I have an EX490. I was wondering what is better whs v1 or whs2011 and why? Just thinking about upgrading but if it's not worth it forget it.

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EX490
CPU E6550
8TB HDD's
2GB RAM

You could certainly go either way on this one, and it's going to be a matter of personal preference. There are pros and cons either way, and I'll try to lay out some of them the best I can without getting too much into the "politics" of the debate.

Items listed are in no particular order of importance:

Reasons to go with WHS v1:

* Well established, robust product
* Simple to set up
* Lots of add-ins available for extensibility
* Drive Extender technology makes adding additional storage to your server very simple; no need to understand "complex" RAID solutions + folder duplication
* Supports backing up Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 clients, 32- and 64-bit

Reasons why WHS v1 may not be the best choice:

* 32-bit x86 architecture
* Can use 4 GB RAM but performance may be degraded
* If doing lots of transcoding and heavy duty streaming, Drive Extender can pose performance problems

Reasons to go with WHS 2011:

* Based on proven 2008 R2 server platform
* 64-bit architecture (x64)
* Simple to set up
* No Drive Extender eliminates stuttering and performance problems with streaming; better support for hardware/OEM solutions like RAID
* Supports backing up Windows XP through Server 2008 R2 (same as above)
* Third party add-ins available (currently beta) for those who want Drive Extender-like technology

Reasons why WHS 2011 may not be the best choice:

* Very new product - not "tried and true" like WHS v1
* Lack of Drive Extender makes adding storage to the server more complicated; users may/will need to invest in hardware RAID (can be expensive)
* Drive Extender replacement add-ins (currently beta) will not be free once released as final products
* Extremely limited selection of add-ins

I have an EX487 running WHS 2011 and an EX490 running WHS v1. My experience with WHS 2011 is still pretty limited so I can't really give a recommendation for or against it. I do like WHS v1 very much, though. And when it comes to WHS 2011, I'm using StableBit Drive Pool (beta) as a DE replacement. I am a Drive Extender supporter...there are lots of DE supporters and lots of DE haters out there, so 2011's lack of DE can be regarded as both a pro and a con, depending on your point of view.

Matt

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Matt Sawyer
Owner, Dojo North Software, LLC

HP EX490, 4GB, E5300, 15TB - Server 2012 - Sharing and Streaming
HP EX487, 4GB, E5300, 13TB - Server 2012 Essentials - Backups

Thanks for the input

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EX490
CPU E6550
8TB HDD's
2GB RAM

I agree with Matt's assessment.

A plus for v1 if you have an HP system (ex: your EX490) is that you have an integrated software/hardware solution. In my opinion, HP did a great job as a value add to the original oem version of V1. DIY systems using V1 do not have this and if you migrate your system to 2011 you will also be on your own. There is no HP "version" for 2011. Not a big deal for most but it depends on how much you want to get involved in deciding whether to use a DE solution, getting the EX490 lights to work, etc. My view is that if your EX490 meets your needs as is then there is no compelling reason to switch at this point.

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WS2012E
AMD Phenom II X4 905e 65W Quad-Core / ASUS Sabertooth 990FX MB / G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB) DDR3 Memory
120 GB Kingston HyperX SSD OS/Boot Drive / 6TB Storage

I agree it a personal preference and it depends on how you use it.

I hated that the EX495 running v1 was so darn slow and it did not seem to work well with win7 (no home sharing, server seldom showed up in explorer).

I switched to WHS 2011 and could not be happier. I do not use it as a media server but as a file server and backup location (both Mac and win7). I think 2011 is far superior to v1 for that job.

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- Tom

I have been using WHS2011RC for a while now, and I have not been able to get a backup to span over more than one backup drive.If WHS is so good at collecting information, how is it possible to back up this information if only one backup drive can be used at a time.

its been a while since I asked this. Has anything changed from when I last asked this.

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EX490
CPU E6550
8TB HDD's
2GB RAM

Mirrors my experience. Even with the stock CPU and 2 Gig of RAM WHS 2011 is MUCH more responsive. With 4 GB of RAM, it's an awesome little box. Unless I was doing heavy transcoding of music or videos, I wouldn't bother upgrading the CPU. And even then, I'd have to think hard about it - who cares if it takes longer - it's a server, it's always on and as long as you don't create new media to be transcoded than the server can do in a 24 hour period is it really that essential? I'd upgrade the RAM over CPU first, if I upgraded the CPU at all. I did upgrade both, but if I were to do it now I wouldn't bother upgrading the CPU.

How do I add more drives if drive extender is gone?

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EX490
CPU E6550
8TB HDD's
2GB RAM

Manually. Plug the drive in, go to the console and then identify which shares you want to move to it.

If you need to span a share across multiple drives, then you'll need a third party drive extender replacement like DriveBender to give you the drive extender like functionality back. So far with 3TB drives I don't miss drive extender, and I'm hoping I can hang on until the next version of WHS which will hopefully be based on the Server 2012/Windows 8 kernel that will have Drive Pooling at the OS level again.

Wow that sucks. I guess I have to pay for drive bender as well? Forget whs2011. Can I use windows server 2008 instead? Does that have DE? And can I host that as a media server still?

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EX490
CPU E6550
8TB HDD's
2GB RAM

Nope - nothing other that Windows Home Server 1 ever had drive extender.

Drive Extender was a good idea, but the implementation had many faults - indeed, early versions of WHS v1 often had data loss issues. Microsoft needed to kill Drive Extender as it was.

With Windows 8 and I also assume the next version of Windows Server Microsoft is introducing drive pooling: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2 ... or-all.ars

It looks to be a much more robust and well-thought out solution, and no doubt Drive Extender and the reaction to the removal of drive extender inspired MS to create it. And those who never heard of WHS will now benefit from it becoming a core OS feature. So far it's the ONLY thing that I am looking forward to in Windows 8 or the next version of Windows Server...

Having said that, the 3rd party utilities still have more functionality than the new drive pooling. And when you consider that WHS itself can be had for under $50, and both of the 3rd party utilities are also under $50 for home use the fact that you need a third party solution really isn't that big a deal - at least to me.

If it is for you, stick with WHS v1 and hope that the next version of WHS is based on the newer version of Windows Server that also hopefully has the drive pooling feature. And that they don't hike the price of WHS v.Next up either

How do I install whs2011 on ex490 HP mss?

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EX490
CPU E6550
8TB HDD's
2GB RAM

Here's how I did it: viewtopic.php?f=33&t=10994

Neither the CPU or memory upgrades are necessary - I have WHS 2011 running on an Atom based MediaVault with the default 2GB of RAM. If I were to pick one of the two upgrades to do first, it would be the memory - I think it's easily the best bang for the buck.

You could just mount the new drives to a empty ntfs folder like on Win7 . and advanced server 03 and advanced server 08. Let save you have a DATA folder and under that you have video, music and software, I know for a fact you can mount a single drive to each folder under DATA, Im not so sure if you can mount several drives to say the video folder.

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EX485, 4gb ram
Intel® Pentium® Processor E5200 (2M Cache, 2.50 GHz, 800 MHz FSB)
4 1Tb drives
WHS 2011 64bit