs Windows Mobile, Vista vs. OS X Leopard).  In the name of all that Microsoft has done well in the last couple of years to simplify their products for the consumer market  (Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, Security Essentials, IE 9, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Movie Maker), this decision needs to be rethought!  This is a product that with a little tweaking and a little more forethought could be a break out hit.  With better marketing and more inclusiveness (include OS X backups like HP did) I could see many homes having a WHS.  This market is not ripe yet, but with more people having multiple PC's, laptops, iPods, and smartphones, having access to my own personal cloud with all my information at my fingertips would be invaluable.

Simplicity is what is driving most consumer purchases in tech and electronics today, I wouldn't pull out that simplicity for either the consumer market or the Small business market (small businesses like simplicity in their tech as well), for a quick and easy win.

Don't be stupid! Just put it back in!

I have been having fun looking at motherboard and cpu combos waiting for the new release of WHS.  If DE is not a part of this package, I agree, what is the use?  Too bad a wonderful product out of Microsoft will now be turned into Vista.

I am a long-time WHS user.  I've never felt the need to post, because I've been satisfied with WHS Version 1  and the direction Vail was reported to be going.

WHS features in order of importance to me are: Automated Back-up, file sharing, and DE.  Removing DE from Vail greatly reduces the scalability of WHS.

I won't leave Version 1 for a Vail without DE.  I'll go to ZFS instead.

Meh - drive extender was always a hack.  A rather elegant one in WHS v1 for lightweight duties, but a hack none the less.  Despite the flack they will get for this, I congratulate MS for making the correct, if not extremely tough and obviously unpopular call.

To get an idea of the enormity of the issues MS was struggling with, one only has to look at the tortured evolution of Drive Extender in Vail - the struggles with checksums and other decisions dedicated to ensure reliable storage.  It was obvious that for every "solution" to previous issues with Drive Extender, more problems (like not being able to mount Home Server drives in another computer and pull files off, or increases in data protection overhead) cropped up.  At what point do you continue to try to hack around current issues in RAID or NTFS, and finally decide it's far better to attack the core problems with those respective technologies?  Obviously someone at MS finally decided to make the tough call - and I think ultimately it will be proven to be the right one.

RAID arrays with parity do suck - but mainly because the current implementations of parity RAID suck.  Who knows, maybe a large OEM like HP has licensed Drobo's Beyond RAID?  Other than being a little poky at rebuilds, I love my original 4 slot Drobo (Generation 2 with Firewire 800).  Personally, I was (and still am) looking forward to Vail and Aurora (especially Aurora/SBS Essentials) support of iSCSI targets for members to the storage pool.  I was already planning to use a 1U SuperMicro Atom server with mirrored OS drives (hardware level outside of the OS) connected to a Drobo Pro over iSCSI (No need for elite!) for redundant storage for my data.  Yup, it won't be an under $400 setup, but it will scale far more reliably, with a greater amount of useable storage per protected/redundant bit.  A half full Drobo Pro will smoke an HP Media Smart with double the amount of hard drives to provide the same amount of useable storage.  And it will be far more reliable, and easier to upgrade than even a WHS with drive extender.  And I will get guaranteed redundancy with no worries of conflict or open files that never get duplicated.  When you start getting into the tens of terabytes, even a Drobo Pro (about $1K with no drives) becomes cost effective pretty quick.  This does leave a gap in the 1-5TB space that the current WHS fills rather nicely - it will be interesting to see what MS has up it's sleeve - WHS's with mirrored 3TB drives?  Two sets of mirrored 3 TB drives (six useable and protected terabytes)?  Heck, for 90% of the people out there, that's more than adequate and I think that's what finally drove MS to realize that the pace of hard drive growth was negating many of the original reasons for drive extender, and the need for dealing with the complexity of what drive extender was attempting to do.

If other manufacturers would clean up their RAID with parity implementations to allow for non-destructive resizing of the array and remove restrictions on having hard drives of similar sizes, things would get interesting indeed - but with large, single drives, mirroring is pretty cost effective these days for all but the largest data hoarders...

Who knows, maybe MS signed a cross licensing deal with Oracle for ZFS :)  Stranger things have happen (although ZFS can't nondestructively resize storage pools either :p )

Another person who created an account here specifically so I could comment.

Without DE there is no point to WHS for me. WHS is wife-friendly. It made storage easy, and it was simple enough my nontechnical wife could get it. RAID, drive letters, and folders scattered everywhere are not wife friendly.

I've been actually pricing components so I could build a 64 bit server to run Vail. Guess that's off the table. Maybe I'll buy another SATA controller card and some more drives for my WHS v1 instead. It's going to have to last a while.

Another lost sale here. Bad move, MS!

"WHS is a HOME product.  SBS/Storage Server are BUSINESS products.  They cater to different markets, which means they may share a common path for awhile, but at some point those paths diverge.  You have just reached that point"

As a home product, how many users do you think would need to exceed 6 Terabytes?  I'm not talking enthusiasts ripping every DVD they own and rent from Netflix, but regular families with photo's, videos, etc.?

I'm guessing less than 20%

Two mirrored 3TB hard drives gives them simple, reliable, and 100% duplicated storage.  Sure, 3TB drives are expensive now, but like all other storage, they will drop fast over time.

Heck, two sets of mirrored 2TB drives would yield 4TB of useable, hardware redundant storage.  For less than $400 in drives (2 TB drives are routinely under $100 - all over the place!).

Your emphasis on "Home" is exactly why I think MS has realized the complexity for DE is no longer necessary.

To me, MS's decision to drop Drive Extender is an obvious one.  DE solves a problem that really no longer exists.  If you need more than 6TB, Vail/Aurora support iSCSI - grab yourself a refurb Drobo Pro for $900, hook it up and have at it.  I'm still planning on doing this for a few non-profits I support that are getting into video production and need lots of cheap, redundant storage.  DroboPro's are an incredible value, but it would be nice to see some more competition in this space.  WHS has value over Drobo's file sharing solutions in their workstation backup (with dedupe and image restore!) and native Windows Server SMB support.  While Samba is pretty good, it's not a native Windows stack.

Personally I'm glad to see DE dead.  This will let some of the oxygen back in the room and we may see some more innovation at the core issues - the suckiness of parity RAID and/or NTFS for flexible storage.

I may be in the vast minority, but I see this as a very, very positive move for WHS and SBS Essentials.  Especially for SBSE - a product I am VERY excited about for non-profits I support and friends who own small businesses (of whom I've already sprinkled v1 WHSs in for workstation backup).

I view the furor over the dropping of DE much in the same vein of Apple dropping the floppy and embracing USB in leu of their ADB ports with the iMac.  At the time, everyone just chalked the move up to another sign of Apple's irrelevancy.  Guess who's having the last laugh for having a long term vision and sticking with it :)

So kudos to the WHS/SBSE team.  A very bold move.  Personally I didn't think MS had the stones to be truly innovative and pushing of the envelope.  The more you push or try to think outside the box, the more pushback you will receive.  Hang in there, but most importantly *follow up with something else*.  Don't just drop the feature and ship - that would truly be lame.  That would be the equivalent of Apple dropping the floppy and optical drive at the same time.  That's not good, so don't do the equivalent of that please!  There needs to be some sort of a solution for the 6TB and under segment - heck, I've identified one easy solution :)

An OEM solution means the consumer has to pay out of pocket for a feature MS is removing. Bad choice removing DE and the death of this product. Surely MS must see this.

Like many others, I see the writing on the wall for WHS now. Now that major competitive advantage of Vail has disappeared, I think even MS will see quickly that there's really little point in 'muddling through' to some kind of release. I hope MS are shamed into reversing this, but I doubt it.

Microsoft Announcement Next XBOX for 2013 will drop internet access. That has same impact as removing Drive Extender from Vail. Yea lets remove a feature that 90% of out customer base need.

I'll add my 2 cents to this.  If DEv2 was such a failure, then add DEv1 back in, as an installable option if you must, but do something.  I was planning my WHS upgrade to Vail, but I guess I will continue with v1 as long as I can and look out for something to replace it in the mean time.

Once again, Microsoft doesn't care about the users.  I was a beta tester for WHS V1 and due to the backup features and the Drive Extender technology I was an evangelist for WHS.

Thanks for removing the biggest feature that convinced me that Microsoft had finally "gotten it".  I was obviously mistaken.  With DE, WHS is worthless.  No folder by folder duplication and the pain in the a-- of drive letters.

Brilliant, Microsoft - way to make the premier home server OS impotent...

Michael, your set of core features in Vail has just become lackluster.. Without DE I'm not going to downgrade to Vail from WHSv1, and will stop recommending the product to others. DE is one of the few pivotal features of WHS.

Hello, my name is Doug and I'm a WHS user.  If Drive Extender goes, I go.

As I understand it DE v2 just plain did not work .. Disks are unreadable on other machines, storage overhead was huge, recovery of unduplicated files after single disk failures was a nightmare ... But why kill the whole concept? Can DE v1 not be ported to Vail?

I created a user here just to said: Noooooo! pls MS don't remove this awesome feature. It's the primary reason why I use WHS (been hooked since the first public beta). I will not upgrade to vail without this feature!

Staggered by this decision. Unbelievably disappointed. You can be as committed to Vail as you like. It won't be what I like. Hi Ho Hi Ho, to somewhere else I'll go.

WHS2 is DOA without Drive Extender.  I will no longer buy nor recommend this product.

The original WHS community was extremely intriguing ...  you had everyone from regular joe schmoes home users to enthusiasts.  Then there were Mac users and people who don't even like the Windows platform, but yet still embrace WHS.  With one stupid move, you've managed to piss off your entire community.

The "Vail" product team really needs to go back and re-read the original design principles that made WHS1 so successful:

blogs.technet.com/.../why-raid-is-not-a-consumer-technology.aspx

While a convenience, DE irritated me from a hardware perspective. I prefer to control drive use and drive replacement, not having DE makes that an easier task. I don't need to use old SATA or IDE drives to build a storage pool, buying a 3tb drive these days is affordable. Buying two and creating a RAID mirror is now less complex. Thanks for rethinking Drive Extender.

I am using WHS instead of a NAS solution because of drive extender. It is THE feature. I do not want to be messing around with RAID for redundancy.  If you are no longer be offering your customers the product yours customers want, your competitors will. Good luck in the future. I will looking for a different solution to replace my aging WHS.

To my friends at Microsoft:

The problem that we are having with DE (on Vail) is NOT Drive Extender per se, but the needless tinkering that has rendered DE less useful. In my opinion, and that of many others, Drive Extender is a compelling feature, maybe the most innovative feature of WHS. Without it, WHS is just another ho-hum product.

As to your assertion that using large disks with RAID is a better solution than DE, I must strenuously disagree. Given the likelihood of physical errors on very large desktop-class hard drives, re-building a RAID array when a drive fails will inevitably result in UREs (unrecoverable read errors) that will destroy the data volume. Most home users will NOT be able to deal with this inevitability. RAID-less redundancy, of the type provided by DE, is the only sensible answer.

As you can see by the comments, everyone, and I mean everyone, on this blog wants Drive Extender included in Home Server. Microsoft claims to be a MARKET-DRIVEN company, one that examines the wants of the market and delivers what the market wants. If that is the case, THE MARKET WANTS DE. Please re-think your decision to remove Drive Extender.

=Mac=

My response? Started looking at Drobo as a potential replacement when my WHS v1 needs to be replaced. Vail is NOT an option. Thanks MS, you've done it again!

"Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail, and continue to work on all the core features outside of Drive Extender."

What is left that makes it worth getting when Vail is released?

Please, post a list of all the features that will make me want to purchase this product.

Jeff

I've also signed up to express my complete disappointment at the removal of this feature. Like many others, I consider Windows Home Server = Drive Extender. Yes, the drives are larger now, but so is the data that we're putting on them. And as drive capacities grow, so will the data we store on them.

You talk about the team making a decision to remove DE because it did NOT meet customer needs. What a croc. I'm a customer (SMB) and my needs WERE BEING met. And now that will not be, I will not be upgrading/replacing my WHS with Vail.

If your team is still about meeting customer needs (not just business needs) please reconsider your decision, or stop saying you care about customer (home and SMB) needs.

You've taken one of your few 'Apple-like" products and made it more 'Microsoft-like'.  Good luck with that.  

(As an aside, I spent 13 years at Microsoft and know some of the people behind the original WHS and DE technology. Sad to see the original product vision fall by the wayside...)

Great to hear you are still 100% committed to Vail. Your users aren't any more...

Thanks for removing THE defining feature from WHS. Thanks a lot! Wow, what a good idea! Now we can go back to manually backing up folders and making several shares that include the same type of files because they can't fit into one single drive. Yaaaay! </norwegian irony>

Why would one even need this type of Operating System? You could just as easily install an older Windows you have lying around and share stuff or even better, a good linux distro that does the same job. Suddenly it became a good time to check out Amahi...

I will not be buying another WHS product if this is removed.  Yes the average IT/Nerd will have no problem setting up RAID but the average user will not understand that.  Yes they may buy it in the store pre-setup but what about redundancy and hard drives going bad.  Now they will have to take it into the store or what ever to get it fixed, they aren't going to understand it.  What about warnings, used to be that WHS warned the user of the health of the drives but now they will have to rely on the raid controllers software.  WHS worked and it worked well, this is just stupid and I have no intention or recommending upgrading or upgrading my self.  And it would seem I'm not alone in this, very bad move Microsoft.

I can't believe you went from releasing several great products to this big steaming pile of garbage.  Seperate WHS from SBS, SBS is not for home users either.  WHS was a home based product and it worked.  I loved it but not anymore, please reconsider this MS.  And trust me this isn't "outreach" as you put it, it's "outrage" get it correct.

It's a pity that WHS is the red-headed stepchild of the "small server" product family; the second-class afterthought who gets short-changed whenever it is cheaper or easier for a decision to favor its siblings.

If WHS ever had an advocate or evangelist, we'd see Media Center running on it, Drive Extender would remain, and WHS devices from partners would be abundant and affordable.

The decision to pull DE from WHS betrays misunderstanding, negligence, and contempt for Microsoft's consumers.

Good luck with that, I will be not be purchasing or recommending WHS2.

If you were 100% committed to Vail, you would listen to the WHS customers, not the SBS customers or the Windows Server engineers.

You can kill DE in SBS and WSS, but keep it in Vail and make your customers happy. It's as simple as that.

I too would like to express my disappointment about this. Drive extender is the key feature that all other components were built on. I can buy a hardware NAS for half the price a WHS box but it will not dynamically let me add storage & automatically choose what content to duplicate. Since using WHS I have actually used the DE to move content from my original set of 200GB disks to my current pack of green 2TB disks. The plan is/ WAS to continue this once larger disk are released again.

As WHSv1 doesn't support SMBv2, IPv6, Hyper-V I am/ WAS really looking forward to this upgrade. If this feature is removed then I really see the VAIL product going the way of the Sidekick & dodo bird...

Really disappointed

"Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail...", I have a hard time believing this. You might as well start praying that your forecasts are accurate and your jobs will still be needed without Vail as a selling product because what you are now packaging as Vail (-DE) no one wants to buy. I'm wiping my test box as I write this and will be reloading CentOS + LVM + Samba as I know that will do what I want and what Vail used to do. I have no interest in going backwards even further to WHSv1 at this point as that is the same dead end ultimately.

How can this be taken as anything but a clear sign from Microsoft that they have no interest in the WHS product and it's community anymore? Until the issues of data duplication/availability and easy drive additions/upgrades/replacements is fully addressed in a format that results in no additional cost in hardware and without degrading the current level of functionality from these features, there is no way I can convince myself to keep using the product and certainly makes it impossible for me to recommend it or sell it. Considering Microsoft's track record in making good on these kinds of bad decisions I now consider my experience with WHS over. This is a definite step backwards for a lot of your target users.

That the biggest software company in the world cannot manage 3 different products with 3 different code bases is impossible to understand.

Do you guys like to be hated ?

Why say that you listen to your users, when you disregard their opinions so sharply ?

Now I have to find a home server solution. Too bad, I liked Vail.

I was just starting to get in the groove with the new Microsoft.  WHS v1 was incredible, easily the best home storage product on the market.  It was amazingly easy to setup, dead simple to expand, easy to recover from a hard drive loss, etc.  I recommended it to many friends and always gave demos of my system when people came over to my house.

IE9 is great, MS has finally put out a real browser.  The combination of IE9 and ASP .NET MVC 3 has shown me that Microsoft is fully committed and moving rapidly towards HTML5/CSS3 standards compliance.  This is great!

Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are both really, really good OS.

Then this news comes along and smacks you in the face.  There was already blood in the water, I realize that, I started the highest voted bug on Connect: connect.microsoft.com/.../allow-disabling-of-file-chunking-striping-for-non-duplicated-folders.  But this is going to leave a mark for a while.  You have successfully gone from having by far the best product on the market to having virtually no product at all.  You brought a rusty spoon to a gun fight this time Microsoft, shame on you.

"Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail"

That's a joke right? You obviously do not understand why people use WHS. Leave it to Microsoft to kill it's best product.

Any chance we can have the v1 team back?

The more I think about practicality of DE in WHS, the more I read all these comments, the more I think, that something is getting wrong with the society. People, wake-up, stop complaining about DE. Start THINKING. Start ANSWERING the questions:

- What is the average size of PC backup (without directories such as SOFTWARE, RIPPED BD, DVD, MUSIC, etc.)?

- What is the average size of average end-user Libraries (Documents+Music+Pictures+Videos)?

Please, no more talks, that somebody still has 4x100GB drives in his closet and wants to give them a second chance (buy 1x2TB). No more talks, that somebody bought a video camera and likes recording now everything around.

On average, if your “belongings” at home exceed 1-2TB, probably, you are not “average” end-user anymore, and your specific “professional” needs have to be fulfilled by other means (read, more expensive solutions).

Let’s discuss each of excessive storage scenarios separately.

1. Video-camera amateur with big video collection. Where is the borderline (in GB) between common sense, obsession to record everything and recording already as part of a business? What are the habits of such average home users in terms of storage for such collections? Does every of them keep it on WHS, or is it recordable/rewritable DVDs, BDs or simply external hard drives?

2. DLNA server for copies of legally bought BDs, DVDs, CDs. 50GB for the best BD movie. 2TB hard drive will need 40 such films. In this case, such consumer is capable to fork out not only for 2TB hard drive, but a bit more for above average storage solutions? Start thinking, why live streaming is pushed to the market now so hard.

3. Illegally copied content (software, movies, music). Should Microsoft be bothered by opinions of such customers?

Do such customers believe, that will not be any official attempts in the coming future to "invalidate" such content or make WHS inoperable due to “security incompliance”? Does anybody think, that it is hard to implement with the right legislations? Will such end-user keep such content on his WHS, but not on Bitlocker encrypted HDD under his pillow? In this perspective, can a further development of DE implementation in WHS be considered as a secondary infringement of copyright materials?

WHS will die! I think this might be the end of WHS without DE... death. Being a home user that built my own machine and installed the WHS OS myself, I am dissappointed .... actually flabergasted! WHS and WIN 7 actually brought me back to MS! WHS was actually a reason I tried WIN 7! Without DE WHS will be worthless to me! I have 7TB in external attached storage. I have had to replace several HD's and DE is what allowed that. Without DE I will move away from all MS products! You finally got it right with WHS and now you take it away. WHS will be worthless!

In the first post you say based on the Feedback you received is why you are taking it out and now you are saying it was a very hard decision to make.  Well if the decision really was based on Feedback, it should have been very easy and straght forward.  Based on the feedback I'm seeing here the only thing I can say is most of the current Home Server users will NOT be moving forward (including myself) if this feature is removed.  Why not actually listen to the Feedback your getting now?!?

100% commitment would mean not having WHS linked with the business versions. I am not going to upgrade to the new version because I cannot use it. A HUGE benefit of the current WHS is the ability to use any of my existing hard drives. I am going to stick with the current version until my hardware dies. Current search for replacement is underway.

An Addendum to my previous post - I was going to recommend WHS to customer/friend because of the ability to add drives without all the problems/costs associated with RAID. Now I can't and its not out of spite, it is because the product no longer does the job it was intended for.

Glad you are 100% committed to Vail, but in reality that doesn't count for much as you see the problem is that now we are not.  

Put back DE, or carry on wasting money developing a doomed product, your choice.

See ya and thanks for all the fish!

VAIL = FAIL

I'm a Product Manager (Program Manager) for a global tech company, and a big WHS fan.

The #1 responsibility of a PM is to represent the conscience of the customer to the engineering team. If I got this type of unamimous feedback, I'd be going back to the engineering team and saying "Guys, we got this one wrong. We need to reconsider our options."

The problem here is that you are reconciling a "home user" product with a "business user" product... and the use cases are very different.

I very much suspect the real problem is fiscal. WHS was initially a "hobby" project and while is has a large number of supporters, it never really captured mass market attention. So it has to rely on the SBS code stream and ultimately be led by it. There seems to be no choice in the matter.

So the best you can do is spin some rationale and wave a different "shiny object feature" to detract from what you removed. It's a bummer.... I've been there....

Two options Michael...

1) Ignore your customers, believe in your own convictions and pray that Vail is a success

2) Listen to the feedback, recognise the problem and plead your case to senior managers

like many, joined only to reply to this atrocity...

let me get this straight...windows HOME server. sure you can use it for small business, but really...home...it's in the name! why ignore the home users?!

I'm a seasoned tech and been in the industry for a long time but i have yet to use WHS - i was looking forward to DE...I have a box built and ready (NOT OEM, obviously), was inches away from purchasing WHSv1 until I did some research and discovered v2 was just around the corner, cool! 2008r2 platform vs 2003, awesome! i was happy to wait a few months (been ~5 already). in the meantime, my box has been gathering dust waiting for the "un-vailing".

I'm sorry to say, but this breaks the deal - absolutely...completely...ffs. the servers' other functionality was neat, some of it useful, but seen as completely secondary to the drive extender. the money is instead going towards hardware...wether it be NAS or attached esata external drive bays, new hd's, whatever. just NOT WHSv2

drive extender is THE reason I was interested in WHS to begin with and now it's gone and so am I...unless you re-introduce it, but knowing you guys, it's most likely not going to happen.

Microsoft, big FAIL this time guys...really, get your s**t together. good luck with the product launch, your numbers will only be skewed by oem like vista was, though i guess it is a bit different...but whatever...LAME! I call shinnanigans!

yours truly,

Super Dissapointed.

You guys are so clueless. Cant you see how many 0-post people signed up to scream their dismay to you?

As a consumer getting ready to deploy 7 copies of windows 7, a 2008 R2 server for learning on top of my 2003 Enterprise box....

You dont get it. I wanted to add two WHS to my lineup but now, no way!

Then bloody decouple the products.

"Let me completely confirm we are 100% committed to Vail" Nope, you're not. You've killed the product.

I've read Thurrott's reasoning on the topic - frankly, decouple the products if enterprise-level loads are causing it to fail. It's named "Home Server" for a reason.

This post about the announcement to remove Drive Extender from Windows Home Server 2008 was written up by Ars Technica. It was timestamped approximately 6am MST on 26 Nov. Here's the URL:

arstechnica.com/.../has-microsoft-just-ruined-windows-home-server.ars

It actually refers to this comment thread explicitly!

The author gave a sensible rationale for Microsoft's decision regarding Vail and Drive Extender. But it seems clear cut that Drive Extender was unique feature. Sad that it was discontinued, as there isn't much else besides RAID storage which no one wants to deal with at home.

Typical corporate America.  Anything to save money.  Do not ask the consumer what they want.  Just change what you want to reduce costs.  That is what drives America these days, the almighty profit dollar.  Not a good quality product that meets the needs of it's customers.  Nope just the profit dollar.

I have to agree with many of the posts here.  The drive extender feature was the only reason I decided to get a Windows Home Server.  So, now instead of adding an extra drive that I may have just lying around, I have to remove and install drives within my WHS.  Let's get real.  You are virtually killing what was a reasonable solution to home network storage.  Sounds to me like another bad decision.  But what do I know I am just the consumer!

Michael,

I own a WS 2008 R2 and had WHS2 installed on it as a VM, because I liked DE. Recently I built a separate box with Vail, for the same reason. Sorry, but despite large drives being available easily (for money), I like WHS because I can use my many small older drives whch are available to me for free. My Vail box currently holds 8 ranging in size from 250 GB to 2TB.

DE is the killer feature of WHS and without it the product is not appealing to me. I am extremely diappointed.

Have you received a single positive user comment by the way? How on earth is it possible to pretend this is in the interest of the user? Which one??????

WHS is the only product I have seen recently (other than Apple's), that actually really created something new and exciting for home users. Without DE it is a yawn.

Removing DE is a really bad idea. The logic that big drives are common is simply flawed.  For decades users like me have had more stuff to store than the current technology supports comfortably.  A large video collection is too much for the cloud (bandwidth) and too much for 2TB RAID drives (how often would one need to add drives?)

I have been thrilled by Vail so far.  I have logged several bugs including some with DE and have been eagerly anticipating the released product.  I have shown the beta to several friends and frequently commented that Microsoft is really getting it right with this product and that it was nice to see at least one part of the company is still able to innovate and simplify.  DE is, quite simply, the core technology needed to make a SIMPLE storage solution.  Without it, the underlying problem remains complicated.  

Without it, Vail has no real value for me.

Without it, Vail has has no real value  for anyone I recommend things to.

Without it, I need to find another vendor for my home infrastructure.

Odd that Microsoft is choosing to concede yet another space to the competition.  Are you guys just tired?

Michael, you know I love ya and your team, but honestly, I'm disappointed that you say you are still 100% committed to Vail.  It's DOA without DE.  Shoot the product in the head so it doesn't die a miserable, lonely, pathetic death.

I have to agree with all the comments here. One of the best benefits of DE is the built-in ability to grow storage and ensure availability in the data. Most WHS users won't get into all the third party bolt-on's etc. I myself have a 20+ year background in IT and see the ease of use as one of the most important selling features. I have recommended WHS to many friends who love the ease of use.  This will cause folks to go back and re-evalute NAS alternatives which is going in the wrong direction for home, consumer use. This is just not a good idea.....

Thanks for the post, Michael, but neither of your recent posts explained why Drive Extender was dropped.  Your customers deserve to know of the problems.

Paul Thurrott had me excited about Vail.  I had planned to purchase a WHS v2 when released next summer.  Without DE, however, WHS v2 is no longer of interest to me.  I will look to Drobo instead.

A terrible decision to drop DE!  I was looking forward to Vail, but now its no-go for me.  I would have to replace my two 1TB hard drives that are DE'ed into one 2TB drive.  Since I currently have less than 50% free space on the DE'ed 2 TB drive, it is simply not possible to upgrade to Vail without adding an additional $200 to my server.  Since this is a HOME server, that is not in the FAMILY budget.  For me, Vail is DOA.

Without DE I would not purchase the a new WHS.

For me. as a "power" home user Veil just became a total irrelevance. I'll go back to using a proper HW Raid server or consider stumping up the cash for a Drobo, at least once my v1 box becomes outdated. Removing simple duplication technology from Veil has destroyed the most critical feature for me, and also destroyed my confidence in Microsoft as offering a solution in this marketplace appropriate for my family and friends. I had previously advocated WHS to them and that cannot be the case any more.

Seriously the storage management pool concept is the critical sauce in WHS. You guys have an uphill struggle now. I urge you to reconsider as without it you are driving the product into oblivion (IMO)

I signed up to simply say this:

Anyone involved in making this mind-numbingly ignorant decision should be blacklisted and prevented from ever working in the IT industry again.

Mr. Michael Leworthless.  That's right, I'm looking at you, and I'm also looking at whatever bonehead boss of yours signed off on such stupidity.

There is absolutely no reason to ever buy any future version of WHS that does not include DE functionality -- nada, zip, zilch, NONE.

Without DE, the entire WHS product line is just like you and everyone on your team: Le' Worthless.

Codename "Fail", indeed...

For what it's worth, I wrote up my thoughts about why DE was important to WHS.  I call it "bad product management" (I am / was a PM and I know these decisions are hard) mostly because I see great opportunity for marketplace confusion.

I ask myself this question:  My parents have a WHS box today.  It has saved their bacon many times.  Without DE, what would their purchasing experience be like?  Could they upgrade their WHS box easily?  Could they differentiate available offerings on the marketplace?

Software RAID / DE offered them great advantages in that they could upgrade whenever they needed.  All they needed to remember were the letters "SATA" and how to open the front of their HP box.

Leaving that user experience up to an OEM is a large opportunity for failure.  Compare how Windows Mobile 6.x compares to Windows Phone 7 in terms of hardware and software.  With WP7, Microsoft constrained the hardware precisely to give the user a consistent user experience.  The OS is smooth, responsive, and the choice is mostly down to features like keyboards, screen size and device feel.  

Drive Extender spackled over an OEM's hardware and gave users a consistent experience.  Exposing an OEM's hardware design to the user is a bad idea.

http://bit.ly/dLQt8m

I have also been a been advocate of WHS.  I have personally convinced a dozen different families and two businesses to purchase WHS.  All of them are using the DE functionality because ALL of them want redundacy and they want it to be easy.  Hardware raid, software raid, etc, isn't easy enough.  The backup functionality, remote access, etc are just icing on the cake.

Most of these people weren't MS fans at all, but they love their WHS and I usually get comments from them stating that MS actually 'got' the consumer market with that product.  I believe the only reason it isn't a huge success, is MS' failure at marketing the product.  All it would take is a commercial with a laptop drive going bad, show the guy going to buy a new HDD and restoring from the bootable DVD.  Then show him getting an alert on a failed WHS drive and getting a new drive and doing a 'hot' insert of the drive and 'removing' the failed drive.  

With DE being taken out of the product you're SOL if you lose a drive now unless you have a hardware raid setup.  There isn't a single family that I've convinced to purchase this system that would have the slighest idea how to replace a HDD from a RAID set with a failure.  Nor would any of them understand the need to purchase the same type of drive, etc.  Don't get me started on how unerliable a RAID 5 set is with cheap HDD's.  You've got to buy drives that are built for RAID for the raid set to truly be reliable.

Really, this is the end of WHS.  Even the small businesses that use WHS use it because of DE.  The product is now worthless.

"we are 100% committed to Vail, and continue to work on all the core features outside of Drive Extender?"

What? Tell me, why even continue after dumping Drive Extender? That's like pulling the engine and drivetrain out of the next Chevy Malibu and saying, "we are 100% committed to making sure the rest of the car is as solid as a new model should be." But you've pulled the heart out of the machine.

This is a horrible decision. Drive Extender is THE -- yes THE -- most useful feature on WHS. I only use my WHS as an "advanced NAS" and don't really use its backup features. To me, the full value in WHS was easy drive pooling and duplication of folders for redundancy. I have purchased a number of "Advanced Format" 2TB drives and was all ready for the update to Vail when the final version arrived. Now I'm going to have to find something else and abandon my WHS. You have just killed WHS.

You lost my at "outreach." Michael, you know that's not outreach you're hearing from users. It's outrage. Who is being helped by you glossing over the significance of this change? Not users, that's for sure.

There's only one thing worse than a population of angry users -- users who don't care any more. That's the next step for us. Without a *meaningful* response from you guys on this subject, many of us will be walking away from WHS.

RIP Windows Home Server

I'm still on v1 and intended to update to Vail. However, as many have already noted, there's not much reason to do so without DE. If I'm going to set up a RAID5 system, I may as well do it with Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit and have Media Center and support for my Hauppauge TV hardware without having to 'doctor' the operating system.

My 2 cents worth - Please reconsider the DE removal from Vail.

This is a failure of vision! - DE has many advantages: Firstly a system can grow, Drives can be added and / or swapped one at a time for larger drives. Swapping also refreshes and renews the storage hardware. At some point in a raid system you will probably need to copy all files to a new system. With DE I can move the data drives and rebuild. I can also protect my 2TB+ or so of Audio photos & home video, while not wasting space protecting TV recordings from my media center. My WHS has grown over the years as I have swapped out 500GB drives one by one for 2TB drives. 2TB drives my look big today but you dont have to look far back to see how storage needs change. All media is now digital the need for secure storage for photos movies and audio is vital. Movies alone will, long term eat up all the storage you can throw at them.

This really is a failure of vision. The blog comment that "... our development for these products is very closely tied, a decision like this affects all three." So what! Make a new plan!

WHS team, I would like to know what your commitments are in FY11. You guys totally lose them. For the coming Vail, I replace and upgrade many hardware as preparation according to Vail's requirements. it as some people around me did. DE is such important feature, without it, why Home users buy it? Because of DE, I gave up RAID, but now you guys make me to hug Linux  to seek a solution.  DE is core value, either for normal user or IT pro. Lose it, lost all of them. Think about it, it worth more effort. Do not make same stupid decision as WM did.

Was waiting for Vail. Not anymore. You mad Vail to fail for me.

Had to chime in with my two cents.  Over the past two years I have never been more excited about Microsoft and it's product offerings.  I learned about WHS about the time the first Windows 7 beta's were coming out.  Since then I have been pushing these two products to anyone who would listen (and some that tried not to).  With the release of Windows Phone I had some kum-ba-ya pipe dream about how nice my digital life was becoming.  WHS was the CORE of making all this possible.  Now, with this news my dreams have become nothing but a fantasy.  I have seen hundreds (thousands?) of posts saying how people won't be upgrading to 'Vail' on release.  My response will be much more severe.  I feel like Microsoft has intentionally made the business decision to slight its home customers and I will be activly seeking alternatives for ALL Microsoft products that I currently use.

This is the whole purpose of the product...easy redundancy of the data. You must provide some solution for data duplication before the release of this product. You cannot expect casual tech savvy home users to now setup and learn RAID configurations.

How can you be committed to a product that your customers will not want and that the hardware vendors continue to drop?

I hate to say it, but this it so typical of MS. You guys go through a cycle of connecting/disconnecting from what your users really want. What happened with Vista should have been a lesson for the entire company. You can't just take features out, highly valued features at that, and expect your users to roll with it. Yet you do it every time.

There are users with already existing installs that will expect a painless transition of their data to the new version. With this change it is not going to be so. Am I expected to invest in a whole new system in order to transfer the terabytes of data already stored in my current WHS? This is no business data, but family pictures, videos, music, software, etc.

You say you are committed to Vail. If you were really then the platform would come when it is ready. All the previous existing features perfected and new features polished. I am sure your users would not mind the extra wait.

It is a very bad decision, sadly not surprising from MS.

How does this affect Small business Server.  I have still not upgraded from SBS 2003 because of the new hardware required for 64x - just now thinking of the upgrade.  Will SBS continue? Also can you suggest a link to a migration guide for this upgrade?

I'm a .Net developer, I've got a Windows 7 phone, I adore my V1 MediaSmart server that is hooked up to my 4 PCs and laptop all running Windows 7.  I even use IE9 Beta.  I've reccomended WHS to just about everyone I know and love showing off how I can stream movies to my MediaCenter PC (and use my MediaCenter Remote)  but this..

I believe your recent ad campaign sums it up.  Really?  Really?  

You couldn't be bothered to put in the extra effort to make this work?  You couldn't just leave DE on WHS and let the others go the other way?  Really?  

Make this right.  You had something special and you're throwing it away for reasons you can't even explain coherently.  Get your acts together.

Why don't you think about your customers who bought hardware for V1, in anticipation for V2 upgrade?  I don't have the option to go out and buy another OEM box.  You need to not bother us with technical explanation and simply meet the customer need.  My next box won't be a WHS.

I was looking forward to making a WHS my next build but with this development I don't think I will bother, this takes away one of the best features of WHS.

I will sound like a echo from the community as a whole. But wtf? (Pardon my french)

I have been using WHS V1 for a long time. I have been using Windows in different shapes and forms since WIndows 3. During the years I have started to feel that MS just didn't get it when it came to the consumers and started using different Linux distributions and OSX. We wanted ease of use, good features and simplicity. Not 50 different versions of the same OS with names like "Basic", "Power", "Pro", "Ultimate", "Exterme", "Super duper thingy that can do some crap that we decided not to put into another version". I still HAD to use Windows since I'm a developer and have worked on a lot of Windows development and, let's face it, you need Windows if you wanna play games on a PC :)

When Vista came I almost puked and stayed with XP until a few months ago. But with WIndows 7 I finnaly felt that MS was back on track. I have installed it, not beacuse I have to but because I actually like it. (With Switcher installed so one can get expose... hehe).

The same feeling was the one I got when I was introduced to WHS. A colluege at work talked about the WHS when I was thinking about building a new Linux server for storage of photos, movies etc. The main point that finaly got me interested was the DE. "Could it actually be that simple to add drives??? And to a WINDOWS OS???". I decided to bite the bullet and get a WHS. And I have loved it!

But what about it is it that I have loved? The DE!!!

I have been able to easily add arbitrary disks to my system, swap disks in and out with ease and per folder set if it's important enough to have the folder duplicated for security. For instance, my pictures of my kids are important, so I have duplicated these. So are my Subversion repositories, important documents and some videos.

My latest Downloads etc could be downloaded again if they fail so I ignore those. Saving a coupple of hundreds of gigs of storage.

I have set up apache, mysql, subversion, uTorrent etc om my WHS. All of this COULD have been done on ANY Windows (or linux for that matter) machine. The ONLY point for actaully going for a WHS was the existance of DE. I could have added a webportal interface to any home built server. Any server could handle client backups etc. But ONLY whs hade DE. All the talk about better media streaming in Vail doesn't meen more than the fact that MS finaly undertsnds that those features sucked in the first version of WHS. I and many with me have lived with a 3-rd party app like Teversity, Orb or similar.

Last week after a power outage my WHS failed to start. The registry had become corrupt and could not be repaired. So I decided to do a server recovery. But just as I was about to start I saw that Vail was avalible as public beta. I read about it and all the new features and thought that I could give it a go. Now, a few days later I get the news that DE is going to be removed from WHS "Vail". This makes it absolutley pointless for me to run Vail. All the benefits of DE for my specific setup and situation are gone and so are my feelings of MS actually starting to get it from a consumer perspective. How can MS have been so blind to the fact that the dedicated users of WHS that do anything more than just starting a ready built OEM version up after unpacking it see the DE functionality as the MAJOR benefit of WHS.

Sure, Mediacenter integration has also been a huge request and you MIGHT have been able to soften the blow by including that as a new feature in your anouncement to kill DE. But you must unserstand that now, Vail will not be used by alot of people. Not beacuse it doesn't have many great features, but beacuse the MAIN request (media center integration) asked bu users was not included and the MAIN advantage lifted and praised by the users (DE) is beeing removed.

I will now remove Vail from my system, go back to using WHS v1, loving my DE capabilities and the ease it brings. I will continue to watch my 1080p HD movies on my XBOX360 using Tversity and I will continue to double my WHS as a development server containing apache, mysql, subversion and more. And if we remove the GUI changes from Vail, do you know what I will actually miss out on by not using Vail instead?... Nothing, absolutley nothing that makes any difference at all in my day to day operation.

A suggestion would be to listen to your consumers. If they want DE, give them DE. There might be situations where DE is not good to use. If it slows down operation under certain circumstances or whatever, fine. But give them the OPTION to use DE if they want to do that.

A sad day indeed and my of hope for MS and their understanding for customer needs has turned from a glimmer into the last few seconds of a dying candle.

Is there some reason why both DE and RAID technologies can't both be included? Put a choice screen in the setup wizard with a link explaining the advantages and disadvantages of each. Make your choice and set things up the way that makes the most sense for your situation. That would be an increase in functionality. Changing from one technology that has some drawbacks to a different technology that has different drawbacks is not.

I am one of the people here who also created an account just for the sole purpose of expressing what a poor decision this is. It saddens me so much to see Microsoft pretty much paralyzing a great product with the removal of the essential feature that defined it in my opinion.

The fact that storage is getting cheaper and larger is true, but stoage needs are also increasing. I can have a 2TB drive, but my content will exceed that soon enough especially with video (like storing my DVD collection on my WHS for quick access instead of popping in DVDs all the time). My current setup exposes a 4.5TB setup and there is no one disk in the market that can do that. By the time there is, stored movies will need even more space.

Also expecting your customers to learn to deal with RAID is a non-starter. Drobo will just eat up all this market.

I heard discussions about improving newtork performance as a relationship to removing DE. If that is the case, WHS team should try to find another way. Revamp the whole underling technology if needed but keep this feature. It is core. Work with the Windows Filesystem team to find another way.

I think WHS was a start to a great future potential in home servers but WHS v2 will not go past the launch date without DE. :(

Please re-consider.

No DE - no Vail for me.

Vail RIP!

I should have done more research before I purchased a new WHS. I was in need of a NAS at home and I found what I thought was a bargin. With the death of DE no wonder it was going at half price. I guess I should have gotten an Iomega product or done all the work and configured a FreeNAS. The work is what I wanted to avoid at home. I have enough of that at work.

I was so looking forward to the new version, now I am locked out. My existing WHS has 2TB across 5 drives. No two drives are the same size and therefor will not work well with raid. Not to mention that automatic folder duplication was the whole reason I got the server in the first place. Nice job of gutting a popular product.

197 comments as of now on this post and well over 200 on the first announcemnet . . . generally one posted comment probably represents how at least 20 other people feel about this issue.  So, truly it is a land slide of dissapointment.  

I agree with the vast majority of the responses - NO DRIVE EXTENDER NO NEED for WHS or 'Vail'.  This is possibly worst decision I have seen MS make in years.  A great way to kill one of the best innovations in years.  Truly shaeks my faith in Microsoft.

I STONGLY urge you to reconsider.  1 TB and 2 TB drives are not nearly enough, and for many of us with media collections multiple PC's at home etc. Drive extender and WHS are one and the same.  Using 'hardware' solutions are not nearly as good as DE, and much less flexable and much harder to manage.  

DE IS WHS.  

At this point I am forced to go find a good Linux solution or some other alternative.  A true innovation wasted by bad management and clear empire building with-in Microsoft.  WHS is not the same as your business server solutions.  I run many servers for business purposes, and web applications.  Unless you can show some real innovation I see no reason to bother with WHS.  WHS has a place in my home network, but clearly has zero value with-out Drive Extender.

Wake-up and listen to your customers.  if you listen carefully they will tell you what about your job and performance.

I joined this community just to vent about this issue...  I bought WHS V1 for the DE technology... As my media grows, so can my server, with little to no management.  When I get home, the last thing I want to do is manage server storage here...  

Just another *one* that sees no need to get vail if it simply has nicer remote access and the ability to host the homegroup... While all the extra features are nice, they are considered extra in my opinion... Extra to the Drive Extender....

I can apprieciate the desire and want to have synergy between Vail and SBS, but they are for different customers.  We all love playing backseat Home Server Developer, but this is more than a gripe, it is the very selling point for most customers...

I have been waiting for Vail, Win Phone 7, and a decent pad/tablet for a year now from MS... Cash in Fist, waiting to buy them... I bought an iPad a few weeks ago, Win Phone is nice, but not on all major carriers, and now this Vail news was the final blow.......

Took the chore to register just to show that I don't agree with this malicious big wig decision.

After reading the DE technical whitepaper I was convinced it will be the future of SMB storage. I'm using WHS since 2 years and had no problems. Loved it.

200 comments from 90% "0 post users" show that people really care about this decision and that this might be possibly the last nail in the coffin of VAIL.

Seriously, you should remove the word "Home" from Vail.

Call it simply "Windows Server", because that's what it is without DE.

A pity WHS is abandoned by MS. And I wonder which are "all the core features outside of Drive Extender" that you're talking about... I really feel insulted, here. :(

Ok so I know I'm not a typical user of WHS I currently have a selfbuilt server box with 15Tera of available storage using 2Tb, 1.5TB,and several 500gb disks (It grew over time and I added storage I could get cheap i.e. on sale at Tiger, Newegg etc) My  last addon were 2 2tb disks from Tiger at $69 ea. Not being any kind of IT pro I am guessing that RAID using my current equipment is out of the question?? I like WHS I have recommended it too friends I even built a server box for one. So now I guess we stay where we are as far as software upgrades are concerned until we can find something made by someone else that serves our needs.

Why not recognize that there is a market for the following:

1) A basic home/small business server app that uses no DE and runs just fine on a single 2 or 3 TB disk

2) A slightly more advanced server app using 64bit tech with DE for home enthusiast

3) An advanced small business app using RAID with enterprise level disks for the high end of the market

I think that as tech advances in storage and broadband speed the home server will eventually go to the cloud but until then plese try to listen to the people that have supported MS through DOS 4.0 Windows 2000 and Vista lets not add WHS Vail to that list.

Just my 2 cents                    John G

P.S. In case you are wondering I am a bit of a SciFi movie nut and I have ripped lots of old movies from the 50's and 60's onto the server so I can watch them whenever the mood strikes me.

I am a completely MAC OS-X converted from windows user, for over three years now, but everytime I spoke of a home server to anyone it was Microsoft Windows Home Server. for me it was the best product Microsoft ever made. Of course Microsoft would blow that. No surprise here. It's who they are BAD DECISIONS all around. Why would Home Server be different?

I am just sorry I spent so much money on a tower for 12 drive bays (on which I have 10 HDDs) instead of investing in drobo then... now I have to spent money again to buy drobo.

And bye bye Microsoft... for good this time.

Despite that I am really sad. Loved WHS. Had it since the beginning of the beta program.

I noticed now that since Dec 3rd not one more comment has been posted as a reply to this thread... how many hundreds are there now I wonder... and I bet all say the same: WHS is DE! Without DE there is no WHS. WHS is dead on arrival without DE.

How many more ways can the customers say this? It doesn't matter how many times we say it because the truth is that the vision of the product since the beginning is the DE, not the backups - that can be done with hundreds of other products that are more easy to use. If you remove DE you kill the product. I wonder what the initial team that developed WHS thinks of this decision...

Now the question is: do you want to kill WHS? I bet that's the real reason here. It's called Microsoft vision - you can't bet on the future because it takes a while to get there. You should put your eyes on Apple attitude towards products more - think AppleTV, no success whatsoever but they keep going until it catches because they have vision and they believe it will catch - its just a matter of the right improvements.

Trust me: removing DE from WHS IS NOT the right improvement.

I have now finished my setup of my "new" homeserver. While removing vail since the announcement that DE was being removed I had my eyes set on moving back to WHS V1. But the I found out about greyhole and decided to set up my own linux server using Greyhole (basically DE for Linux). But just as I was about to start I read about .Amahi which is basically a ready built Linux Home Server.

I installed it with ease thanx to a ready built distro built on top of Fedora 12 and now have all the things I liked about WHS + the fact that I'm running linux and all the lovely door that opens up. I mounted the networks share set up by Amahi on my client and rsynced all my files from my old WHS shares onto it. Works like a breeze.

One-click installation of apps (Amahi equivalent to add-ons) for all kinds of stuff like fileexplorer, terminal shell, vnc client, bookmark shares server, calender server, dlna media streaming server, photo gallery etc!

I wish the WHS team well and hope they go back on their, quite rankly stupid, decision to remove DE.

p.s.

And Greyhole has the built in function to fore a balancing of the storage pool if you want to :)

Just plum ridiculous, in a world where home HD video and Digital SLR photography are becoming the norm. A Windows 7 enabled personal computer and a WHS server forms a homogenous storage and backup solution, Microsoft manage to identify the key point of a turnkey solution and trash it...  I won't be upgrading to Vail as DE currently protecting my data will effectively be taken away.

Sorry Michael, it wasn't a rough day for VAIL, it was funeral speech for VAIL.

DE is the key component of WHS and w/o it, everyone can use a standard NAS or something else.

I don't know, what the next generation of routers the german company AVM will produce

but i guess it will have some sort of next generation type of USB, Light peak or something else,

so that i can connect a Drobo to it and run the internal NAS-Software without Speed-Limitations.

If that happens there is no need anymore for WHS and Microsoft will loose again a market.

Thanks for making my decision easy on whether to purchase a second WHS box for a small office that I support. Without DE and with HP's withdrawal of the MediaSmart line, I'll be going with a Drobo. So long Project Fail.

I will not support , buy or use Windows Home Server  product without drive extender. That is the primary reason I am running a WHS box. I bought a HP / MS solution because it was what I needed right out of the box. This is the only machine, out of 5 computers in my system, that I did not build from components. With out DE I am afraid I will shop elsewhere.

Rgrds

Peru

newsflash!: at the heels of microsoft's drive extender's demise, apple inc. announces and releases a super-easy-to-use-even-a-child-can-do-it mac-os based home server which includes a new an improved variant of drive extender. upon hearing about this great "new" invention, the world flocks to get a piece of the action while windows home server fades into the background, windows-mobile style. the usual.

To use the "We Got Served discount" that DROBO gives to WHS users, yesterday I finally ordered my first DROBO device. I chose a DROBO S that has 5 drive bays and eSATA, FW800 and USB 3.0 interfaces. I'm going to connect it to my now unused 3 years MacBook and put it on the network after copying all my WHS content on it. Bought 4x GreenCaviar 2TB drives to use with a free 1.5TB disk that is on the WHS.

I still believe that what MS really wanted was to kill WHS. Congratulations. They succeeded. In doing so MS pointed me into what will be a 100% Apple infrastructure at home. With the end of WHS that was my last Microsoft product (although one that I really loved), MS ends its life in my house.

A lot of small mistakes made consistently over time will be Microsoft doom. This is just one of them.